On Building Peace: Rescuing the Nation-state and Saving the United Nations 9789048534906

Citation preview

On Building Peace

On Building Peace Rescuing the Nation-state and Saving the United Nations

Michael von der Schulenburg

Amsterdam University Press

Cover design: Gijs Mathijs Ontwerpers, Amsterdam Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 94 6298 427 1 e-isbn 978 90 4853 490 6 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789462984271 nur 754 © Michael von der Schulenburg / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2017 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.

For my twin brother Gert, who helped me turn loneliness into adventure For my friend Michael Fone, who helped me turn fears into curiosity



Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 9 Foreword 11 Introduction 17 Is Peace Escaping Us?

1 The Fading of the Post-Cold War Peace Order 1.1 The Emergence of a Post-Cold War Peace Order 1.2 The Unraveling of Western Global Dominance 1.3 The Delusion of a Just Peace

33 35 41 48

2 The Failing of the Nation-State 2.1 The Surge in Intrastate Armed Conflicts 2.2 The Rise of Belligerent Nonstate Actors 2.3 The Neglected Dual Character of Nation-States

59 64 68 78

3 The Marginalization of the United Nations 3.1 The Eroded International Law of the United Nations 3.2 The Inherent Limitations of the United Nations 3.3 The Loss of Innocence of the United Nations

89 92 102 105

4 Rescuing the Nation-State 4.1 The Nation-State and Peacebuilding 4.2 The Nation-State and Belligerent Nonstate Actors 4.3 The Nation-State and Peace Agreements

119 122 131 141

5 Building Peace on Collective Security 5.1 Restoring the Primacy of the UN Charter 5.2 Expanding the Mandate of the UN Charter 5.3 Broadening Collective UN Decision-Making Processes

159 164 170 181

6 Striking a New Grand Bargain for Global Peace and Security 6.1 Fears of a Global Power Vacuum 6.2 Prospect of Preserving Democratic Values 6.3 Risks of Fighting the Last Wars

195 201 210 214

7 Must Future Peace Be Different?

235

Annexes 243 Annex I UN Peace Missions: When Peacekeepers Turn into a Conflict Party 243 Annex II UN Reforms: Two Reviews Are One Too Many 251 Annex III A New Diplomacy for Intrastate Relations 259 Annex IV Glossary of Terms Used 263 Bibliography 275

Text Boxes by Chapters Introduction The Syrian Conflict and the End of the Post-Cold War Peace Order 29 Box 1.1 Promises of Paradise 52 Box 1.2 Wars Shape Peace 53 Box 1.3 Will We Be Able to Manage This? 55 Box 2.1 Do Intrastate Conflicts Come in Waves? 81 Box 2.2 Afghanistan’s Unsuccessful Liberators 83 Box 2.3 Iraq and the Storming of a Country under Siege 87 Box 3.1 Shifts in UN Peace Operations 111 Box 3.2 From the Iran-Iraq War to the Sierra Leonean Civil War 112 Box 3.3 Rwanda, the Peacekeepers’ Nightmare 115 Box 4.1 Is Peacebuilding Trying to Cheat History? 154 Box 4.2 Who Is Responsible for Lynching Farkhunda? 155 Box 4.3 Holy Books and Secular Constitutions 157 Box 5.1 Sierra Leone: When the British Saved the United Nations 186 Box 5.2 Iraq’s Mistrusted Nation Builders 189 Box 5.3 Libya and the Failure to Protect 192 Box 6.1 Candles, Flowers, and the Caliphate 223 Box 6.2 Refugees, Migrants, and Teddy Bears 224 Box 6.3 Are We Setting Ourselves Up for Failure? 229

Acknowledgements My very special thanks go to Brami Van Crombrugge who has gone through the whole manuscript and not only corrected my poor English, but made excellent and wise substantive comments to ensure that my arguments flow smoothly. He is a professional, talented loyal young political scientist trained in diplomacy and has been a great personal support. I am sure that he will have a promising future and, one day, write greater books than this one. I also wanted to thank my wife, Evelien, and my sons, Julian, Casper, and Philip, for being such a great support in helping me to overcome the many moments of self-doubt and ill moods. And my thanks go to my cousins Angela Bohrer and Elisabeth Ruge, who helped at a time when I ran into a conflict with a former publishing house and was close to abandoning the entire book project. The book, therefore, has a touch of being a family affair. I am most grateful to Jan-Peter Wissink for taking the risk to publish this book – and to publish it for what it is. Without him, there would probably never be such a book. Thanks also to Saskia Gieling, Jaap Wagenaar, Ed Hatton and all of their colleagues from AUP for bringing this book to publication. I am proud that the book is published in Amsterdam, the European city of tolerance and openness and the city of my wife. When writing this book, I felt at times reminded of my experiences in East Germany when crossing ideological lines. Though I do not see it like this, many of my professional friends and contacts from think tanks, universities, international institutions, and journalism must have felt that my arguments went beyond what they may consider an acceptable range of criticism of the West. Several even turned their backs and no longer answered, especially not in writing. To avoid embarrassing anyone, I have decided not to mention any of the professional inputs I received. On this background, I have to mention Simon Head of the New York Review of Books. Although he will, in all likelihood, not even remember our brief meeting in Berlin, he gave me this short and dry advice: If you believe in it, stick to it! That was all I needed to hear. Many readers may differ from my assessment of the geopolitical developments and disagree with the recommendation I make. However, I wanted to assure them that I have written this book with all my sincerity and honesty.

Foreword It was a cold dark early morning in Kabul on 10 November 1989 when I heard the news on the BBC on the radio. At first it seemed completely unbelievable: the Berlin Wall had fallen! There it was: Alex Brody’s1 voice speaking from Berlin and describing how thousands of people on foot or in their Trabis2 were pouring through, and, yes, some even climbed over the Berlin Wall. Only a few hours earlier, this Wall was one of the best-guarded and most impregnable borders in the world. The fall of the Berlin Wall was a momentous historical event that triggered huge political changes.3 Two years later there would no longer be a Soviet Union, no longer a communist Eastern Europe, no longer a Warsaw Pact, and, indeed, there no longer was a communist threat. Most communist parties, especially those in the West, began to disband. This was the end of the bitter nuclear East-West confrontation that, in several instances, had come close to wiping out all of mankind. Despite the enormity of the changes, it all happened perfectly peacefully, without a shot being fired and without anyone being killed. What brought the Berlin Wall down and, with it, the communist political regime was simply people power – no Western politician or think tank, no secret service or clandestine operation had any influence on these historic developments. Indeed, Western intelligence was just as surprised by what had happened as their Eastern “counterparts.” For me, lying in a bed under a heavy blanket to protect myself against the morning cold on a mattress that had seen better days, and waiting for Ahmed, who spoke German with a heavy Bavarian accent, to light the little wood stove in my room, this was not only a momentous, but also a very emotional, event. And it had an unreal feeling. I was the only guest at what had once been the German guesthouse in Kabul, in a country in which 1 I had met Alex Brody earlier in Pakistan when he was a journalist for the BBC there. I do not know what has become of him but because of his broadcast from Berlin that November morning, I will neither forget his name nor his voice. 2 Trabi is cozy name for a small East German plastic car, the Trabant. 3 The fall of the Berlin Wall was the most spectacular, but not the first opening of the Iron Curtain that divided East and West. This credit goes to the Hungarians, and to the courageous decision by a little-known Hungarian prime minister, Miklos Nemeth, to cut the barbed wire that separated Hungary from Austria and an even less known Hungarian major of the border guards, who’s name I do not know, who applied the UN refugee convention and allowed East German refugees to escape over the border to Austria to reach West Germany. This was the first little hole that would ultimately burst the dam under the pressure for political change.

12 

On Building Peace

the East-West conflict was still fought over with weapons delivered by the East and West. Kabul was still controlled by the procommunist Najibullah government and came under regular rocket attacks from mujahedeen forces in the surrounding mountains. 4 The city with its lovely morning scent of wood fires marking the preparation of the first tea of the day was otherwise without electricity and without much heat; indeed, there were none of the Western amenities that come with a large development community. It was still war, and for any news I depended on my small radio running on two 1.5v batteries. I had grown up in East Germany, went to school there, and completed the obligatory military service.5 I remember the feeling of being trapped when one Sunday – it was 13 August 1961 – my mother told us a wall had been built across Berlin. I remembered the day when, in November 1962, we were told that my sister, with the help of a West German friend, had escaped to West Berlin tied under a specially prepared car. And of course, I remembered my own escape with my beloved twin brother hiding in an East German freighter ship loaded with military equipment destined for Vietnam in May 1969. I remembered the excitement to be free, free to travel, free to choose a profession, free to be friends with whom I wanted, free to read what I wanted, free from being told what is good and what is bad, and free to have my own political views. I also remembered the fear that came with this freedom, the fear of getting lost in an environment of neon lights, individualism, and social indifference. I did not quite get lost, but, of all places, I found myself in Afghanistan in 1989. The last Soviet troops had left Afghanistan only nine months earlier, defeated by mostly poor, hungry, and uneducated Afghan mujahedeen forces. Now, I was the head of the United Nations mission in Kabul codenamed “Operation Salaam.” Salaam, meaning “peace”! Our job was to help find this peace for Afghanistan. We did not find it. Afghanistan was to enter a further period of violence and anarchy, torn apart by warlords that 4 In May 1990, I was wounded by a cluster bomb that was fired from the mountains into Kabul. According to Helo Trust, a British demining NGO, this cluster bomb was American made and the rocket delivering it was Egyptian. It is ironic that an American-made cluster bomb almost killed me only a few months before the Soviet regime, which I had successfully escaped from 20 years earlier, finally collapsed. 5 I had served eighteen months of compulsory military service in the former SS barracks built to guard what had once been the first Nazi concentration camp of Sachsenhausen near Oranienburg, what was then East Germany. As a punishment (I was the sole soldier who had dared to vote against the new socialist constitution in 1968), I had to spend the last months in the same barracks that once housed prisoners assigned to forge British pound notes.

Foreword

13

the West had once armed against the Soviet Union only to later fall under the austere Islamist regime of the Taliban supported by an Arab Islamist group that would soon be known as al-Qaida. Afghanistan was to suffer yet another foreign military invasion – this time by US/NATO6 troops. Afghans were to pay the price, rightly or wrongly, for the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. The invasion of Afghanistan, code-named “Operation Enduring Freedom,” had the mission to destroy once and for all al-Qaida and its safe havens, to free Afghans from a medieval Taliban rule, and to turn the country into a prosperous liberal democracy. At the time, it amounted to blasphemy to raise any doubts about the future success of this mission.7 The “whole world”8 was now united in what President George W. Bush called Afghan “nation building”; it was the high point of the post-Cold War new peace order.9 But this was not to last. As I write these lines, most United States/NATO troops have finally left Afghanistan. Compared to the Soviet invasion in 1978, the West had come with twice as many troops, stayed almost twice as long,10 and poured tens of billions of dollars into this devastated country – resources the Soviet Union never had. This had become the longest war in post-WWII Western history; in fact, the longest war for the United States ever. Despite all of this, the West, like the Soviet Union before it, is leaving without having achieved 6 In Afghanistan, two parallel foreign forces operated: a US-led Operation Enduring Freedom and later the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). 7 In early 2002, a few months into the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, I had written several internal papers for the then-SRSG (Special Representative of the Secretary-General) Brahimi cautioning against too much optimism after the quick elimination of the Taliban. See “Fighting Terrorism in Afghanistan and Milton Friedman’s Airplane” (January 2002), “Peace and Foreign Troops in Afghanistan” (February 2002), or “Afghanistan’s Peace in a Glasshouse” (July 2002). They were not appreciated. 8 The term the “whole world” is often used even if this only means Western countries. However, in 2001/2002 it was the whole world that supported the invasion of Afghanistan. Nonetheless, it quickly became a Western project when NATO took over ISAF in August 2003 and with financial support coming almost entirely from the West. 9 The first time the “whole world” had united behind US leadership in what was then the beginning of the new post-Cold War peace order was to fight the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in January/February 1991. But, different to the later invasion of Afghanistan, this did not lead to any change of political regimes and “nation building” – or as we would call this now, peacebuilding. 10 At the height of its military deployment in 2013, there were 140,000 foreign troops under NATO command in Afghanistan. To this, one would have to add tens of thousands of private security contractors. Their exact numbers are not known, but the assumption of 60,000 private partly and heavily armed security guards is probably one of the lower estimates. The Western intervention is now in its sixteenth year and is likely to continue at a reduced rate. In comparison, Soviet forces were estimated to have reached 100,000 troops and remained in Afghanistan for only nine years and two months.

14 

On Building Peace

what they had come for. They too could not beat a mostly impoverished and illiterate local Afghan force in sandals that were now no longer called mujahedeen but Taliban. The West was equally unable to bring about a stable Afghanistan with a well-functioning government. Worse, al-Qaida, the terrorist organization that had triggered this invasion, could not be destroyed; instead they appeared to gain strength. The threat around the world from Islamist groups such as al-Qaida, Islamic State (IS), Boko Haram, and many other similar groups has since increased manyfold. Many political analysts claim that the Soviet empire began to disintegrate in Afghanistan. Whatever the case may be, the Soviet Union would only survive two and a half more years following its withdrawal from Afghanistan!11 Of course, the West will not collapse over its withdrawal from Afghanistan. But, a sure thing is that the Afghan failure is also a game-changer for the West. Western influence in the world is now much weaker. It had to absorb huge costs while other countries advanced12 and its technically highly sophisticated armed forces proved unable to beat low-tech, but highly motivated nonstate actors in an intrastate conflict. Much worse, the West, as the champion for the rule of law, human rights, and personal freedoms, had fallen into a moral pit, literally. This so-called “salt pit”13 consists of reports of torture and extrajudicial killings that, more than anything else, symbolize the Western defeat. How does this reconcile with pictures of jubilant young people hammering away at the Berlin Wall, the symbol of authoritarian imprisonment, only 25 years earlier? What had gone wrong? Why was such an economically, technically, and militarily powerful Western coalition not able to secure a victory against a low-tech armed local opposition that had virtually no international support? Why was it not possible to build a stable and functioning Afghanistan despite almost sixteen years of massive Western technical and financial assistance? Why was it so difficult to build peace – something everyone wants? The West 11 The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan in February 1989; the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991. 12 Sachs, “Alle Wege führen nach Peking.” There is a dispute over whether China’s GDP has or has not overtaken that of the United State in which different price indexes are used. However, in the context of this book this is relatively irrelevant. What is important is that there is a massive and probably irreversible shift in economic power away from the West toward the South – and this not only due to China’s economic growth. 13 The so-called “salt pit” was a clandestine prison in a former Kabul brick factory run by the CIA in which Afghan prisoners were tortured and even killed. See US Senate Intelligence Committee, “Report on CIA Torture.”

Foreword

15

wanted peace and Afghans want peace! Was it that Western peace and Afghan peace are different? I have always loved Afghanistan and still have the greatest respect for Afghans on all sides of the conflict. For this reason, I regarded the repeated assaults on Afghanistan without a solution in sight to also be my own defeat. More importantly, though, it is a defeat of the collective security system and its embodiment, the United Nations, an organization for which I have worked for over three decades under often extremely trying circumstances in many countries with similar problems than those in Afghanistan. I surely had an interesting life, but was it also a successful one? This is, therefore, also a personal book that analyzes building peace from the point of view of collective security. More than any academic research, this book takes its clues from my own experiences that took me from communist East Germany to West Berlin, London, Paris, New York, and many different countries around the world where people struggle finding peace, security, justice, and at least some prosperity. This book will not be able to answer the questions it raises with any degree of satisfaction. There will be many different views on how best to build peace because peace itself is too complex and controversial for easy answers. Recognizing that I can only make a small contribution, if that at all, I have called this book simply “On Building Peace.”

Introduction Is Peace Escaping Us? Today, we may be living in the most peaceful times in known human history.1 If the decline in civilians, soldiers, or militants being killed as a result of wars or armed conflicts around the world is an indication for greater peace, we have globally made considerable progress toward peace. Since the creation of the United Nations at the end of two devastating World Wars, the absolute numbers – and even more so the relative numbers of battle-related deaths have, with annual fluctuations, drastically declined. Indeed, for anyone in the world living today, the risk of being killed in a war or armed conflict is only about 2% to 5% compared to the risk their parents had faced living in the 1950s.2 In fact, today, four to five times as many people get killed in vehicle accidents then in wars and armed conflicts. The reduction in the risks of being killed due to wars is even more pronounced if we look back at events in the first half of the twentieth century. For the ten years from 2005 to 2015 combined, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) lists a grand total of about 567,000 battle-related deaths.3 This ten-year accumulated figure is substantially lower than the numbers of people killed in single battles during WWI or WWII. 4 For example, the battle of Verdun in 1916 may have cost the lives of about 714,000 men, mostly soldiers, and the battle over Stalingrad in 1942/1943 1 Steven Pinker makes this argument forcefully in his The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011), as does Joshua S. Goldstein more specifically in reference to the United Nations in his Winning the War on War (2011). 2 Uppsala Conflict Data Programme, Annual Report 2015; see also Pettersson and Wallensteen, “Armed Conflicts, 1946-2014.” This figure is calculated as a percentage of reported average annual battle-related deaths compared to total global population; it hence reflects not only a decline in the number of those killed, but also the tripling of world population since the end of WWII. I am grateful to Prof. Joshua Goldstein for drawing my attention to this development. 3 Almost half of the total 2005 to 2015 battle-related deaths is due to events in the last two years. In 2014 and 2015, battle-related deaths were estimated to have reached 251,000. Could this be because the civil war in Syria has increasingly become a proxy war among global and regional powers? All numbers are taken from the UCDP report. See also Chapter 6.3. 4 It would be interesting to see if the dramatic increase in internally displaced and refugees during the last ten years, and the willingness of the international community to support them, has helped keep casualty numbers down. If yes, it would prove the achievements of today’s humanitarian activities.

18 

On Building Peace

is estimated to have cost the lives of between 1.3 and 1.7 million men and women, mostly civilians.5 For peace, there is a further encouraging development: Since the end of the Cold War, the number of interstate wars has constantly declined. Today, wars among nation-states in which national armies f ight each other over territory or power, once a regular scourge in human history, have almost completely vanished. The 2003 Iraq War saw the last major combat between regular armies; since then, confrontations between regular armed forces have been limited to skirmishes. In 2013, 2014, and 2015, the most recent years for which we have data, the UCDP registered 34, 40, and 50 armed conflicts respectively worldwide. All except one were intrastate armed conflicts. The only exception was the ongoing conflict over Kashmir between Pakistan and India. And, while the numbers of estimated averages of battle-related deaths had recently increased quite dramatically from 44,100 in 2013 to 131,840 in 2014 and around 118,000 in 2015 mainly due to the Syrian intrastate conflict, the total number of people and soldiers killed in the only intrastate war along the IndiaPakistan ceasefire line was less than 50 in both years. Since 2004, UCDP charts show a very flat low line of the number of peoples being killed as the result of interstate wars. The worldwide reduction in battle-related deaths is, of course, no conciliation for those who face death daily in Aleppo, Mosul, Fallujah, Ramadi, Sana, or Sirte, and in so many other places around the world torn apart by armed conflicts. Still, far too many people are killed or maimed and, as these are intrastate conflicts, most of them are civilians. And while interstate wars have almost vanished – and with it, one of the main causes for people getting killed – the risks for such wars to break out again still exists. Indeed, the most disturbing development over the last ten years is the increased internationalization of intrastate armed conflicts. In 2014, 13 of the 40 registered armed conflicts saw foreign interventions; in 2015, 20 of the 50 registered armed conflicts were internationalized. By far the greatest share in battle-related deaths are nowadays due to such internationalized armed conflicts. As in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or Libya this makes intrastate conflicts bloodier and last longer at a much greater risk to global peace and security. Much of this book will be about this internationalization of intrastate armed conflicts. 5 In comparing such numbers, we also have also to compare world population in 1916 and 1942/1943 with the world population of today. Looking at it in such relative terms, today’s decline in battle-related deaths is much greater.

Introduc tion

19

The decline in battle-related deaths and the waning of interstate wars are more than simply statistics; these are encouraging developments in which peace seems to be winning. Why then, should peace be our main concern and why should building peace be an issue? Behind this is another question: Why are we, especially in the West, so worried and pessimistic? Indeed, why are we so fearful about the future? Is peace escaping us after all – despite all these positive developments? There is this widespread anxiety, especially in Western countries,6 about the state of affairs in the world that goes beyond a daily breaking news culture that thrives on pictures of wars. In an interview in the magazine Foreign Affairs (September/October 2016), the former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, acknowledged that “It’s the most dangerous period in my lifetime.” However, all Western countries combined spend about two-thirds of all military expenditures in the world.7 This should have made us secure. Who or what should we fear? What has made an experienced and highly decorated military like General Dempsey so pessimistic and insecure?8 In January 2017, Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet president, warned in a Time magazine article entitled “It All Looks As If The World Is Preparing for War” about impending dangers of a nuclear war, alluding to mounting tensions between NATO and Russia. This warning comes only 27 years after the end of the Cold War. Gorbachev, more than anyone else, had helped end the Cold War peacefully and with it the danger of the East-West conflict turning into a nuclear inferno. Are we now falling back into a Cold War-type of conflict? What has happened with those high hopes in 1989 that the fall of the Berlin Wall would end such conflicts and finally bring peace to the world? There may also be something deeper that worries all of us, something still too vague to exactly pinpoint. It is more like a distant murmur, but a murmur that appears to draw closer. Could it be that the years of peace 6 In this book, we will often speak about “the West.” This is, of course a very fluid term. However, here I have used the definition used by the German historian Heinrich August Winkler in his four-volume work Die Geschichte des Westens. See also Annex IV. 7 This is an estimate made by Michael O’Hanlon and General David Petraeus in “America’s Awesome Military.” 8 There are other important personalities who expressed similar worries. Henry Kissinger observed that “the United States has not faced a more divisive and complex array of crises since the end of the Second World War” (in his opening statement before the US Senate Committee on Armed Services, 29 January 2015) and the long-time and highly experienced Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Vitali Churkin, recently complained that Russian-US relations had have hit an all-time low not seen since the Cold War.

20 

On Building Peace

which we in the West have enjoyed for the last decades, have blinded us to the dangers just across the borders? Is the West losing its grip on world affairs and are organizations that we have taken for granted, such as strong nation-states, regional unions like the European Union, or international organizations like the United Nations weakening or even disintegrating without any perceivable alternatives? Are the unabated population growth and the scarcity of life-essential resources such as water, land, food, or energy building up pressures around the world that could further undermine state authorities and facilitate the emergence of ever more aggressive armed nonstate actors?9 So far, only the long lines of refugees and migrants that arrive at our doorsteps or the news showing graphic pictures of terrorist attacks in Western cities give most of us a glimpse of the suffering, tension, and anger that are building up in so many places just across our borders – and increasingly also within our own borders.10 Are we at going through the turmoil and uncertainties that are so often the forbearers of a new world order, a world order in which we, the West, will lose the dominance we had once enjoyed? Are our fears about the future rooted in a sense that the known world peace order is changing and that we might ultimately be the losers in such changes? The giant geopolitical changes we are presently going through may become clearer when we look back 25 years. In 1992, after the collapse of the communist system, we felt as if we were on the top of the world – in fact, on top of history. We took the collapse of the Soviet Union as final proof that the Western system of governance, its liberal democracy combined with free market economic policies and world trade, was superior to all other forms of governance. The West was ideologically, economically, and militarily unchallenged and there was now only one superpower left in the world: the leader of the West, the United States. In Fukuyama’s words, history – at least the history of competing social and economic systems – had “ended.” It was now not only the West’s right, but its duty to help the rest of the world brake the chains of oppressive regimes and free the way for liberal democracies to emerge. Liberal democracy as a unifying worldwide system would bring the peace and prosperity humanity had always longed for. 9 And one may add, the reemergence of nonmainstream and more aggressive right and left-wing parties in Western countries. 10 From a global point of view, what happens to us in the West are, despite all the excitement, only relatively minor events, many countries in the developing world accommodate far larger numbers of refugees and internally displaced, and far more people in non-Western countries are killed in suicide bombs and other terrorist attacks.

Introduc tion

21

While in the 1990s and early 2000s, the West felt called upon to intervene militarily in many faraway places with the aim of spreading the blessings of liberal democracies, we are now primarily concerned about our own security and protecting our borders. Instead of European enlargement (we once considered this as a form of global peace policy), the European Union discusses these days how to protect its borders, how to create a common EU military command, and how to deploy our armed forces in our own countries to protect us from terrorist attacks. In the United States, the recent presidential elections were dominated by controversies over how to strengthen domestic security, including the possibility of closing entry into the country to certain groups perceived to be dangerous; there was even talk of building a wall along the 3,100-kilometer-long border with Mexico. What’s more, free trade agreements, once the hallmark of the Western economic policies, are increasingly seen as existential threats. The optimism that reigned during the immediate post-Cold War era and the conviction that we would be able to solve the world’s ills – if only we wanted to – is now replaced by a deep pessimism that we can no longer find solutions to many of the international problems. We learn about climate change and the devastating consequences this can have for all humanity. We know about the population increases and the millions of young people without any hope to ever lead a productive life. There are deepening socioeconomic inequalities, not only in the developing world but increasingly also in our own countries. We feel that our governments have lost control over our economies and that we have become pawns in a world of huge capital flows, hedge fund manager decisions, and the superrich evading their social responsibilities through tax evasion. Many have lost trust in their political and economic elites as well as in the media. We know of the huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that still exist, and this may be a potential threat that could become worse. The possession of such nuclear weapons appears to protect nation-states from the risk of any military intervention, especially from the United States. This makes them attractive and unless there are other guarantees against foreign military interventions, North Korea might not be the last country to develop such weapons. What’s more, there is the constant reminder of the existence of nuclear superpower rivalries with some of the language regarding Russia and China that is reminiscent of the darkest days of the Cold War. It may, however, also dawn on us that there is a completely new global threat scenario that is brought about by the increase in the powers and

22 

On Building Peace

outreach of belligerent, and often highly radicalized, nonstate actors.11 These belligerent nonstate actors have made huge gains over the last 20 years. Despite, or because, of its military superiority, the West has proven incapable to overcome such threats. Indeed, such threats could become far worse should belligerent nonstate actors get hold of WMDs one day, or acquire the capabilities to conduct a cyber war. What we see today might only be the beginning of a completely new type of conflict for which we are ill-prepared, and for which we have no guaranteed defense. Even more worrying are those intrastate armed conflicts in which the West has been drawn into without any chance of bringing them ever to satisfactory conclusions. Whether or not the West will withdraw from such conflicts in the future, their military interventions have set entire regions ablaze. These are fires that will burn uncontrolled for a long time to come and risk engulfing us one day. At the same time, we see a deeply divided international community, unable to respond collectively to those threats. Accompanied by an increasingly hostile language, we see pictures of US, UK, French, and Russian fighter planes carrying out offensive military air operations within the same small airspace over Syria, yet with conflicting military objectives. Such close military encounters of four conflicting nuclear powers in hostile environments over such long periods of time did not even exist during the Cold War. Could the intense nuclear power rivalry in intrastate armed conflicts drag us back into interstate wars, but of much greater magnitudes? This book argues that all these fears and threats are indications of much larger ongoing geopolitical changes, changes that are taking us away from a world that was dominated by conflicts among nation-states and military alliances to a world that will increasingly be dominated by intrastate conflicts, the weakening of nation-states, and the rise in the powers of nonstate actors. In this new world of intrastate conflicts, no clear international order will exist anymore; no single power will be able to provide global leadership and the present collective security system will be unable to fill this vacuum. This is likely to create a world that is very different from the one we know today and that creates challenges to global peace and security that were previously unknown to us. Indeed, we run the risk of a world descending into chaos and anarchy. 11 In this book, we largely avoid speaking of “terrorists” and use instead the more general term “belligerent nonstate actors.” This is because the term “terrorist” is so often misused but also to emphasize that the challenge to the nation-state is a much wider phenomenon that includes all sorts of nonstate actors. See also Chapter 2.2 and Annex IV.

Introduc tion

23

The very mechanisms and institutions that are meant to prevent global chaos, to keep us safe and help cushion sudden security shocks are failing us: (i) the global post-Cold War Western-dominated peace order is fading, (ii) the traditional concept of the nation-state is faltering, and (iii) the United Nations as the international organization charged to maintain a global peace order is not equipped to adequately respond to the new geopolitical changes. The fading of the post-Cold War peace order (i) With the collapse of the communist world, the West was handed what may have been one of the most complete victories in human history. The hope was that, under Western leadership, its winning political system of liberal democracy would become an all-unifying global system. This would, in turn, bring not only peace to conflict-ridden countries but global peace. However, Western efforts to promote its political system ended mostly in failures; liberal democracy proved a difficult system to transfer into other regions and cultures. The Western-dominated post-Cold War peace order that we thought would last forever, is now crumbling, only 25 years later. Today, the West remains a strong global power, but it no longer dominates world affairs as before. It now has to share power with many other global and regional players, many of them having very different political and value systems. If anything, Western influence may even further decline. With the fading of Western dominance, who or what could guarantee some level of global order in the future? What would a new global order look like? The answer to these questions remains unclear, nourishing fears of a looming global chaos. The failing of nation-states12 (ii) Fears of a looming chaos in world order are further compounded by the faltering of nation-states. Once the basic building blocks in a global order and the guarantor for peace, security, justice, and prosperity to its citizens, the concept of the nation-state becomes increasingly challenged – no longer by external enemies and competing nation-states, but from within by progressing globalization and an array of nonstate actors. Not even Western countries are immune to internal pressures questioning their nation-state identities.

12 The use of the term “nation-state” is surely controversial, but I have not been able to find a better term. See for a more detailed discussion, see Chapter 2 and Annex IV.

24 

On Building Peace

Far more worrying is the number of failing states with intrastate armed conflicts in which powerful armed nonstate actors challenge the authority of mostly weak governments. This has taken on such magnitude that failing states with intrastate armed conflicts battling belligerent nonstate actors have replaced interstate wars as the main threat to global peace and security. Applying the model of liberal democracy has failed to stabilize failing nation-states. External military interventions have made bad situations only worse. A clear understanding of the future of the nation-state is not to be found. The marginalization of the United Nations (iii) After WWII, the United Nations was created to help prevent or end conflicts between individual countries, prevent wars among them, or help end ongoing interstate wars. While the United Nations was fairly successful in dealing with international affairs, it largely failed in preventing and ending intrastate armed conflicts. With the rise of Western dominance, the United Nations became progressively side-tracked. International law such as the UN Charter or UN Human Rights conventions were increasingly reinterpreted – or some would say, replaced – to suit a Western-led global peace order. This has undermined and compromised the credibility of the United Nations at a time when such an organization would have been most needed for helping solve intrastate armed conflicts.13 Instead, the United Nations is largely paralyzed in a changing world for which it was not created and does little to alleviate fears over a looming global chaos. Nowhere are the erosion of international order, the failing of the nationstate, and the marginalization of the United Nations more evident than in the protracted carnage of Syria’s and Iraq’s intrastate armed conflict 14 with its array of local and international warring parties each following their own narrow political aims. Syria is living proof of the failures of the international community to solve intrastate armed conflicts and of its intransigent naivety of continuing to see such conflicts through the lenses of interstate power games.

13 Many actors in intrastate conflicts regard the United Nations as a legitimate target to attack as such conflicts force UN peace missions to take sides. See Chapter 3.3. 14 See Box “The Syrian Carnage and the End of the Post-Cold War Peace Order” in the introduction.

Introduc tion

25

In our increasingly interlinked world, the consequences of such misconceptions could be catastrophic. Building peace today must, therefore, mean having to reverse the decline of these three core pillars on which also our future global peace and security order will rest. This book suggests that, with these geopolitical changes, the way we build peace must change. Instead of focusing resources and energies in old Cold War-style policies of containment, we must now develop new concepts on how best to deal with the real threats to global peace and security emanating from collapsing nation-states, powerful belligerent nonstate actors, and intrastate armed conflicts. As we enter a more multipolar world order with an array of global and regional powers and often very different political systems, we must return to collective security mechanisms to develop and implement any such concept. This can no longer be the sole responsibility of the West; it must now be done through collective security arrangements within the framework of a revamped and reinforced United Nations. The collective security system must therefore be adjusted to deal more specifically with intrastate conflicts. For this reason, we suggest in the book that UN member states agree on a new “grand bargain” that would give the United Nations a second mandate. In addition to being mandated as the custodian for the international norms and principles maintaining global peace and security in the relations among member states, the United Nations should now also be mandated to develop international norms and principles that would help to prevent the collapse of UN member states and their descent into intrastate armed conflicts. More figuratively, this would mean giving the United Nations a second leg to stand on: a first leg for international relations and a second leg for intrastate relations. Implementing such a grand bargain would be anything but simple. It could revolutionize international affairs as practiced today. Indeed, it would touch some of the most sensitive issues in international relations as it would challenge the 400-year-old Westphalian model of sovereign nation-states and suggest adapting it to our modern interconnected globalized world. This would require a change in the UN Charter. A grand bargain would further require the development of internationally accepted norms and standards for intrastate relations, similar to those that govern international relations today. This would have to include not only relationships between a state and its citizens, but also relationships among various communities within a nation-state. A grand bargain would have to set and regulate the conditions for deciding if and when to intervene into intrastate armed conflicts and, even more importantly, the collective mechanisms that will establish the right to decide such interventions. A

26 

On Building Peace

grand bargain would have to include a whole set of different levels of external interventions; military interventions must remain the very last option. All of this goes far beyond what the Security Council does today when it declares an intrastate armed conflict as a threat to global peace and security. What looks at f irst as a further erosion of the principle of national sovereignty would, at a closer look, strengthen national sovereignty. By placing any intervention, and especially military interventions, strictly under international law and collective decision-making, it sets the bar for intervening in UN member states with intrastate armed conflicts very high. This would also reduce the risk of intrastate armed conflict becoming victim to foreign interests. A grand bargain would hence help protect especially smaller UN member states from arbitrary and unilateral foreign interference and interventions. It would, on the one hand, recognize the continued need to intervene, but, on the other hand, limit the conditions and approaches under which outside powers may intervene in the intrastate armed conflicts of other countries. An international framework in which such interventions could take place under the control of a collective security system would have to be set. This book sketches such a framework to place international interventions – both civilian and military – in intrastate armed conflicts within a revised and enlarged UN Charter and international law. The book makes several proposals that could give such a grand bargain more structure and substance; some of them are unconventional and may hence be controversial. It argues, for example, that countries have the dual character of being a nation and a state and that intrastate conflicts are the result of both going wrong. Solutions must, different to liberal peacebuilding, consider both sides of this dual character. It emphasizes the need for a new approach in dealing with armed nonstate actors around the world, not only with radical Islamist groups but also with separatist monuments, transnational crime syndicates, and all other sorts of armed revolutionary and rebel groups that threaten the state. The book argues that in intrastate armed conflicts there is no such thing as a fair peace and that there are, like in interstate wars, winners and losers. To argue otherwise is presumptuous. This role of an international community would then be to try to minimize the negative effects of a winner’s peace on the loser. In other words, it will not be about what peace should be but more what peace should not be. To achieve this, the book suggests that a peace following armed intrastate armed conflicts would need two peace agreements and suggests that national constitutions would have to become such a “second” peace agreement. Further, the book suggests more inclusive decision-making processes among the member states of the United Nations by increasing the

Introduc tion

27

mandate of the UN Peacebuilding Commission to support and advise the UN Security Council when it comes to solving intrastate armed conflicts. What the book doesn’t and cannot do is to give an answer to the core question of what the “peace” is or should be for intrastate armed conflicts. It makes no attempts to formulate any alternative to liberal democracy. It makes therefore also no suggestion of what an ideal nation-state should look like. Here we must learn to be more open to different peace solutions and various political systems of government. The underlying argument throughout the book is, however, that we must return to international principles, norms and laws to govern not only our relationships among nation-states, but increasingly also within nation-states. These will normative values to which all can agree. These values will, no doubt, be heavily influenced by norms and values that come from liberal democracy. But in this case, they would be globally accepted values and not values that are brought about by various military “freedom” operations or by regimes change. In the future, we may face even greater threats to peace and security that emanate from intrastate armed conflicts, failing nation-states and the rise of armed nonstate actors. Such developments are likely to be driven by population increases. According to the UN Population Division,15 over the next thirteen years the world’s population may increase by 1.3 billion. That is more than twice the entire population of the European Union. In 80 years, world population may even reach between 11 and 12 billion people. That is an increase of about 4 billion people or more than three times the entire population of the African continent today. Virtually all these population growths will be in low-income countries with weak governments that have few options to meaningfully integrate16 the bulge of largely abandoned young people. This in turn will create exceptional pressures on the resources that provide for the basic necessities of human survival such as water, energy, food, and land. Environmental degradation due to the overuse of national resources in poor countries and an irresponsible overuse of scarce natural resources in rich countries could trigger a vicious cycle from which many parts of the world may not be able to escape. 15 All data are taken from UN Population Division, World Population Prospects. 16 While we often speak of the problems we have in integrating refugees and migrants, much poorer countries face far greater problems of having to integrate the hundreds of thousands of youths who are rejected by their traditional societies and roam the shantytowns of the cities. For example, in the Sahel zone with the world’s poorest countries, the share of those under 25 years of age is about 70%. Most of them are unemployed in the deeper sense of the word and will have no chance to ever find a place in their own societies.

28 

On Building Peace

Already weak and failing nation-states and their governments may no longer cope with such exceptional pressures and begin to lose the grip over these problems. A collapse of more nation-states will force many of those millions, if not hundreds of millions, of abandoned youths to find safety in nonstate organizations. Not all of these nonstate actors may turn violent. In fact, many of them we may not. Indeed, civil society, traditional forms of organizations and, above all, religious communities may absorb millions of the youth that have fallen out of the more formal sectors of nation-states and give them at least some dignity and a future. However, frustration will turn many to violence and ultimately further strengthen belligerent nonstate actors, be they ideologically driven movements, criminally driven organizations, or a mix of both. This will make may of such belligerent nonstate actors become more powerful, allowing them to control territories and populations – and possibly even to take over nation-states. The resulting threats of global peace and security from this will dwarf all the interstate problems the West gives so much attention to today. The frustration and anger of hundreds of millions may destroy traditional state structures and be increasingly channeled through belligerent nonstate actors. In this backdrop, the building of a military airstrip on an artificial island in the South China Sea or the tag-of-war over spheres of interest in the Ukraine become almost irrelevant. Such interstate problems are the conflicts of the past; future conflicts will be driven by intrastate problems. We better start preparing for this. Our future may hence be decided on how we will collectively be able to deal with intrastate armed conflicts, collectively be able to rescue collapsing nation-states, and collectively be able to approach the phenomena of the rise in nonstate actors – both civil and belligerent nonstate actors. It is a huge challenge indeed, one that will need a collective security system and a stronger United Nations. This book tries to make a contribution to finding new and unconventional – though surely insufficient – solutions. The structure of the book is very simple: the first three chapters deal with the problems, and the next three chapters with possible solutions. In the very short seventh chapter I try to find closure. Accordingly, the first three chapters sequentially examine (i) the fading of the global peace order, (ii) the failing of nation-states, and (iii) the marginalization of the United Nations. The following three chapters sequentially discuss possible solutions for (i) how to rescue the nation-state, (ii) how to achieve more comprehensive collective security through the United Nations, and,

Introduc tion

29

finally, (iii) how to make such reforms feasible. And as my first thoughts in this book were about the West, I felt it appropriate to close the book in Chapter 7 with a final thought on China from my former Korean colleague Y.J. Choi. The book includes nineteen separate text boxes dealing with specific events or issues. I have chosen this format to add some life to the subject of building peace without disrupting the flow of the more general arguments in the book itself. For the same reason, there are annexes added that look at the changes to peacekeeping, recent attempts by the United Nations to reform, and the impact all of this may have on diplomacy. The final annex is more than the usual glossary defining the terms used in this book as it debates how terminology has influenced our thinking about building peace. Box The Syrian Conflict and the End of the Post-Cold War Peace Order The carnage in Syria has been lasting for five years and there is no end in sight. What made this conflict in Syria – as the parallel conflict in Iraq – so exceptionally cruel and why is it so difficult to find a peace solution? The main answer is probably that the Syrian carnage is the result of the absence of any internationally accepted laws and norms for intrastate armed conflicts and foreign involvement in such intrastate armed conflicts. It underlines the urgency that we begin to build a collective framework – similar to those we have developed for interstate wars – that would help contain such types of conflicts. The very brutality of the Syrian intrastate armed conflict shows that none of the parties to the conflict – be they local or international – feel any constraints. The Syrian conflict takes place in a de facto lawless and normless environment, being in parts an intercommunal local conflict and an international competition. The Syrian conflict demonstrates the problems of the new phenomenon of intrastate armed conflicts that involve many different local and international forces, each pursuing separate and conflicting aims. Since the end of the Cold War, such intrastate armed conflicts have globally become the dominant form of warfare and increasingly draw in outside forces. The international community must find new answers on how to better contain them. The Syrian quagmire, being an extreme form of such internationalized intrastate conflicts, can teach us some lessons that may be useful for finding better answers. The following nine points are drawn from the Syrian conflict but also apply, at different degrees, to all other internationalized intrastate armed conflicts: 1 The Syrian conflict symbolizes the fading of the Western-dominated global post-Cold War peace order; solutions can no longer be imposed by a single superpower. In particular:

30 

On Building Peace

– It proves ad absurdum the assumption that one could remove authoritarian regimes and that democracy would emerge. – It signals the end of hopes that liberal democracy would spread around the world and presents a peace solution for countries with internal conflicts. – It marks the rise of independently operating non-Western global, regional, and local players; ultimately, the West may no longer have a decisive say in a future peace solution for Syria. 2 The Syrian conflict demonstrates a breakdown of existing international law. All foreign forces openly breach the UN Charter’s two core principles of noninterference in the internal affairs of a UN member state and nonuse of military force to advance political aims. Human rights and humanitarian laws are also regularly ignored by both local and foreign forces. Such a breakdown of core UN principles sets a bad precedent and will have negative consequences beyond the borders of Syria. 3 The Syrian conflict suggests that the “fog of war” is thicker in intrastate armed conflicts than in interstate conflicts. None of the parties in intrastate armed conflicts – be they local or international – have any real idea about what is happening around them. In such types of conflicts, indisputable facts and certain truth simply do not exist. There are no longer clear frontlines and clear alliances but highly fragmented interests among local as well as international players. This creates insecurities and fears which in turn makes fighting in the “fog” of intrastate armed conflicts so brutal. 4 The Syrian conflict shows that local government and nongovernment forces quickly adopt the lowest common combat standards. Although the Syrian government is a signatory of the UN Charter, the Human Rights conventions and most other international law instruments, none of the many armed nonstate actors are signatories of any international agreements. While government forces would be bound by these international norms but rarely abide by them, nonstate actors are legally not bound at all. In Syria, most nonstate actors such as Islamic State follow an extreme form of radicalized Islam. They reject international laws and norms as Western and instead follow their own interpretations of Islamic religious law. This contributes to the lawlessness of the Syrian conflict. 5 The Syrian conflict raises the more profound question of the extent to which present international law applies to intrastate armed conflicts. The UN Charter was drawn up to help prevent or end interstate wars and not intrastate armed conflicts. For example, foreign interventions in an intrastate conflict are mostly justified under Chapter VII, Article 51, of the UN Charter as support to a country exercising its right to self-defense. However, the Charter clearly

Introduc tion

31

describes self-defense only in relation to an attack by an outside aggressor; it does not establish any right of specific governments (instead of “member states”) to ask outside powers for assistance in its “self-defense” against an armed opposition from within the country. 6 The Syrian conflict proves the fact that any foreign force intervening in an intrastate armed conflict becomes automatically party to this conflict by supporting one side in the armed conflict. In such conflicts, it is impossible to act as an impartial third party that could help bridge the differences among local belligerents. Foreign interventions tend, therefore, to make intrastate armed conflicts only worse, bloodier, and last longer. This becomes even worse if, as in the case of Syria, foreign forces support both sides in such a conflict. 7 The Syrian conflict exposes the impotence of international organizations such as the United Nations in helping solve such intrastate armed conflicts. Because of the weakness of international law and the absence of any other internationally accepted normative framework that can be applied to intrastate armed conflicts, UN envoys have little to stand on except decrying the enormous human costs of such conflicts. 8 The Syrian conflict illustrates the absurdity of wanting to find a negotiated solution in intrastate armed conflicts with the exclusion of some of the most powerful adversaries because they are considered as too radical and extremist. Peace negotiations have always been between adversaries who hate each other – why not also in intrastate armed conflicts? These groups will torpedo any ceasefire agreement to prevent a united front from being built against them (e.g., the collapsing United States-Russian ceasefire agreement for Aleppo in September 2016). 9 The Syrian conflict exemplifies the huge difficulties for mediators to find solutions in intrastate armed conflicts. Intrastate peace is vastly more evasive than interstate peace. Most interstate wars end with negotiated ceasefires and a UN-monitored separation of belligerent forces. This is rarely an achievable solution for intrastate armed conflicts. Solutions can not include separating people along their political, ethnic, or religious affiliations; belligerent communities must find ways to live together.

1

The Fading of the Post-Cold War Peace Order

On the night of 25 December 1991, at 7:32 p.m. Moscow time,1 after President Mikhail Gorbachev left the Kremlin, the Soviet flag was lowered for the last time, and the Russian tricolor was raised in its place, symbolically marking the end of the Soviet Union.2 This, and not the fall of the Berlin Wall two years earlier, was the event with the greatest global significance since the end of WWII. But it passed almost unnoticed. Most people in the West will remember the day the Berlin Wall came down; however, on this Christmas Day in 19913 they had other things on their minds, unaware of an unspectacular event that would affect their lives to this day and profoundly change the course of history. The lowering of the red Soviet banner with its golden star, hammer, and sickle4 on that day 25 years ago symbolizes more than just the demise of a once powerful state, the Soviet Union; it was the end of the communist system of government and ideology that had only shortly before controlled almost half of the world population.5 With it ended one of the most radical human experiments of forming societies along alleged social laws6 with the 1 This touching description of one of the world’s great historical closures was, with little adjustments, taken from Wikipedia’s article on the Dissolution of the Soviet Union. 2 It is said that when President Gorbachev sat down on the evening of 25 December 1991 to sign the act to dissolve the Soviet Union, his Soviet-made pen did not work and a CNN correspondent had to give him his Western-made pen. The West proved superior even in regards to pens, signaling that the communist defeat was comprehensive. This was the story, at least, whether it was true or not. 3 This was, of course, only a Christmas Day celebrated in the West as in the Soviet Union Christmas was no longer a holiday. In any case, the Russian Orthodox Christmas was, according to the Julian calendar, not on 25 December but on 7 January the following year. The irony is that in 1992 – only thirteen days after the lowering of the Soviet flag – Orthodox Christmas was celebrated in Moscow for the first time since the communist revolution in 1917. 4 The Soviet flag was full of significance: the red color symbolized the blood spilled in the struggle of the working classes, the hammer industry workers, the sickle farmers and the star the bright future communism was supposed to bring – a promise that vanished with the flag in this cold, dark night. 5 Of course, there were countries that remained communist, such as North Korea and Cuba. Countries such as China or Vietnam, although they introduced market economies, remained under the dominance of their communist parties, but without the economic ideology. 6 There are different views for when the Cold War began. Here, we assume that it began with the speech by President Truman to the US Congress in March 1947 when he promised the US military would help countries threatened by communist takeovers, the so-called Truman Doctrine. It ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

34 

On Building Peace

hope of bringing social justice and prosperity. Similar to the hopes we had for liberal democracy, its supporters had expected that one day communism would take over the world as a unifying political system bringing global peace. Communism ultimately failed and ended a social experiment that began with good intentions, but that had ended costing tens of millions of people their lives. The collapse of the Soviet Union – the Warsaw Pact had dissolved a few months earlier – meant that one side in the 42-year-long Cold War, the East, had finally caved in. It left the other side of the conflict, the West, as the sole victor, even if this was more by default than by outright victory. With the lowering of the Soviet flag on 25 December 1991 began a new era under a Western-dominated global peace order. This new era, it was thought, would ultimately bring freedom and the winning Western political system of liberal democracy, peace, justice, and prosperity to all humankind. Liberal democracy would become the final stage in the development of social organization and respond to the ultimate aspirations of all people around the world irrespective of their cultural and historical backgrounds. This is what US political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, had in mind when he declared the “end of history” in 19927 – barely a year after the collapse of communism.8 But history did not end and what had begun with so much hope appears very differently now, 25 years later. Not only is liberal democracy globally on the decline, the global dominance of Western powers is also fading and with it the post-Cold War peace order. Hopes that, under Western leadership, liberal democracy would spread throughout the world as a unifying and peace-bringing political and economic system have – like similar hopes that the world would turn communist – largely evaporated. We have entered a far more multipolar world with many global and regional power players and with many different political systems. But this is a world without any clear leadership or any other form of established global order. We risk entering a twilight zone of global chaos. The two successive Iraq Wars in 1991 and in 2003 exemplify how the different geopolitical situations before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union influenced decisions over war and peace. When in 1990, President 7 Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man. 8 The idea of an inevitable victory of liberal democracy is still very much alive. In his speech to the General Assembly in September 2014, President Obama rejected any possibility of a “clash of civilizations,” implying that ultimately all humankind would turn into liberal democrats. As such, President Obama was ideologically in the tradition of other post-Cold War American presidents.

The Fading of the Post- Cold War Peace Order

35

Bush Sr. wanted to repulse Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact still existed. He therefore sought international cooperation – also with the Soviet Union. He got the approval by the UN Security Council and assembled a very large coalition of forces from diverse countries with different political systems. More importantly, he did not attempt to use this military intervention to change the government in Baghdad, an essential factor that helped keep the very diverse anti-Iraq coalition together. When in 2003 his son, President Bush Jr., decided to invade Iraq, he acted in the knowledge that now the United States was the only superpower and had to ask nobody to cooperate. He went to war without – one could almost say, against – the UN Security Council and he felt it no longer necessary to assemble a wider international coalition.9 In contradiction to his father’s policies of not occupying Iraq, his objective was from the very beginning to change the regime in Baghdad. Iraq was to become a liberal democracy and this in turn would, he hoped, trigger a democratic transformation of the entire Arab world. It was an effort to change the Middle East into an image of the West. While the first Bush Iraq War was based on real politics, the second Bush Iraq War was rooted in ideology. While Bush Sr. conducted a war to defend the principles of the UN Charter, Bush Jr. acted in contradiction to the UN Charter. While in 1991 international law applied, by 2003 it was the victor’s law that prevailed. And while the first Iraq War was a success, the second ended in disaster. Instead of creating prosperous democracies, Bush Jr. set the entire Arab world ablaze. And, thirteen years later, it is still on fire – with no end in sight.

1.1

The Emergence of a Post-Cold War Peace Order

Like all major wars before it, the Cold War resulted in a new postwar peace order that changed previously existing global, regional, and local power structures. The Cold War didn’t end with any negotiated peace agreement. There was no Final Act,10 no Potsdam Agreements, no Treaty of Versailles. This was no longer necessary, or indeed possible, as one side in the East-West 9 Under Bush Sr., the coalition during the first Iraq War in 1991 included 28 countries; when Bush Jr. invaded Iraq in 2003, only three additional countries came along: the United Kingdom, Poland, and Australia. What the political interests of Poland and Australia could have been to fight in Iraq is not clear. 10 The Final Act was signed in Helsinki in 1975 with the intention of ensuring peace during the Cold War by freezing the post-WWII borders in Europe, something the Potsdam agreements had failed to do. However, as so often with peace agreements, it resulted in the opposite: it

36 

On Building Peace

conflict had melted away. But nonetheless, the Cold War had ended with a clear winner: The West. This must have been the most complete victory in history. Neither WWI nor WWII resulted in such overwhelming victories. It was, for the first time, a truly global victory. By 1992, there were no longer any other competing political forces in the world that could have challenged the West or any power that came even close to the United States’ economic, military, and (in Joseph Nye’s terminology) “soft powers.”11 Consequently, it was the West that determined the post-Cold War peace order. It was a Western peace. The United States, now the only remaining superpower, became the principle promoter and defender of a political system that was to be based on its vision of “peace.” Core to this post-Cold War peace order was the Western model of liberal democracies build around representative government, separation of powers, rule of law, and a free market economy. The post-Cold War peace order was, like all other postwar peace orders, a winner’s peace. Above all, it was the United States that was the winner in the East-West battle for world leadership. It now determined the conditions for the global peace order that was to follow. Despite all high-minded promises and statements that now peace and justice would be brought to all people around the world, the United States did what all major winners of wars had done before: (i) to secure its status as the winner by becoming the only world superpower, and (ii) to insist on its political and economic system as the only viable option for the rest of the world. In March 1992 – the Soviet Union had been buried just three months earlier – a draft for the annual US Defense Planning Guidelines unmistakably stated its claim to permanent global leadership in categorical and unmistakable terms: Our first objective is to prevent the reemergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere. […] This requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be suff icient to generate global power.12 ultimately contributed to the collapse of the communist world and resulted in one of the most radical changes to national borders in Europe since the Congress of Vienna of 1815. 11 Joseph Nye introduced the term “soft power” to describe the attractiveness of a country to others in the form of its cultural and social but also political systems as opposite to “hard power” such as military and economic power enabling to coerce other countries into submission. See Nye, Soft Power. 12 Quoted from Morris, Why the West Rules.

The Fading of the Post- Cold War Peace Order

37

Later versions of the US Defense Guidelines somewhat softened the wording, but the United States never abandoned its claim to preserve its unique superpower status, if necessary by force. Its Western allies never questioned US leadership and in 1992 there were no other powers who could. In fact, most Western countries acted like free riders and began to reduce their respective armed forces. The United States, with its overwhelming military superiority, would maintain global order and provide an overall security umbrella for all other Western countries. This brought about a major shift in military doctrine. While during the Cold War, US military doctrine – and by extensions that of NATO – was based on deterrent and defense,13 and on preventing communist rule making any further inroads in the world,14 the United States and NATO now felt free to peruse its objectives also through military interventions. The Bush doctrine claiming for the United States the unilateral right for preventive and preemptive war was born. Of the last 25 years, the United States, NATO, or various combination of Western alliances continuously carried out military operations around the world. This drew the Western military into many conflicts from which they now find it difficult to extract. The aggressive policy aimed at preventing any new global power to emerge was combined with a more benevolent policy of promoting, under Western leadership, liberal democracy. But here the claim was also that of a winner and hence absolute. Liberal democracy became the only acceptable system of government. Countries were judged by how far they implemented liberal democracy. Nobody expressed this claim in stronger terms than Fukuyama did in his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man; liberal democracy was not just another ideology, it was to end all ideological competition. What we are witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or a passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

13 The two main military alliances during the Cold War, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, were both defense organizations. While the Warsaw Pact collapsed in 1991, NATO began to mutate from a defense to an intervention force. 14 The Vietnam war (1955-1975), although it has many parallels to today’s internationalized intrastate armed conflicts, was in fact a typical Cold War response to communist North Vietnam’s efforts to take over a South Vietnam that was part of the Western world.

38 

On Building Peace

That Fukuyama’s book appeared so shortly after the 1992 US Defense Guidelines15 is no coincidence. At that time, Fukuyama was a member of the influential Project for the New American Century (PNAC) under the chairmanship of Dick Cheney. Though short-lived, its membership read like the “who’s who” of the Bush Jr. administration. Its motto was “American leadership is good for America and the world.”16 American exceptionalism was sweetened with the promise that this would bring global peace, justice, and prosperity; in short, a paradise on earth.17 The dual strategy of maintaining US global leadership and of promoting liberal democracy would, in various shapes and forms, determine US policy ever since.18 It helped justify frequent military and clandestine operations – but it rarely brought peace. Of the 25 years since the end of the Cold War, US armed forces, with various combinations of allies, have conducted foreign military operations for the last 20 years – and there is no end in sight. Without this double claim of military and ideological superiority, US – and with it, its Western allies’ – attitudes toward China and Russia could not be understood. Its claim to have the right to conduct preventive wars, something it denies to others, is at the root in this double strategy. Whatever the justifications, this was a far cry from the peace we expected after the end of the East-West conflict. In the post-Cold War era, Western dominance was generally accepted. The West had the most advanced economies, had made huge scientific advances. Who did not want the lights of Paris – the symbol of Western good life – to also shine in Kabul or Baghdad? The elites in most non-Western countries were especially attracted by the West and its wealth. But would this make them democrats? And would they speak for the bulk of their people who continued to live in poverty or pursue more selfish objectives? In most transition counties, the introduction of democratic processes has come along with ever greater corruption and the emergence of an irresponsible 15 Fukuyama had already published an article entitled “The End of History” in the US magazine The National Interest in 1989, following the fall of the wall; but it was only the collapse of the Soviet Union three years later that turned his thesis into a major ideological justification for post-Cold War Western policies. 16 This is according to Mackay, “Bush Planned Iraq ‘Regime Change.’” 17 See Box 1.1. 18 The PNAC was instrumental in bringing the United States into the Iraq War and its ideas of a world shaped in the image of the United States still impacts events today. PNAC was led by Dick Cheney and Francis Fukuyama was a member at that time. So was Victoria Nuland, US assistant secretary of state responsible for Europe and Eurasia, who played a key role in organizing the regime change in the Ukraine. She was one of Dick Cheney’s principal advisers.

The Fading of the Post- Cold War Peace Order

39

political elite. At that time, all of this was easily overlooked; such consequences would only surface much later. Indeed, the Western victory was so complete that the spread of liberal democracy was widely seen as something unstoppable. Not only that, it was largely assumed that liberal democracy was a form of social organization that was inherent in human nature. As soon as people were free to choose, their “natural” choice would be liberal democracy, irrespective of their histories, values, religions, and cultures.19 The only impediments to the spreading of liberal democracy were hence autocratic and undemocratic regimes that suppressed the natural aspirations and choices of their people. Once people were freed from dictators and oppressive regimes, a democratic system would emerge with the rule of law and a free market economy. It is, therefore, unsurprising that the West considered its many military interventions as battles to liberate suppressed people from their authoritarian rulers and to free the way for liberal democracy to emerge. This conviction is reflected in the way the United States called its various post-Cold War military invasions: Afghanistan in 2001 was coined “Enduring Freedom,”20 the invasion of US Special Forces in the Philippines in 2002: “Freedom Eagle,” and in Iraq in 2003: “Iraqi Freedom.” Western military forces were hence believed to be some sort of warriors for the global good in bringing people the blessings of Western liberal democracies. As countries liberated from authoritarian rule were likely to initially lack the experience and technical know-how to make liberal democracy work they needed technical assistance, and as most were poor countries they also needed financial support. The feasibility of transition to liberal democracy therefore depended on the right combination of technical assistance and financial support. Peacebuilding was hence seen primarily as a technical issue. It was no longer a political challenge; the liberal democracy was the “natural” system for humankind to organize their societies; there would be no conceivable alternative.

19 In his very readable booklet Bescheidenheit (Modesty), Tomáš Sedlácek writes in this regard: “Das ist im Übrigen das Ziel jeder Ideologie: So zu tun, als gäbe es sie nicht, als sei sie gleichsam natürlich” (It is the aim of all ideologies to pretend that they are not ideologies but a natural phenomenon [translation by the author]). Not surprising that Sedlácek come to this conclusion. As a Czech, he experienced the demise of another ideology, communism, that had made very similar claims of being universal in following natural laws (Sedlácek and Orrell, Bescheidenheit). 20 In 2015, the United States began a new military mission in Afghanistan with the specific aim of fighting terrorist organizations in the country as yet another freedom operation: “Freedom’s Sentinel.” This begs the question of what US forces had done the previous fourteen years.

40 

On Building Peace

Initially, political developments appeared to prove such assumptions right. In a dramatic turnaround, most Central and Eastern European countries embraced liberal democracies and adopted free market economies almost overnight. Only fourteen years later, most of these countries had joined the European Union and/or NATO. The enlarged European Union was hailed for bringing peace to this continent that had experienced some of the most devastating wars in mankind only half a century earlier. Western-style liberal democracies and free market economies brought great benefits for these countries. People could now elect their governments and hold them accountable. They enjoyed the freedom of forming political associations, the freedom of speech and press, and were free to travel wherever they wanted to. But the main attraction of the liberal order was probably the economic benefits of a free market economy and the increase in the general prosperity. All new members of the European Union experienced above-average growth rates – at least initially. Liberal democracy outside Europe also increasingly gained acceptance. Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World” index estimated that in the short period between 1989 and 1994 the number of countries that had at least some form of democracy jumped from 41% to 64%.21 A huge success! Since 2005, however, darker clouds began to appear on the political scene. Democratic advancements around the world not only stalled – they began to go in reverse. The Arab Spring in 2010/2011 that many praised as the fourth wave of democratization faltered quickly and, except for Tunisia, ended in a military coup (Egypt), brutal suppression (Bahrain), anarchy (Libya), and a now five-year-old civil war (Syria). In Freedom House’s 2015 report entitled Discarding Democracy: Return to the Iron Fist, its vice president for research writes: For the ninth consecutive year, “Freedom in the World,” Freedom House’s annual report on the condition of global political rights and civil liberties, showed an overall decline. Indeed, acceptance of democracy as the world’s dominant form of government – and of an international system built on democratic ideals – is under greater threat than at any point in the last 25 years.

Post-Cold War experiences would prove wrong the assumption that liberal democracy inevitably spreads. It did not succeed in non-Western countries and even appears to have failed in certain parts of Europe. Although NATO 21 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2015”; FFP, “Fragile States Index 2015.”

The Fading of the Post- Cold War Peace Order

41

was able to militarily enforce an end to intrastate fighting in the Balkans, it was not able to bring a lasting democratic peace. Now, almost 20 years later, the European Union and NATO maintain armed forces to secure their peace order. These forces were not able (or willing) to stop ethnic cleansing; every fifth former Yugoslav civilian had to leave their former homes as a result of various armed conflicts. Even today, people continue to flee the area. The wars have not been able to implant the political system that the United Nations, the European Union, and the OSCE tried to bring. Could we have fallen into the trap that winners always consider their peace to be the only peace that is possible?

1.2

The Unraveling of Western Global Dominance

Today, the euphoria surrounding a post-Cold War liberal order that would bring global peace and prosperity has made room for far more sober, even pessimistic assessments. To start, the post-Cold War peace order was anything but peaceful. For 20 of the last 25 post-Cold War years, NATO or various combinations of US-led coalitions conducted or supported military operations in places outside their own region, such as in the former Yugoslavia,22 Somalia, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chad, Libya, Mali, and now again in Iraq/Syria. Few of these operations had a UN mandate, and most were unilaterally decided by the United States. The United States with the help of its Western allies further conducted a number of clandestine and undeclared wars such as its decade-long program of drone attacks on targets in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and to a lesser degree probably also on targets on the Philippines’ Mindanao island. None of those attacks were within international law. It was not only that the West felt it was above any international law, also the justifications the West gave for its major military interventions since the end of the Cold War were either questionable or outright wrong. NATO’s attack on Serbia in 1999 was – especially in the German parliament – justified with an alleged horseshoe operation according to which Serbian forces were about to expel or kill Kosovo Albanians. We know now that such an 22 The first time that NATO militarily intervened outside its own treaty area and outside its own treaty obligations was when it bombed pro-Serbian forces to make them to agree to the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995. Since then, there has not been a single year without Western military operations in one or the other country outside its own region, either under the NATO flag or under a US-led coalition.

42 

On Building Peace

operation plan never existed. The US-led attack on Iraq in 2003 was justified with the alleged illegal possession of WMDs; this proved later not to be true. The NATO air campaign against Libyan government forces in 2009 was justified with alleged mass killings of civilians by Gaddafi’s security forces; we now know that this was not true. The war against the so-called Islamic State (IS), was justified (at least in Europe) with Article 51 of the UN Charter as collective self-defense. With the terrorist attacks in Paris of November 2015, IS had declared war on France. But such justification ignores that by this time, France had already been bombing IS targets for over a year. Even the justification for the Western military intervention in Afghanistan – even only those interventions that were sanctioned by the UN Security Council – to eliminate the al-Qaida center for the planning of terrorist attacks, rings somewhat unreal. Were the 9/11 terrorist attacks really been planned and directed from hideouts inside Afghanistan? With the declared aim of assisting local democratic movements, the West also intervened in other nation-states by providing financial and logistical support, or through the application of unilateral sanctions. The hope was to topple what it considered undemocratic governments, for example, during the Orange Revolutions in Georgia, Moldova, and the Ukraine, and more recently again with EU/US efforts to take the Ukraine out of Russia’s sphere of influence. Others, especially Russia, also continued using their military and/or natural resources to influence political developments among its weak neighbors23; China has so far abstained from any military interventions abroad.24 With its military intervention in Syria in September 2015, Russia has now followed Western examples of openly interfering in an intrastate armed conflict outside its own imminent region. With this, Russia has challenged the “understanding” that the right to militarily intervene has been reserved to the post-Cold War winner. This has turned such an intrastate armed conflict into a battleground with competing nuclear powers – a dangerous and, for the Syrian population, dreadful development. Even if one would argue that Western military interventions, clandestine operations, and support for opposition groups served a good purpose and 23 Prior to 2015 and its involvement in Syria, Russia had intervened militarily only closer to home to suppress rebel/secessionist groups within the Russian Federation (e.g., Chechen separatists) or to fight over contested border regions following the collapse of the Soviet Union (e.g., Abkhazia, South Ossetia). Even if Russia has militarily intervened in the Ukraine, as claimed by NATO, this would still be a conflict within its immediate neighborhood that directly impacts its national security interests. Only Syria has changed this. 24 China, the upcoming superpower, is a great exception in the sense that it has never carried out military or clandestine operations to change governments.

The Fading of the Post- Cold War Peace Order

43

were justif ied to bring freedom to suppressed people, to protect civilian populations, or to fight international terrorism,25 one would have to acknowledge that they were mostly outright failures. Despite trillions of dollars and the deployment of the latest military hardware and software, they did not bring a freer, safer, more peaceful and more democratic world. To the contrary, they contributed to creating even greater fiascos, chaos, and destruction than what they had initially set out to prevent. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and even in the Ukraine those interventions did not have the intended results. Western interventions, especially military interventions, led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people, both soldiers and civilians, and led to multiple human rights abuses. The ultimate outcome and the human costs26 of these interventions stand in no relation with the alleged humanitarian justifications, and seem to have made a mockery of such declared aims as the protection of innocent civilians. They appear to have only further strengthened armed opposition, especially extreme Islamist groups. Western support to opposition groups to change unwanted governments27 also appears to have only triggered armed interstate conflict, further destabilizing countries as recently as Libya,28 Syria, and the Ukraine. In fact, growing Russian 25 Since 2003, the “War on Terror” greatly intensif ied inclinations to resort to unilateral military interventions. Yet, the disposition of the West/NATO to use military force without a UN mandate already preceded the “War on Terror” (as, for example, in the Balkans in the 1990s). 26 For example, the US-led intervention and occupation of Iraq to free Iraqis from a brutal dictatorship has, according to a recent study by one Canadian, one Iraqi, and two US universities (Simon Fraser University, Mustausirya University, the University of Washington, and Johns Hopkins University), cost the lives of over 460,000 Iraqis as a direct impact of war-related violence. These casualty estimates do not even include those who died as a result of the thirteen years of severe sanctions or those who were killed in the continuing civil war following the departure of US and allied troops in 2011. For all those deaths, the West carries a heavy responsibility. Taken together, these causality figures are probably far above any estimated number of the people Saddam Hussein may have indirectly/directly killed during his 23-year reign of terror (even if including the death toll of the eight years of the Iran-Iraq War). 27 Most of such support is secret and difficult to prove. However, regarding the recent crisis in the Ukraine, it was revealed that the United States had invested more than five billion dollars since 1991 to help Ukraine achieve “the future it deserves” (Victoria Nuland). A 2013 leaked telephone recording revealed that the United States wanted the Ukrainian politician Yatsenjuk to become prime minister, something that subsequently came to pass. See Mearsheimer, “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault.” 28 In March 2011, the Security Council debate about authorizing military protection for civilians in the Libyan conflict may be an indication for this. At that time, the Security Council had an interesting membership; in addition to the permanent members (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia) it also included all the countries that were most mentioned to join as new permanent members in an (eventual) Security Council reform: India,

44 

On Building Peace

hostilities, China’s new assertiveness in the South China Sea, and even the emergence of Islamic State may, though in very different ways, be reactions to the West’s aggressive missionary zeal wanting to change the world in its image over the last 25 years. While the West was engaged in all sorts of costly wars, something more important happened: it lost its military, economic, and moral superiority and, with it, the ability to shape world affairs unilaterally.29 Military interventions in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Syria, and now against Islamic State have exposed weaknesses of modern Western high-tech military forces in wanting to achieve political aims in fragile countries with sizable and motivated belligerent nonstate actors. Military superiority measured in nuclear arsenals, stealth bombers, cruise missiles, submarines, and aircraft carriers largely evaporates when fighting determined and locally embedded belligerent nonstate actors in faraway countries. Relying on superior military to build peace30 – the declared ultimate aim to bring democracy and with it peace and prosperity for all – has repeatedly failed.31 Although the United States continues to have the most powerful military, it is no longer an awe-inspiring threat to belligerent nonstate actors. Some may even welcome US involvement as a rallying cry for their supporters and to justify their own brutalities as necessity.32 South Africa, Brazil, and Germany. Three of these “newcomers,” India, Brazil and Germany, joined Russia and China in being critical of such an intervention and abstained. And although South Africa had voted for the resolution, its foreign minster later criticized NATO’s intervention sharply. Was this a new political alignment in the making? 29 When, in November 2005, the author attended a session of the Security Council on Iraq for the first time, he realized to his great surprise that the resolution extending what was now called the “multinational forces in Iraq” (SC/RES/1637) was adapted without any discussion whatsoever – and this although Iraq had by then descended into a civil war and the role of US-led coalition forces in Iraq were fiercely criticized. Could it be that some of the Security Council members who earlier opposed the US-led intervention into Iraq now saw an advantage in the fact that the United States was sinking ever deeper in the quagmire of an extensive and costly intrastate armed conflict it could no longer win? 30 Recognizing the limitations of brute military force in intrastate conflicts, the United States introduced a new military approach aiming at conquering the “hearts and minds” of local populations. Its 2008 published counterinsurgency strategy (COIN), however, could not change the basic contradiction of wanting to bring peace and liberal democracy through military force. 31 The West’s uniquely privileged position at the end of the Cold War was not enough to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The 1993/1995 Oslo Accords drawn up in the atmosphere of post-Cold War optimism later failed and, today, Israel and Palestine are further apart from any peace than ever. Not only that, the Israeli prime minister can openly challenge the authority of a US president without fearing any repercussions. 32 At the time of writing, the United States and some of its allied forces have bombed IS positions for two and a half years and despite territorial gains were so far unable to beat them

The Fading of the Post- Cold War Peace Order

45

The West has also economically lost its post-Cold War dominance. The Western share of global economic output, its share in global exports, and its annual growth rates continuously fall below those of many non-Western countries. According to the IMF,33 China is today the world’s largest exporter and in 2014 China’s GDP may even have overtaken that of the United States (at least measured in current prices). At the end of the Cold War, China had still been a negligible economic power. In 1990, it produced only about 4% of global output while the United States produced over 24%. By 2014, this had completely changed: China produced 17% of world output compared to the United States’ 16%.34 And while the combined production of the European Union amounted to about 28.2% of world production in 1990, it is estimated to drop to around 16.7% by 2018 – and this although 2018 production numbers now also include the twelve additional EU members in Central and Eastern Europe.35 We can observe the same development in regional contexts. While in 1990, Australia’s GDP was larger than that of all ASEAN countries together, today Indonesia’s GDP alone surpasses that of Australia. Not only Indonesia but many other Southern countries are catching up economically, notably Brazil, India, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey, but also Bangladesh, Chile, Ghana, Mauritius, Rwanda, and Tunisia. UNDP recently calculated that by 2025 (that is only in eight years!) the five BRICS countries (China, Russia, India, South Africa, and Brazil) will together produce over 50% of world economic output.36 The calculations in UNDP’s Human Development Report 2013: The Rise of the South may ultimately prove too optimistic, but they indicate a general trend that, despite temporary fluctuations, is likely to accelerate with time and change in the economic power relations among countries and regions. The factor that may have an even greater impact on a relative decline of the West is the huge shifts in the world populations toward non-Western countries, shifts that are so substantial that they will make the rise of the non-Western world unavoidable. The only question that remains is how completely. The question here is whether the involvement of the United States has in fact increased local and regional support for IS among Sunni Arabs, and not weakened it. 33 IMF, World Economic Outlook. 34 These numbers are highly politicized and whether the United States or China has the greatest economy is greatly debated – but for the argument made in this book, this is relatively unimportant. 35 Based on IMF figures, Ruth Lea, Global Vision cofounder, analyzed the immediate future of Europe’s economy in 2013 in her “EU-28 Is No Longer the World’s Largest Economy.” 36 UN Development Programme, Human Development Report 2013: The Rise of the South.

46 

On Building Peace

this rise will happen: will it be though chaos or through an internationally managed process? Per the latest estimates by the UN Population Division, world population is presently at around 7.5 billion and is likely to increase to 11.2 billion by 2100.37 A huge increase within only 150 years from just little over 2.5 billion in 1950. Since the end of WWII, the overwhelming majority of these population increases were in non-Western countries, and since the end of the Cold War, population increases are entirely in non-Western countries. In fact, the population in most Western countries is likely to shrink during this period. In 1950 the share of Western countries38 in the world population was around 26%; it dropped in 1990 to 20%, only to decline further in 2013 to 17%. Population trends indicate that by 2050 the Western population share will only be 14%; by 2100 it may even drop to 10%.39 And not only that, the share of populations in Western countries that have their cultural and religious roots outside the Western world will continuously increase. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, the share of nonWestern population is estimated to reach 12.3% in 2016, and this number does not even include the first, second and even third generations of Dutch citizens with no Western roots, many of whom may have very different social value systems. 40 The great majority of the world’s population will therefore not be raised in Western thinking and values. This may have huge consequences on political developments. In this vein, it would be presumptuous to assume that the model of liberal democracy – at least in its Western form – would remain the dominant political system. In particular, the rise of the middle class in non-Western societies and countries may challenge Western liberal thinking.

37 That the population might increase further beyond the turn of the twenty-second century is a relatively new finding by the United Nations based on more recent trend analysis. This would have huge political, social, economic, and environmental consequences. 38 Western countries include all of Europe (except Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus), the United States, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. 39 According to these projections, the population of Nigeria alone could reach 900 million by 2100, becoming almost twice the projected population of the European Union in the same year. 40 There are no reliable figures of non-Western immigrants in Europe, but there are for the United States. For example, in the last 20 years, the Latino population in the US state of California has become relatively the largest community and it is estimated this community will become an absolute majority in 2040. This population shift will not only change the prevalent language, but also value systems and local identities, and will ultimately impact California’s political system.

The Fading of the Post- Cold War Peace Order

47

According to UNDP, countries in the South will see an ever-greater rise in its middle classes. 41 Thus, the share of Europe’s and North America’s middle classes42 compared to those in Asia-Pacific, Central and Southern America, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Sub-Saharan regions will fall from an estimated 54% in 2009 to 32% in 2020 and to only 20% in 2030. Political thought will be influenced by these upcoming middle classes outside of Europe and the United States. Political solutions will increasingly be determined by values and political concepts formed by their respective traditions, historical experiences, cultures, and religions. Many emerging countries such as China, India, Iran, and the Arab world, but also African societies, can look back to centuries of often highly sophisticated social organizations and political governance systems. Although many of these ideas and concepts are alien to Western political ideas of liberal democracy, they are likely to gain greater acceptance in their own countries. The West should learn to accept the emergence of a greater diversity in political systems; it will be powerless in attempting to change this inevitable and intangible development. 43 There may even be greater irony about Fukuyama’s predictions of an “end of history.” The turning point that led to the decline of a Westerndominated post-Cold War peace order may not have been brought about by emerging new state powers, but by a belligerent nonstate actor, al-Qaida. When, on 11 September 2001, nineteen young terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, they triggered a chain of events that would ultimately weaken the United States and its Western alliance. In its “war on terrorism” The West was drawn into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq they could neither win nor end. The West’s dominance was not challenged by any regular military or country but by belligerent nonstate actors. Even if the wars in Iraq and Libya began by fighting their regular military forces, the West ultimately faced belligerent and radicalized nonstate actors. The time of powerful nonstate actors has come, challenging not only their own 41 UN Development Programme, Human Development Report 2013: The Rise of the South. UNDP defined “middle class” to include people (not families) that are earning or spending $10 to $100 per day in 2005 purchasing power parity terms. 42 These numbers appear to include the Ukraine and Russia for Europe and Mexico for North America, but I could not verify this. 43 After failing to introduce liberal democracy by force, the hope has now shifted to the work of the so-called civil society. Larry Diamond, lamenting about the recession of democracy, comes to the conclusion that “in the long run, economic development, globalization, and the growth of civil society will induce democratic change in a number of autocracies” (Diamond, “Democracy’s Deepening Recession”).

48 

On Building Peace

countries but the global peace order – and the West could prove essentially powerless in controlling this new threat. In the process, the United States, NATO, and its allies have lost 8,311 soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq alone, 44 almost three times the number of those killed in the 9/11 attack, and spent trillions of dollars in resources.45 The results of these “wars on terror” were shockingly bad. Fourteen years later, many nation-states have weakened. Whole regions from the Hindu Kush to the Arab deserts and the African savannah with millions of people have now come under the control of extreme Islamist forces – the exact opposite of what one wanted to achieve with these wars.

1.3

The Delusion of a Just Peace

In his acceptance speech for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, President Obama spoke about his commitment to achieve “a just and lasting peace.”46 Fast-forward eight years later and a just and lasting peace has not been achieved in any of the conflicts in this time. But new conflicts have emerged. Sadly, Obama will be remembered as the first US president to have the US army involved in wars and armed conflicts from the first to the last day of his presidency. 47 He inherited a calamity – the war against terrorism as his predecessor called it – that was largely misjudged; fighting belligerent nonstate actors at the global stage was a kind of warfare no other president had to face before Obama. In part, his problem was that being drawn into intrastate armed conflicts in which an overconfident US army was fighting armed nonstate actors was a new type of war for which neither the United States nor any of its Western allies were prepared. What were expected to be easy military solutions would turn out failures. The war in Afghanistan is already the longest in which US forces ever been involved – and a war with no peace in sight. But this probably is not only a problem of failed military solutions. 44 See “Iraq Coalition Causality Count.” 45 In his brilliant book In the Light of What We Know (2014), Zia Haider Rahman claims that the added number of people killed in car accidents by switching from air to road travel during the first six months after 9/11 exceeded those killed at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. 46 President Obama gave his speech the title: “A Just and Lasting Peace.” 47 I say here “sadly,” because President Obama is probably one of the most nonmilitaristic and decent presidents in US history. My wife, a great fan of Obama, insisted that I added this; I largely agree with her, but I feel, however, that his record of not using force, to say it kindly, is mixed.

The Fading of the Post- Cold War Peace Order

49

Indeed, the problem of intervening in intrastate armed conflicts may reveal a far deeper problem, that of finding a just peace. Obama’s claim in Oslo that there was such a thing as a just or fair peace after a war or armed conflict may be erroneous. Was Obama arguing for something that in the real world does not exist? Could his hope for a just peace have misled him? In his speech, Obama defended the use of armed forces in pursuit of such a just peace. Is the notion of pursuing a just peace now also justifying to conduct (just) wars? Victors will see a just war where losers will see an unjust war and victors see a just peace where losers will see an unfair peace. 48 But a just peace – or some would say, a fair peace – may never have existed; it was and will remain an illusion. This is a delusion that is fed by the assumptions that our system of governance, liberal democracy, would be the only acceptable form of organizing human societies. The decline in the Western-dominated global peace order will increasingly question this assumption. The Western victory over its communist adversaries had nourished the hope that a worldwide peace that people had longed for throughout human history could finally be attained – and that this was a “liberal” peace. Once freed from authoritarian rule or freed from the fears and devastations of intrastate armed conflicts, people would “naturally” chose liberal democracy. Liberal democracy and free markets would now spread to all of those countries that had been prevented from adopting this system due to East-West competition and other forms of autocratic regimes. As a globally unifying political system, liberal democracy would bring the global peace people had craved for throughout human history. Democracies do not go to war with other democracies – true or not, that was at least the theory. 49 Even more important for dealing with the many intrastate conflicts, liberal democracy was considered as a remedy for stabilizing failing states. It was widely seen as responding to an inherently human desire for individual freedom, irrespective of cultural differences.50 The adoption of 48 NATO’s military operations against Serbia over control in Kosovo is still seen in our media and among mainstream politicians as having brought a just peace. But can we argue that the bombardment of Serbia, though illegal by international law, was a just war? Hardly! 49 Under the general notions of “democratic (or liberal) peace,” there is an extensive body of research to prove the point that democratic countries do not go to war with other democracies. Unfortunately, this could never empirically be proven and remains largely a dispute over how to define democracy. See Lawrence, “Imperial Peace or Imperial Method?” 50 This is what is also behind the controversy over Huntington’s “clash of Civilizations” – a response to Fukuyama’s claim of the “end of history.” To accept that civilizations are different

50 

On Building Peace

liberal democracy would end the search for the perfect political governance system. With liberal democracy, sociopolitical development would have reached its end point.51 Liberal democracy would bring freedom, peace, justice and with it also prosperity to its people that would do much to alleviate the local grievances that fed previous conflicts. Remaining disagreements would be solved through free and fair elections, free speech, the formation of political parties, and a functioning legal system. Separation of powers, a constitution, minority rights, and a general climate of tolerance and compromise would prevent any side from enforcing its views on others. In other words, “just peace’ meant adopting the Western concept of liberal democracy. This approach was embodied in the concept of peacebuilding,52 a concept developed in the aftermath of the Cold War to deal with the increasing number of intrastate armed conflicts. Roland Paris, one of the leading academics on the issue of peacebuilding, described it as follows: [P]eacebuilding was in effect an enormous experiment that involves transplanting Western models of social, political, and economic organization into war-shattered states in order to control conflict: in other words, pacification though political and economic liberalization.53

We now know that such a “transplantation,” as Paris calls it, rarely, if ever, worked to end conflicts and brought peace. There are considerable cultural, historical and social barriers hindering the possibility for liberal democracy to work globally. But there is a more profound problem when equating liberal democracy with peace. This would make peace a political system irrespective of any outcome of a previous war or armed conflict. In other words, peace was clean of any war or armed conflict. It would create win-win situations and no longer distinguish between winners and losers. But is this realistic? Unfortunately, in the realities of war and peace, such an assumption is a delusion. Peace is rarely, if ever, just or fair to all parties in a conflict. After a war, peace and justice are mostly two mutually exclusive objectives – still today! – and hence could clash – would amount to saying that liberal democracy is essentially a Western concept that is not suited as a global system. 51 See also Box 1.1. 52 Peacebuilding was introduced in the United Nations by the Secretary-General in 1992 (Boutros-Ghali, “An Agenda for Peace”). 53 Paris, “Peacebuilding and the Limits of Liberal Internationalism.”

The Fading of the Post- Cold War Peace Order

51

Peace is intricately linked to the outcome of wars and armed conflicts. Their outcome is usually a reshuffling of an earlier social, economic and political order. But a postwar peace agreement is decided by the winners and not by the losers. Any new peace order would depend on the relative power of each of the warring parties in the aftermath of wars and only very little – if at all – on any notion of fairness or justice. The winner decides and the loser tries to mitigate the negative effect of any peace deal. And that is not all. Winners tend to regard their peace order as just and fair, and hence lasting. Losers that see things differently are easily dismissed as spoilers, or to use a more fashionable term, as terrorists. This was not any different following the end of the Cold War. It is the way in which a victory has been achieved and on how complete a victory is that determines to what degree a victor can enforce his interests. Modern wars may be more circumspect in as much as they may result in fewer postconflict killings, but most of today’s peace settlements also divide societies into winners and losers. Instead of revenge killings, modern-day wars often end with the forced departure of unwanted political, religious, or ethnic groups. We only have to look at the outcome of the various wars in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, or now at the conflict in the Ukraine. The sad reality is that people go to war to win, not to share. Peace tends to therefore inherently carry the seeds for renewed conflicts. But what then is peace? For interstate wars, the answer appears to be relatively easy: the end of fighting, or what Johan Galtung54 had called a negative peace. But what could peace be for intrastate armed conflicts? A positive peace? What would this positive peace be and how could one achieve this? What is simply ideology and what is realistic? The United Nation has, surprisingly, said very little on this. In two recent high-level reviews of its peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations, it avoided this issue.55 As the validity of the liberal peace concept is fading, developing a new concept for peace for intrastate armed conflicts becomes an urgent issue. Any answer would have to involve defining internationally accepted norms for intrastate relations. This, in turn, would imply that solving intrastate armed conflicts would need a collective security system. Preserving peace within nation-states would hence need an international normative framework and an empowered United Nations. 54 Johan Galtung is the apostle of international peace research. He introduced the concepts of negative and positive peace in an editorial in the Journal of Peace Research in 1964. Although at this time intrastate armed conflicts were not yet the issue of peace research, the rise of these conflicts have given his peace concept renewed importance. 55 See Annex II.

52 

On Building Peace

Box 1.1 Promises of Paradise By 1992, communism as a state system had collapsed. It could not deliver on its core promises of bringing peace, prosperity and, above all, justice (in this case social justice). Instead, it had turned into a rigid governance system that put security first and, as a result, was unable to cater for the needs of its people. This compared badly with the achievements made under liberal democracies; state communism was hence doomed to fail. A historical verdict was made: communism does not work, but liberal democracy did. However, if we compared the ideas of communist ideology with those of liberal democracy, we would find many parallels. Both promise paradise on earth. Both would argue that they are universal concepts that would fit any country and culture and both were convinced that, over long, their system would become a unifying global political-economic system that would bring peace to the world. Geopolitical developments would prove otherwise. Communism, despite much support among so many of the educated elites in Western and in non-Western countries, did not survive. Liberal democracy will survive but is unlikely to become globally the dominant system of governance. Despite many elites from outside the West professing to be democrats, it has not taken root in the non-Western world, and where it did it is heavily adjusted to suit local political and cultural norms. Both communism and the liberal philosophy are concepts that are deeply rooted in Western thinking that have emerged from the European enlightenment. They replaced former religious concepts that promised paradise in the afterworld with the promise that peace, justice and prosperity, a kind of secular paradise, could be achieved in this world. Both would argue that to achieve this, one would have to apply the natural laws that drive human society and behavior. It was the time when people began to believe in science and began to apply it to political thinking. God’s hand was no longer needed. Quite to the contrary, both concepts argue that destructive forces drive human and social progress. In the case of communism, it is the exploitation of man by man that would generate the revolutionary energies that ultimately would lead to a society free of any exploitation and create a world in which everybody can live according to his/ her needs. Liberal democracy sees the driving force for human progress in the selfishness and personal greed of humans. It is the desire for profit that would stimulate entrepreneurial inventiveness and create wealth for everybody to live according to his/her abilities. Both concepts make analogous arguments on achieving peace, justice, and prosperity. In a communist view, the main obstacle to peace is private ownership of the means of production that divides societies, creates injustices, and leads to poverty. Once all means of production are returned to society, people would share the fruit of their work and live in justice and in peace with each other. This would

The Fading of the Post- Cold War Peace Order

53

also end interstate wars. In a battle for survival, the argument goes, private capital has to strive to gain maximum profit and this, in turn, leads to wars over access to resources and markets. Social ownership of the means of production would hence also bring global peace. Workers would not go to war against workers! Liberalism believes that the main obstacle to peace, justice, and prosperity are autocratic regimes. Once freed from the chains of their suppressors, people’s natural choice would be freedom, democracy, and a free market economy. Democracy among free individuals would lead to dialogue and compromise; the remaining differences will be decided by elections or a justice system. Intrastate armed conflicts would hence no longer be necessary. Democratic societies and free market policies would create a globally interconnected network of economic activities that would bring about global prosperity and global peace. Interstate wars would no longer be necessary. Democrats will not go to war against democrats! Both are ideologies that argue that their political system is the only guarantee for peace. They both believe that this requires that men and women are freed from any chains of the past, be they traditions, religion, tribal linkages, or family. Both see invisible social laws at play: liberal democracy argues that human society is directed by the invisible hand of the market while a communist would argue that societies develop subject to equally invisible social laws of historical materialism. But there is also a fundamental difference that may play a role in shaping our future. Liberal democracy builds its ideology on the interest of the individual, communism on the interests of social groups. For now, individualism appears to have the upper hand. But much of the upheavals we see today are against such Western individualism. Will this lead to a revival of political systems with greater emphasis on social cohesion, on traditions, on family, on tribes and religions? And would this also imply a return to stronger nation-states? My hunch would be yes! Only time can tell.

Box 1.2 Wars Shape Peace Wars tend to end with peace agreements that shape the postwar peace order. It was the devastation and suffering of these wars that make a new peace order not only necessary and possible, but also acceptable. Peace agreements are usually soaked in blood; they are neither fair nor are they meant to be fair. It is the winner(s) who determine(s) what this new peace order is going to be, and the loser(s) who accept(s) it. The balance of power determines to what degree a winner can impose his conditions and rarely with any feeling of pity for a loser. Nonetheless, peace agreements are positive in as much as they end the killings and give the loser the possibility to recuperate. Mostly unintentionally, they have another positive effect: they tend to establish new postwar principles,

54 

On Building Peace

though often for very different purposes, that are now part of international law (jus cogens). Many of these peace agreements have a stabilizing effect on international relations to these days. Indeed, many of these principles have found their way into the UN Charter. The Thirty Years’ War ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. This peace agreement introduced, for the first time, the principles of “state sovereignty” and “noninterference in the state’s internal affairs.” It was meant to cement the victory of the invading powers of France and Sweden. At the time, it was intended to enshrine the fragmentation of Germany into over 320 little states, cut the powers of the German king/emperor, and prevent the emergence of a powerful centralized state at the center of Europe. This guaranteed France’s dominance over continental Europe and Sweden’s dominance of the Baltic Sea for the next 150 years. Although the original context has now changed, the principles of national sovereignty and noninterference have ever since regulated international relations and became part of the UN Charter in 1945. The Napoleonic wars ended with the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna of 1815. The Vienna Congress is credited with establishing the principle of the “balance of power” that should help make wars among European powers less likely and suppress any revolutionary and nationalist tendencies that could rock the established order. The so-called Concert of Europe of the five major European powers held supreme powers over smaller states to enforce the new European peace order. Today, the ideas of the balance of power and special powers given to major powers found its way into the UN Charter in the form of the five veto powers in the Security Council. The First World War ended with the Versailles peace treaties in 1919. Among others, it stipulated, for the first time, the principle of the “self-determination of people.” At the time, this principle provided the justification to dismantle the territories of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. Not surprisingly, the new principle of self-determination was not applied to the territories and overseas colonies of the victorious states. However, self-determination made its way into the UN Charter as a universal principle, and would later drive UN-supported decolonization in the 1960s and 1970s. The Second World War ended with the Potsdam Protocols in 1945. They introduced, for the first time, the notion of “crimes against humanity,” “war crimes,” and “genocide.” Instead of arbitrary revenge killings, a legal process would deal with the atrocities committed by Germany. The Nuremberg Trials marked a beginning. Today, efforts to charge those who have committed war crimes in court are now part of the UN system in the form the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and a number of ad hoc local courts to bring such crimes to justice as, for example, in Cambodia, Rwanda, or Sierra Leone. The

The Fading of the Post- Cold War Peace Order

55

post-WWII peace agreements brought about the UN Charter and the Declaration of Universal Human Rights – a momentous step forward for humankind. The Cold War did not end with any written peace agreement but it resulted, like all wars before it, with a new peace order. Again, it was the winner who determined the new order around principles such as representational democracy, personal freedoms, rule of law, the separation of powers, and free market economy: Western liberal democracy.56 The big question is: what will happen to these principles now that the West is losing its global dominance? If history is any guide, Western liberal principles are likely to become part of the heritage of humanity and help shape, as with past peace agreements, future international relations. But the bigger question is whether humankind will be intelligent enough to adopt these principles in a new global peace order without first having to go through a devastating war, hot or cold. This would require a reformed United Nations able to preserve and build peace, security, justice and prosperity for future generations. And all of this would have to start with finding solutions to failing nation-states and the rise of belligerent nonstate actors.

Box 1.3 Will We Be Able to Manage This? When faced with the increasing inflow of migrants and refugees, German chancellor Angela Merkel coined her now-famous phrase in August 2015: “Das schaffen wir!” and added: “Wo uns was im Wege steht, muss es überwunden werden” (We can manage this! Where we face obstacles, we must overcome them [translation by the author]). With this exhilarating message, she referred to overcoming the practical problems related to the welcoming of the expected 1.5 million refugees57 in Germany: the refurbishing of abandoned buildings to houses for arriving refugees, the provision of other basic needs such as clothing, bedding and food (especially for winter), but also the acceptance of foreign university degrees, the opening of the job market, and the organization of German-language classes. But if Merkel had instead spent more time analyzing the root causes of the refugee influx, she may have come to a very different conclusion, and said instead: “We mismanaged our various interventions in the countries from where 56 Of course, these liberal principles existed before the end of the Cold War, but it was only in the post-Cold War era that they were meant to become universal norms. During the Cold War, the West ideals competed with those of the communist world and a Group of 77 that claimed to have a third way. 57 The term “refugee” is not used in a legal sense here as many of those who arrive in Germany may not officially be given the refugee status.

56 

On Building Peace

most of these refugees come from. We do not know how to get this right.” Not all these root causes are the responsibility of Germany, but under its new motto “We must take greater responsibility,” Germany gets increasingly involved militarily in intrastate conflicts that it will ultimately not be able to manage. In 2015/2016, the four largest groups of refugees/migrants that arrived in Germany were Afghans, Kosovars, Syrians, and Iraqis.58 First, there are the Afghans: Merkel should have admitted that the lives of 57 German soldiers and police officers – not to speak of the unknown number of Afghans who lost their lives as the result of the German intervention – and the billions of euro invested by Germany in Afghanistan59 have not achieved what Germany had come for: peace, security, and prosperity in Afghanistan. Instead, it has contributed to a stream of Afghan refugees and migrants seeking peace, security, and prosperity in Germany. The Afghan refugees are the direct result of mismanaging the German military intervention in Afghanistan. Second, there are the Albanian Kosovars: In 2015, Kosovars were the secondlargest group of migrants that arrived in Germany as part of the refugee crisis. Although not recognized as refugees, they nonetheless are the result of a mismanaged foreign military intervention and a failed state-building operation. In a breach of the UN Charter, in 1999 Germany had participated in bombing Serbia to free Kosovars who had killed between 3,000 to 4,000 Serbs and later resulted in 250,000 Kosovar Serbs being forced to flee their former homeland. Now, sixteen years later, Germany is still party to the Kosovo Force (KfOR), a NATO force that allegedly protects peace and security in Kosovo. There are no reliable estimates of the total German contributions to the war over Kosovo or the support given to the new Kosovo state, but it may be in the order of hundreds of billions of euros channeled through its own aid agencies but also through NATO, the OSCE, the United Nations, and a myriad of NGOs.60 Thirdly, there are the Syrian and Iraqis: Germany had not participated in the ill-fated US-led Iraq invasion and, to the credit of its former chancellor, Schroeder, openly opposed it. Chancellor Merkel has now undone this by bringing the

58 This is taken from a 9 November 2015 BBC report “Migrant Crisis, January to October 2015.” 59 The costs of German engagement in Afghanistan during the f irst thirteen years (2002 to 2014) may have reached a total of 35 to 40 billion euros. That would make the costs of the German intervention in Afghanistan fourfold to fivefold that of Germany’s contributions to all UN peacekeeping missions in the world. See Brück, De Groot, and Schneider, “The Economic Costs of the German Participation in the Afghan War.” 60 The author knows of no studies that would indicate the total costs of Germany’s Kosovo engagement over the last seventeen years, which would include its contributions to NATO as well as to humanitarian and state-building activities. The total costs may well have reached over 100 billion euros.

The Fading of the Post- Cold War Peace Order

57

Bundeswehr into the war against extremist Islamist forces such as IS and the al-Nusra front in Syria and Iraq. With this, Germany got drawn into a war that has become increasingly messy and for which there is no end in sight. In fact, in this war, the US-led coalition of which Germany takes part no longer has any local allies it can rely on and the war aims appear to evaporate with every bomb exploding. We, like Russia, the United States, and all the other foreign countries involved, are committing war crimes and the local allies we equip and finance are, and will, commit terrible human rights abuses. Even if the US-led alliance – maybe one day with Russian support – should be able to dislodge IS from the main cities, we may not have beaten them and only shifted the conflict to another level. We should recall that in 2001 we also thought we had comprehensively defeated the Taliban. Today, they are back in force and on the verge of taking control over Afghanistan again. In Syria and Iraq, dislodging IS will not end the conflict. Instead, the various local players will fight over the ruins our bombing has left behind. While Germany continues flying its AWACS and tanker planes at 10,000 meters over the carnage below, there is a realistic prospect of years of civil war in Syria and Iraq and more refugees arriving in Europe. Merkel adds to all of this by sending German tanks to the Russian border. Can she truly say “We can manage this”? I doubt it!

2

The Failing of the Nation-State

Barely 20 years after the red Soviet flag had been lowered over Moscow’s Kremlin, marking the end of the once all-powerful Soviet Union, a black flag was raised over many locations in the Arab Sunni heartlands of the Middle East, signaling the birth of a completely different type of a new “state.” On 8 April 2013, a largely unknown religious scholar from the small Iraqi town of Samarra with the nom de guerre of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had announced the creation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).1 A year later, Islamic State controlled large regions including some large cities such as Mosul, Ramadi, and Raqqa with possibly over 8 million inhabitants. It has attracted the allegiance of tens of thousands of young jihadists – men and women – from all over the world. It has branches in at least eighteen other countries and carries out terrorist attacks in may Muslim countries and throughout much of Europe. In June 2014, it turned into a self-proclaimed Caliphate, claiming the religious and political leadership over all Muslims in the world. IS had its predecessor organizations, but this was the first time that a nonstate actor has begun to control large territories and populations and create a state. And despite appearing to us as an enigma, it proved quite resilient. After being militarily attacked on all sides by a powerful array of global, regional, and local powers for now over three years, it is still not defeated. IS grew out of the vacuum created by the virtual collapse of Iraq and Syria; without this, the emergence of such a historical paradox would not have been possible. If indeed IS is a historical paradox, only time will tell. It may very well be that we see other such strange state constructs driven by nonstate actors emerge from the ruins of collapsing nation-states. Such new types of “state building” points at another problem, that of failing and collapsing nation-states. IS may hence be symbolic of a geopolitical development in which the insecurities caused by a fading post-Cold War peace order are now compounded by failing nation-states, the rise of belligerent nonstate actors, and the spreading of intrastate armed conflicts. Indeed, this triple phenomenon of state failures, powerful nonstate actors, and intrastate armed conflicts has become the dominant threat to global peace and security today – and it will remain the dominant threat for the foreseeable future. Indeed, we may only be at the beginning of a development of increasing nation-state failures. 1 Throughout the book we will refer to ISIL with the name “Islamic State” and use the abbreviation “IS.”

60 

On Building Peace

With a rising world population from 8.5 billion by 2030 to 9.8 billion by 2050 and possibly reaching over 11 billion by the year 2100,2 the faltering of nation-states as the basic social organization to provide people peace, security, justice, and prosperity is an extremely worrying prospect.3 The collapse of nation-states could release enormous forces of anarchy and chaos involving hundreds of millions of angry and mostly young people and add considerably to chaos, anarchy, and wars. By 2030, about 50% of the world’s population will be below the age of 25 years. 4 This will make the challenges in front of us even harder. Nothing could be as dangerous as millions of frustrated and desperate youth storming our institutions and our shores. Many of them will not find a place in their societies and will have little hope to ever conduct a decent life. The youths on which we depend for our futures may turn into massively destructive forces. A radicalization and criminalization of the youth in many parts of the world would probably find their organizational forms in aggressive and violent ideological and criminal belligerent nonstate actors. What we experience with IS today, may only be the tip of the iceberg. Unemployment and underemployment are already rampant among the young, not only in the developing world but increasingly also in Europe.5 And this youth crisis extends far beyond jobs and opportunities. It is a crisis of identity and belonging. To many of the youth, their identities around tribes, families, and traditional religion are eroding and most of them experience the nation-state as either menacing or simply nonexistent. It may therefore not primarily be dysfunctional economies6 that will threaten peace, but the corresponding breakdown of social cohesion. With the decline of nation-states (in whatever form) and of other forms of social organization, we take away a sense of belonging, of being part of a community, of sharing responsibilities and of an informal social safety net. Globalization suddenly turns them into individuals, socially abandoned 2 UN Population Division, World Population Prospects. 3 We are often told not to worry as population growth throughout the world is steadily falling. But in absolute terms, there is no such decline. While in the 20 years between 1950 and 1970 world population increased by 1.3 billion, it will increase in the 20 years between 2030 and 2050 by 1.3 billion (UN Population Division, World Population Prospects.) 4 UN Population Division, World Population Prospects. 5 The countries that now receive most of the illegal migrants (such as Greece, Italy and, to a certain degree, Spain) also have the highest rate of youth unemployment among their population. This is a dangerous mix that could, one day, unload into violence and fighting in the street. 6 Most political analysts see poverty is the reason for radicalization. It surely plays a role, but there is more to it.

The Failing of the Nation-State

61

and lost in an electronic world of social media and global markets in which they have no say and no share. With careful management of our global resources, the world could sustain a future population of 11.2 billion. But this would need good management and an environment of intercommunal peace and understanding. For this, we would continue to have to rely on a commonwealth of individually functioning nation-states. Indeed, the challenge that comes with globalization is not to replace nation-states but to make them work better for their citizens. Rescuing today’s nation-states from collapse is therefore not a nostalgic and backward-looking approach; it is an essential – maybe even the most essential – requirement for securing the world’s future. Without good social organizations and functioning nation-states, we will, in all likelihood, not be able to maintain peace and provide for the economic and emotional needs of a growing population. The advancing failures of nation-states we observe throughout the world may hence pose a great, if not the greatest danger for our common future on this planet; a danger that will ultimately go far beyond any refugee and migrant crisis, or terrorist attacks as we experience them today. In the past, the collapse of a nation-state largely remained an isolated local issue. However, today, with much greater global interlinkages, the effects of collapsing nation-states will be felt worldwide almost immediately. Most Europeans would have read about the carnage that accompanied the separation of India and Pakistan in 1947 only in their morning newspapers. Today’s Syrian carnage, though much smaller compared to what happened then in India and Pakistan, has, in the form of large numbers of refugees, arrived on our doorstep. Globalization does not make nation-states obsolete; quite to the contrary, globalization requires, more than ever, well-functioning nation-states. Despite all talk about the fading of the importance of the nation-states in an increasingly globalized world, we have not developed any credible social model that could replace nation-states as functioning social organizations. Could international organizations or even international enterprises take their place? Would we want this? Can we realistically expect that the world can be run by international bureaucrats and self-interested company CEOs? Could we really expect peace, justice, and greater well-being from them? Would this translate into the destruction of the middle classes and a further economic decline of the working classes? And what would happen to our democracies? Would we lose any say in the affairs of global governance? The answer to economic failures, we are told, lies in even greater international trade. It was the access to foreign markets that made the economic

62 

On Building Peace

recovery of Germany and Japan after WWII possible and it was also global trade that allowed the Chinese miracle that pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty. What we need, therefore, is to tear down borders and open the world to free trade. Only this can bring the economic growth necessary to cater for the youth. Even if we agree that free trade and open borders would help our economies grow – and there are increasingly doubts about this assumption – this would not necessarily apply to all human societies. Germany, Japan, and China all had strong and well-organized states with highly developed national identities. And they had well-guarded borders.7 Many postcolonial states of today, if we can even call some of them “states,” no longer have such borders. The irony is that representational democracy and a justice system depend on borders; they need clearly defined populations and territories8; only free market policies see borders as a hindrance. The discussions around Brexit were exactly along those lines. Those against Brexit argued about the negative fallout a British exit would have on the economy, while those for Brexit argued about the loss of national sovereignty, and the erosion of democratic decision-making and a functioning justice system. Today’s fashionable claim to be a global citizen – mostly made by the “well-off” – ignores the fact that about 97% of the world’s population will die in the country they were born in; the vast majority of them probably within a few kilometers of their birth place.9 For them, globalization is at best a mixed blessing: while their elites travel globally, the bulk of the world’s populations hardly ever leave their communities; while wealth is now global, poverty remains local; while capital flows are global, labor remains local; while climate change is a global phenomenon, its negative effects are all felt locally, etc. How many of the international economic and social elites who like to call themselves “global citizens” are absconding their social responsibilities of paying taxes to local communities with which they have lost touch and instead place their wealth into tax heavens? Unfortunately, there is only a small step from “global citizen” to tax evasion. Nowhere is this failed approach to globalization more visible than at the yearly show meetings in Davos. The majority of the participants nobody has ever elected, they are accountable to nobody and they do not represent 7 Of course, this applies less to Germany as a member of the Schengen Area, but borders and how to guard them has again become a top issue in Germany, so with the influx of refugees and migrants Germany has begun to control its borders again. 8 This argument is brilliantly made by a young Dutch, Thierry Baudet, in his 2012 book The Significance of Borders. 9 IOM, “Global Migration Trends Factsheet.”

The Failing of the Nation-State

63

any communities except the very rich and beautiful and some rather grey heads of international organizations attracted by the blitz of show business. The attendees were described by Huntington as “transnationalists” who “have little need for national loyalty, view national borders as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations.”10 These meetings take place in a remote mountain area behind several rings of armed protection in hotels that 99% of the world population would never able to even visit. Many of their participants live behind high walls back home and build nuclear-proof bunkers on their properties. Davos is this the symbol for globalization. If anything, the Davos meetings underline that we will still need the nation-state – not much for those transnational businesses but for ordinary citizens who cannot afford to build their own private walls and nuclear shelters. It is also a reminder of the dangers we would all face if nation-states would further destabilize and even collapse. Globalization needs the nation-state. The problem of troubled and shaky nation-states is not limited to developing countries; it is a worrying global phenomenon. In the West, such problems are more circumspect, but nonetheless most Western countries increasingly face identity crises and mounting internal political divisions. The United States and Europe are both going through the most profound internal confidence crises in post-Cold War history. Public credibility ratings for most government institutions are worryingly low. The 2016 US presidential elections have shown an American society deeply divided along income, regional, and ethnic lines. In Europe, the strong electoral showing of anti-Europe and anti-immigration parties have, for the first time since the demise of communist parties at the end of the Cold War, wrecked a prevailing political consensus among the more established political parties. The standing in the world of the United States and Europe is, as a result, weakening. But far more serious are problems of the stability of nation-states in the poorer South. The growing numbers of failing and fragile nation-states around the world are truly alarming. According to the 2015 Fragile States Index 11 published by the Fund for Peace (FFP), out of the 178 countries it had monitored in 2013, 38 countries were rated from “high alert” to “alert,” meaning that they face serious internal problems that have already or could result 10 I have taken this description from Sorkin, “What to Make of the Davos Class in the Trump Era.” Although Sorkin identifies these words as those of Huntington, I cannot independently verify this. 11 FFP, “Fragile States Index 2015.”.

64 

On Building Peace

in intrastate armed conflicts. A further 85 countries are listed under various degrees of “warnings,” suggesting that there are reasons for considerable concern about their future stability. Only 40 countries were rated either as “stable” or, as what the Index calls, “sustainable.”12 In other words, the Fund for Peace considers 123 out of the 178 countries reviewed, a staggering 76%, at different stages of state failure or at risk of state failure – a frightening prospect for global security.13 OECD/DAC in its 2013 Failed States Report lists a total of 47 countries as failed states. Per these statistics, up to 40% of the world population live in unstable and fragile countries. These also are among the countries with the highest population increases.14 The developing “youth bulge” in these countries will only add to their fragility. The failing of nation-states opens an enormous potential for all sorts of belligerent nonstate actors to fill the emerging vacuum. The result will be a further increase and intensification of intrastate armed conflicts and instability around the world.

2.1

The Surge in Intrastate Armed Conflicts

Largely as the result of the end of the Cold War and the emergence of increasing numbers of failing states, we are today witnessing an unprecedented shift from interstate to intrastate wars and armed conflicts. This is an extraordinary change in the pattern of wars and armed conflicts! Indeed, this may be the first time in human history that interstate wars no longer are, in the words of the UN Charter, the scourge of humanity. Now, intrastate armed conflicts have become the scourge of humanity. This will have huge geopolitical consequences on how we define peace and security in the future. It will require very different international efforts and approaches 12 Such indexes must be handled with care. They expose a largely Western-centric view of state fragility. In 2015, all countries ranked “sustainable” or “very sustainable” were Western democracies. The Ukraine, believed to be firmly in the Western camp is, despite its civil war and its oligarchies, ranked 84 – better than China ranked 83 and, of course, Russia ranked 65. And while Saudi Arabia is ranked 101, Iran is only ranked 44 (the higher the ranking the more stable a country is assessed). 13 Particularly worrying is that the “Fragile States Index” lists two countries under “high alert” that are nuclear powers: North Korea and Pakistan; they rank respectively as the 13th and 23rd most fragile countries! 14 Interestingly, countries with intrastate armed conflicts are, despite all those killed in such conflicts, among the countries with the highest population increases: e.g., Libya with 4.85%, South Sudan with 4.23%, Iraq with 2.29%, and Afghanistan with 2.25%. By comparison, in peaceful, secure and rich Germany population growth, despite net immigration, is negative (-0.12%). See UN Population Division, World Population Prospects.

The Failing of the Nation-State

65

in maintaining global peace and security. Instead of focusing on interstate relations, such efforts must now be directed on intrastate relations. During the first half of the twentieth century, the two world wars were typical interstate wars on an unprecedented scale. During the second half of the twentieth century, also the Cold War was an interstate war in which two military alliances of nation-states with different ideologies, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, threatened each other with mutual destruction. It was a “cold war,” but one that provoked many proxy wars and, although it provided some sort of “global stability,” the Cold War was enormously threatening to global peace.15 With the end of the Cold War and the dawn of the twenty-first century, interstate wars began to disappear. The 2003 Iraq invasion was the last major war in which regular national armies fought each other. With only minor exceptions,16 there were no more interstate wars.17 Wars among nation-states and their alliances that have plagued humankind since the dawn of human history no longer exist – at least not at the levels know before. Unfortunately, this was not the end of the “scourge of war”; only the pattern of war changed. Today, intrastate armed conflicts have successively replaced interstate wars.18 Intrastate armed conflicts and not interstate wars have become the new killing fields in the post-Cold War era. Cambodia, Angola, Rwanda, Burundi, the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Congo, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, South Sudan, Libya, and now Syria are all examples of this. This change in violent intrastate conflicts is the birth of peacebuilding. Of course, intrastate armed conflicts always existed; there were also civil wars, revolutions, and independence wars before. But they had mostly remained local conflicts or, at best, regional affairs. They never dominated the global agenda as they do today and their negative fallout was never before felt as globally as it is today. It is only now that intrastate armed conflicts have become the main concern for global peace and security. 15 Although the Cold War remained luckily “cold,” we must not forget how real and dangerous this war was. Here, millions of well-equipped and highly motivated regular armed forces of alliances of nation-states faced each other and repeatedly brought humankind to the brink of extinction. 16 These are mostly skirmishes, i.e., along the Kashmir border between India and Pakistan, between Eritrea and Ethiopia, or between Sudan and South Sudan; the latter two had their roots in former intrastate conflicts. 17 For example, NATO’s 2011 air campaign against the Libyan army and security forces, although between two armies, can no longer count as an interstate war. It falls under the category of an internationalized intrastate armed conflict. Here NATO has intervened in an intrastate armed conflict by choosing to take the side of belligerent nonstate actors against the state. 18 See also Box 2.1.

66 

On Building Peace

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP)19 has probably the world’s best data on armed conflicts. Its data shows that the number of battlerelated fatalities have, despite annual fluctuations, declined since WWII.20 In 2013, UCDP registered 32 ongoing wars and armed conflicts with more than 25 battle-related fatalities in that year. In 2014, the number of ongoing wars and armed conflicts around the world had increased to 40; in 2015, this number increased to 49. More importantly, in all three years, except for a small skirmish,21 all were intrastate armed conflicts. The same trend is confirmed by looking at estimated battle-related fatalities. In 2013, all the estimated 80,000 battle-related fatalities were the result of intrastate armed conflicts; in 2014, 99.9% of the estimated 100,00022 battle-related fatalities were from intrastate armed conflicts. What has, however, changed is the increase in the internationalization of intrastate armed conflicts23; in other words, more and more outside powers have begun to get directly or indirectly involved in intrastate conflicts, either in the side of local governments or one or the other belligerent nonstate actors. In 2013, 11 of the 32 ongoing intrastate armed conflicts were internationalized, in 2014, of the 40 ongoing armed conflicts 13 were internationalized. What makes this trend more significant is that, according to the UCDP, internationalized intrastate conflicts tend to be bloodier and last longer. In 2014, one-third of intrastate armed conflicts had seen some form of foreign military intervention.24 Accordingly, the number of battlerelated deaths in internationalized conflicts increased quite considerably 19 These and all subsequent UCDP data refer to its 2015 and 2016 reports on Armed Conflicts. 20 The UCDP def ines “armed conflicts” as violent conflicts with at least 25 battle-related fatalities per year and “wars” as violent conflicts with more than a thousand battle-related fatalities per year. In this book, “armed conflict” is used in the context of intrastate conflicts, whereas “war” is used in the context of interstate conflicts. The only reason for this is to better distinguish between these two. See also Annex IV. 21 The single interstate war was between Pakistan and India over Kashmir, which flared up briefly in 2014 but has remained relatively calm ever since. 22 The annual numbers of battle-related deaths quoted here are averages between a high and low range of estimated battle-related fatalities. 23 The UCDP defines local intrastate armed conflicts as those in which a government battles with one or more belligerent nonstate actor(s). It defines internationalized intrastate armed conflicts as those in which either the government or one of the nonstate actors is militarily supported by one or more foreign powers. 24 This calculation doesn’t include the deployment of UN peacekeepers into intrastate armed conflicts. However, strictly speaking, their intervention also “internationalizes” a formerly local armed conflict. Counting them in, over 50% of all intrastate armed conflicts would be internationalized.

The Failing of the Nation-State

67

over the last years: from well below 10,000 in 2004 to about 80,000 in 2013, mostly due to foreign military involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria Despite all assurances by foreign powers that they have intervened to help end the civil wars, the reality of internationalization of armed conflicts is that their interventions achieved the opposite. Unfortunately, this has not entered discussions about solving the Syrian armed conflict where each foreign power accuses the other of being responsible of intensifying and brutalizing the conflict while seeing itself as a force for peace.25 The shift to intrastate armed conflicts has profoundly changed the roles of armies around the world. They no longer fight other armies. National armies are now almost exclusively fighting belligerent nonstate actors within their own countries. What’s more, foreign armies are also now exclusively engaged in intrastate armed conflicts, fighting mostly – but not only – belligerent nonstate actors. The so-called war on terror was only one such new type of warfare. The newly built-up national armies in Afghanistan and Iraq26 are exclusively trained and equipped by the NATO/US-led coalition to fight an intrastate armed conflict – they would be useless in an interstate armed conflict. Similarly, the Iraqi-Kurdish Peshmerga and the Syrian-Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), themselves semi-non-state armies, are trained and equipped to fight a nonstate actor in intrastate armed conflicts: Islamic State. The British army used to fight the Irish Republican Army and the Russian army Chechen rebels, the Ukrainian army fights separatists in the east of the country, the Turkish army Kurdish fighters, the Saudi army Houthi rebels, and so on. This is a trend we can also observe in Western countries. In the wake of terrorist attacks, France and Belgium have mobilized their armies within their own territories for civilian protection. Recently, Germany has created the legal possibility to use its armed forces against internal terrorist 25 The United States increasingly accuses Russia of excessively bombing rebel-held areas in Aleppo, hitting innocent civilians while the United States and its allies bomb cities held by IS forces in which civilians remain holed up. In fact, the bombing by the United States and its allies probably exceeds that of Russia overall. In Syria and Iraq all foreign forces are guilty of breaking humanitarian law and human rights. 26 This has been done even if it is in contradiction to the country’s constitution. The 2005 Iraqi constitution, for example, explicitly forbids its national armed forces to be used in internal conflicts against its own population. But this is what it had done ever since it was built by the United States – even if not very successfully. The Afghan constitution – strangely – does not mention its national armed forces and its responsibilities at all. The Afghan army is almost entirely paid for by the West. Could it be that it is not national army but a mercenary force to cover the West’s withdrawal?

68 

On Building Peace

threats – something that was previously an absolute taboo, due to the bad experiences under the Nazis. More troubling for world peace is a new trend in the internationalization of local conflicts. While until 2013 internationalized intrastate armed conflicts were exclusively the domain of Western-led military interventions, in 2014 Russia joined the fray by sending its army into the Syrian conflict to fight various armed nonstate actors opposing President Assad. The year before it had intervened in the internal Ukrainian armed conflict. In 2015, Qatar and UAE also briefly intervened directly in the internal conflict of Libya when they sent in fighter jets to bomb targets of nonstate groups they did not like. Since March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition has been militarily intervening in the intrastate armed conflict of neighboring country Yemen to fight an increasingly bloody civil war, something that hardly makes it into the mainstream media. Furthermore, Turkey has moved from simply supporting some opposition forces to directly marching its army into Syria to essentially fight the Kurdish YPG. Are we seeing initial signs of a return to a time when global and regional powers went to war in an effort to protect and/or establish spheres of influence here? Are the new battlegrounds to establish spheres of influence countries within intrastate armed conflicts? If this is the beginning of a new trend, it could go in two very different directions. On the one hand, intrastate armed conflicts could bring back confrontations among global and regional powers with the risks of a return to interstate wars. On the other hand, the ferocity of internationalized intrastate armed conflicts, such as in Syria, could bring all major powers to the realization that an alternative, more collective approach is needed to solve the threats of failing nation-states, belligerent nonstate actors, and intrastate armed conflicts. But for this to happen, we would need a reformed collective security system.

2.2

The Rise of Belligerent Nonstate Actors

On 11  September 2001, nineteen young militants on a suicide mission highjacked four passenger planes at US airports and managed to crash two of them into the two towers of the New York World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon.27 As despicable this attack on unexpecting civilians was, we must accept that they carried out what must have been one of the 27 The hijackers of the fourth plane were overwhelmed by passengers; the plane crashed into a field, not reaching its intended destination of attack.

The Failing of the Nation-State

69

most successful “combat” missions in human history. For the entire world to see on their television screens, they conducted successful attacks against the two symbols of the world’s only superpower, the United States, killing close to 3,000 civilians and emergency workers. But the main “success” of their mission lay in the fact that these nineteen suicide militants were able to attack the United States at its weakest point – its exceptional military strength. Given their military strength and the humiliation of being attacked on their home soil by a bunch of young jihadist, the United States had to respond forcefully for the whole world to see. A measured response was not possible. This drew the United States, supported by its allies, into a succession of wars, mostly against belligerent nonstate actors; the name given to this at the time was the “war on terror” – a terrible misnomer that revealed the blindness that was created by the hubris of assumed military superiority. But they were all wars the United States could not win. Sixteen years later, with hundreds of thousands of people dead28 and after spending trillions of dollars on these wars, the United States and its Western allies emerge considerably weakened. Instead of beating radical Islamist groups, these groups now spread around the world and began to control territory and large population centers. This was an attack on the American mainland by a foreign power. This foreign power was not an enemy country or group of hostile countries, but a group of armed nonstate actors. And the arms they used were essentially only boxcutters against a country with the most modern and best-equipped armed forces in the world. On this day, the United States, in a very dramatic and tragic way, experienced a new form of warfare and the powers of emerging belligerent nonstate actors. The increase in failing nation-states goes hand in hand with the rise of belligerent nonstate actors. Like intrastate armed conflicts, armed nonstate actors are historically nothing new. But, 9/11 has shown, they have become a global phenomenon, operating on a much more dangerous level. Since the end of the Cold War, their powers and outreach have increased dramatically. Once posing only a local challenge, they have now become a dominant threat to global peace and security. 28 The total number of Western soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq by 2015 alone amounts to 8,311 (see “Iraq Coalition Causality Count”); that is, almost three times the number of those killed in the original 9/11 attack. And those Iraqis and Afghans killed must be about two hundred times those killed at 9/11. Like in the World Trade Center, the overwhelming majority here were also innocent civilians.

70 

On Building Peace

The global magnitude of armed groups fighting government forces can be best understood by the fact that virtually all of today’s military operations around the world, be they operations conducted by national armies or by foreign military interventions, are undertaken to battle various kinds of belligerent nonstate actors. Even if most of these violent conflicts occur now in the Muslim world, we can find military operations against nonstate actors in almost all parts of the world, even in Europe. Indeed, violent armed conflicts and clashes between regular armed forces and irregular armed groups of nonstate actors have dominated the global security agenda for much of the last 25 years. Belligerent nonstate actors come in many forms and shapes. They can be grouped roughly in five general categories: extremist Islamist groups, procommunist organizations, secessionist movements, local rebel groups, and crime gangs29 and transnational criminal syndicates. They all use illegal force in pursuit of their aims, but their aims differ widely. In addition to using force in pursuit of their aims, these five groups share several other features. They all thrive in the vacuum that is left by weakening the nation-states. They act locally while mostly operating globally. Most appear to be astute in taking advantage of globalization, the spread of social media, the speed in global communications, and the easiness of global travel – all things in which national governments, their adversaries, are less astute in. They do not feel restricted by national borders and jurisdictions, and do not recognize any international law. They are often masters in maneuvering within the shadows and cracks of national jurisdictions, and in using illegal and other shadowy channels for obtaining funding and weapons. But above all, they all find ways to thrive on corruption, either by corrupting officials or by finding local support because of corrupt officials. They differ, however, in their aims and in how they oppose state authority. Let us look at them in reverse order: – Transnational crime syndicates, like the Colombian Medellín Cartel (1972-1993), want to create space for their illegal businesses; they intend to weaken or undermine, but not to replace, state authority. They are mostly considered as “nonpolitical” and, therefore, rarely play any role in UN peace operations. Nonetheless, they tend to have a huge impact on state authority within countries and are important factors threatening global peace and security. If we take annual violent deaths as indicators for global threat levels, transnational criminal syndicates 29 We lump rebel groups and crime gangs together here. The reason is that they have much in common, including the use of force to exploit the local population.

The Failing of the Nation-State

71

are responsible for many more people being killed and injured than any of the other belligerent nonstate actor. The UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that in 2012 approximately half a million people worldwide were intentionally killed by organized crime. This is more than five times the total number of battle-related deaths reported by UCDP for the same year. In 2012, the people killed due to criminal activities amounted to about 30,000 in Colombia, about 27,000 in Mexico, and about 6,000 in Guatemala.30 In comparison, those killed in the Syrian civil war in the same year amounted to an estimated 37,000.31 The FBI reported that in the United States alone 8,124 people had been killed by firearms32 in 2014 – in only one year! To this, one would have to add the approximately 1,200 people shot dead by law enforcement officers in the same year.33 The total 9,324 killed by firearms in one year is therefore higher than the estimated 9,100 people killed during the almost three years of the Ukrainian conflict.34 Although criminal syndicates prefer to remain politically in the background, they control today large territories and populations, mostly in poor rural areas and in the inner cities and shantytowns of major cities. They now operate virtually all over the world and increasingly move to control city councils and even regional governments in Asia, Africa, Europe, and, above all, Latin America. – Rebel groups, like the Lord’s Resistance Army (1987-present) in Uganda, mostly aim at local control and pillage and have, except for some confusing political concepts, no overriding political aims. Rebel groups, like criminal gangs, rely mostly on the absence of any government presence to exploit local populations,35 but they do not try to change any government. The danger of rebel groups is that they form close-knit gangs of young men – and sometimes also women – who control and terrorize local neighborhoods out of desperation for their own survival – mostly 30 UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Global Study on Homicide. 31 These estimates are made by Syrian opposition forces; they are probably inflated. 32 FBI, “Firearms Death Statistics.” 33 There are no national statistics of the number of people shot by the police in the United States. This is a number given by the FBI director in an interview. 34 UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine.” 35 This can have major consequences. The New York Times carried an article on 13 November 2016 about hundreds of thousand people fleeing from the violence of criminal gangs in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. They are refugees fleeing not political persecution but gang violence.

72 

On Building Peace

in poorer countries. They will have a lot in common with local criminal gangs. Frequent drug taking can make them unpredictable and excessively violent. They can ruin entire countries, as we have seen not only in Uganda but also in Sierra Leone with the Revolutionary United Front (1991-2003), in Liberia with the LURD army36 (1999-2003) or in the Congo with the M23 rebel forces (2012-2013). We must expect similar local rebel groups to emerge. – Secessionist movements, like the Tamil Tigers (1976-2009), Kurdish PKK (1978-present). or the Ukrainian separatists, want to take control over parts of the country for which they demand independence. Their main aim is not to topple a central government. Secessionist movements though threaten the territorial integrity of countries, and that often massively. There may be up to 110 countries (or over 60% of UN member states) in all five continents in which separatist movements are active.37 Not all secessionist movements are violent, but many – if not most – resort to an armed struggle. Among belligerent nonstate actors, secessionist movements are the most likely to draw international support for or international condemnation against their aims. The recent examples of the Balkans, the Sudan, and the Ukraine are reminders of how quickly secessionist conflicts can turn international. – Ideologically motivated organizations, mostly procommunist movements like the Maoist Communist Party of Nepal or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), want to replace not only the government but take over control and institute a very different social, economic, and political governance system. The Communist Party of Nepal had concluded a peace agreement with the government in 2006 and FARC with the Colombian in 2016, indicating a more general decline of such politically motivated and/or procommunist nonstate actors around the world, once a major threat. However, they remain of interest as they might present experiences of how to deal with armed nonstate actors in general. – Extremist Islamist groups such the Taliban, al-Shabaab, al-Qaida and its affiliates, Islamic State and its affiliates and Boko Haram, to name only the most important, are today the most powerful, visible, and 36 LURD stands for “Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy.” Their uplifting name does not prevent them from committing some of the worst human rights abuses. 37 The detailed lists of separatist monuments around the world can be found in Wikipedia and the World Public Library. I have not found any academic institution that monitors regularly separation movements and produces reliable statistics.

The Failing of the Nation-State



73

reported-about armed nonstate actors. They want to replace national governments and establish in its place an Islamic state based on Sharia law. Initially organized to commit terrorist actions against Western targets, they now control wide territories and populations that include large parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, the Egyptian Sinai, Libya, Algeria, Chad, Niger, Mali, and Nigeria. Should the Afghan army collapse, this could bring most, if not all, of Afghanistan again under the control of Taliban forces and their associates. In Pakistan, they gain influence in a country with nuclear weapons. If only a few Pakistani army officers switch their loyalty from the Pakistani government to Islamist groups, the conflict with belligerent nonstate actors could suddenly reach far more dangerous levels.38 Should Afghanistan fall back to the Taliban and large parts of Pakistan come under pro-Taliban control, this could bring an interconnected area with a surface larger than Europe and a combined population of 200 to 300 million under the control of extremist nonstate actors. It would cover an area stretching from the Hindu Kush, through Mesopotamia and the Arabian deserts, into much of the heart of Africa. Extremist Islamists in Afghanistan now also threaten Central Asia and those in Mali and Somalia the rest of Africa. Worse, Islamic State is expanding and, in reaching Libya, it has now arrived at the gates of Europe. I fear that the present US-led fight against IS would not change this. If anything, it might further fuel resentment among the Moslem populations around the world and mobilize new supporters – especially among the youth.

One of the most striking features of belligerent nonstate actors is their extraordinary resilience – even when fought by overwhelming military forces. The Colombian FARC, for example, maintained its control over large parts of the country for the last 52 years. They could not be militarily defeated, despite – some would say because – of extensive US military support. It is a negotiated peace agreement that now provides the best chance for this armed conflict, that may have cost the lives of over 250,000 people, to 38 How close we may be to such a scenario became clear when in Rawalpindi in February 2016 a huge crowd of men (exclusively only men) came to honor the body of a Pakistani security guard who had been tried and hanged for killing the governor of Punjab. A year earlier, the guard had gunned him down in protest because the governor had defended a Christian girl accused of insulting the Koran. Rawalpindi is the headquarters of the Pakistani army and many of the men who came out in support of the guard must have been army officers or brothers and sons of army officers.

74 

On Building Peace

finally be solved. In the Philippines, the New People’s Army, a Maoist group has been fighting the country’s regular army for the last 47 years with no end in sight. In Nepal, the conflict with the Maoist Communist Party has lasted for over 20 years without having been militarily beaten. Again, it is a peace agreement that ended this conflict and placed them prominently in today’s government. Even Boko Haram, which controls large parts of Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad, seems to maintain its grip despite coordinated operations by the military of those three countries, again with logistical support from the outside. The recent election of Muhammadu Buhari, an experienced and well-reputed general, as Nigeria’s president appears to have dented Boko Haram’s powers and control of territory; however, it has not defeated them. In Mali, the French military intervention saved the country’s capital Bamako from being overrun by an alliance of Islamist and Touareg fighters, but neither the French nor UN peacekeepers are able to dislodge them from the northern parts of the country. Nonstate actors appear to reemerge, even after they appear to be beaten. In 2001, it was taken as a certainty that US-led forces had comprehensively defeated the Taliban in the mountains of Afghanistan. However, they reemerged four years later and could not be defeated despite massive foreign military campaigns. Today, sixteen years later, the Taliban controls large parts of the country and are poised to take control of Kabul once the last US troops leave Afghanistan. Will we see something similar happening with Islamic State? We continuously get news of them being about to be beaten, but who can prevent them from reemerging when the military storm is over? Other forms of belligerent nonstate actors also show great resilience, often against overwhelming forces. Secessionist movements are rarely beatable. An exception is the Tamil Tigers who were violently defeated by Sri Lankan government forces in 2009 after an intensive civil war that lasted for 26 years. Other secessionist movements end with the independence of parts of a country such as in Kosovo, Eritrea, and South Sudan. But would this bring an end to the conflict? Even rebel groups without a cause appear to have great standing powers. In Sierra Leone, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a brutal rebel group, lasted eleven years and it was a peace agreement, not a military defeat, that shattered the organization. Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army has operated in many countries for almost 30 years and, despite international military efforts, is not yet completely beaten. Transnational crime syndicates appear to be “blessed” with eternal life. Even if one such group is destroyed, it tends to emerge in a different disguise.

The Failing of the Nation-State

75

Nowadays, many belligerent nonstate actors are well entrenched and organized. They raise taxes and canvass other financial resources. They behave increasingly like statelike organizations by providing local security and justice39 as well as various forms of social services. Most of these nonstate actors rely on intimidation, but they can also have considerable local support. This applies in particular to secessionist movements. They are often seen by a local population as less corrupt, less distant, and less aloof compared to their respective governments. Otherwise, they could not have survived. For example, the Taliban faced at times about 400,000 modern-equipped foreign and local military forces. 40 They could never have survived this without being supported by large parts of the Pashtun populations and possibly increasingly also by other ethnic groups. 41 Something similar appears to happen in parts of Syria and Iraq where IS receives support from local Sunni Arab communities. With Kurdish and Shiite-dominated forces entering their traditional homelands and committing human rights abuses, this support may only increase. Latest pictures of Boko Haram showing local villagers waving black flags would indicate local support. Not all of this may have been staged. 42 Even crime syndicates can count on a level of local support, especially among the young in shantytowns. They provide “jobs,” income, security and some form of justice. Much to the advantage of nonstate actors, the local population often fears national armed forces and the secret police even more than them. Much of the support for belligerent nonstate actors is a direct consequence of failing and corrupt governments, and of an irresponsible political and economic elite that has lost the confidence of their citizens. The Western 39 The New York Times, 1 February 2015, reported that an increasing number of Afghans, disgusted by the corruption and inefficiency of regular courts, not only turn to their traditional Shura system to seek justice but increasingly also to Taliban-administered courts – a significant defeat for Western civilian aid efforts. 40 At the peak of NATO’s presence in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012, ISAF counted 140,000 soldiers plus an estimated 70,000 paramilitary staff from private security companies. In addition, there were almost 300,000 Afghan forces (the Afghan army and the various Afghan polices forces accounted – officially at least – for 150,000 men and women each). Furthermore, there now are increasing numbers of militia forces, secret police, and other “private” security units. NATO will leave behind an Afghanistan consisting of a highly armed population. Whether this will help preserve Afghan peace is questionable. 41 Instead of beating the Taliban, Western forces may have provoked a shift in local support toward IS-associated groups and contributed to a further radicalization of Afghan society. 42 This may be typical examples of the West deceiving itself. Our media is so occupied to tell us how despicable these nonstate actors are that we are unable to see anything else – at our own peril.

76 

On Building Peace

interventions and the failure to understand local societies have further contributed to the fueling and strengthening of the support to belligerent nonstate actors. There would have probably never been any Taliban without years of first Soviet, and later NATO, interference in Afghan society. Moreover, there would probably also never have been something like IS without thirteen years of devastating Western sanctions and ten years of a violent Western military occupation that destroyed the social fabric in Iraq and virtually all forms of state organization. The same is now happening to Syria. Foreign military interventions kill and commit human rights abuses. They are often operating with great cultural insensibilities43 and seen as supporting rival ethnic and/or religious groups. Without realizing, they may carry the stigma of atrocities committed years before. 44 More than any other intrastate conflict, the military interventions in Iraq and Syria have become a sad symbol of “signal failures’45 of the international community to solve such types of conflicts. In fact, they have all made a bad situation worse and are responsible for the ongoing carnage – not only in Aleppo! The US-led military campaign over Iraq and Syria against Islamic State and other extreme Islamist groups such as al-Nusra Front (now renamed alFateh Shams) over Iraq and Syria is exposing the misery of foreign military interventions in intrastate armed conflicts. The 2014 US-formed 65-member alliance has long broken apart with regional powers pursuing separate interests. What’s more, with Russia going to war on the side of Assad, the situation appears increasingly desperate. Overlapping conflicts between Russia and the United States, between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and between Turkey and the Kurds make future solutions even less likely. There are no clear battle lines and constantly shifting alliances. Nobody can say what winning these wars would look like. More than two years after the US-led air campaign began, it is not obvious whether organizations such as IS and al-Nusra/al-Fateh Shams46 can be 43 Scott Smith, a former UN colleague and now fellow at the US Institute of Peace, had interviewed former Afghan President Karzai in Kabul in 2015. Karzai claimed that the many mistakes Americans have made in Afghanistan were due to their, in his words, “clumsiness” rather than any hidden conspiracy. 44 See also Box 2.3. 45 The expression “signal failure” was coined by the British to describe their total defeat in the hands of the Afghans in 1842 in the First Afghan British War. It is said that only one officer had survived this British invasion. 46 There are many more such radicalized – and brutalized – armed groups and militias on all sides in Iraq and Syria. There are reports of up to a hundred separately armed groups operating in Syria alone.

The Failing of the Nation-State

77

beaten on the battlefield. If the experience with the Taliban is anything to go by, these religiously driven groups tend to survive intensive bombing and, despite temporary setbacks, reemerge at a later stage. While all focus is nowadays on the role of belligerent nonstate actors, one must not forget that there are also increasingly powerful civilian nonstate actors that nibble away on nation-states. These include global religious and humanitarian organizations, international NGOs, global sports associations and new international corporations. They increasingly create their own organizational and legal frameworks outside of national jurisdictions, and run extensive and well-financed nets of lobbyists and legal firms to protect them from unwanted government interference. The tremendous increase in the global economic and financial powers of transnational corporations, hedge funds and other financial institutions increasingly challenge the authority of nation-states. Their financial powers and outreach increasingly marginalize even the most powerful nationstates and, with it, the possibility for citizens to decide their own futures. Individual market decisions could increasingly replace general elections in determining future politics and executive boards of large corporations could marginalize national governments. Nation-states that do not go along are increasingly threatened with the withdrawal of financial resources and investments. In fact, nation-states are already giving up national sovereignty to transnational corporations. With the increase of arbitration courts outside of any national jurisdiction, international companies with their wealth of lobbyists and lawyers, can now sue nation-states. Without taking any responsibility for the local communities, 47 they can make these local communities pay for allegedly hindering their businesses. 48 In the long run, such developments may be a more worrying aspect for global peace and democracy then the more belligerent nonstate actors. But this is not the subject of this book.

47 The possibility of tax evasion means that they do not pay their contributions to those countries that can now be sued for millions of dollars. Any defeat in such arbitration courts would have to be paid by local citizens. 48 Arbitration courts are nothing new in international business. However, the TTIP agreement would institutionalize this practice at a much larger scale and give the abdication of national sovereignty to international companies a seal of official approval.

78 

2.3

On Building Peace

The Neglected Dual Character of Nation-States49

The rise in and nature of intrastate armed conflicts is a reminder of the dual character of countries: they are both state and nation. Both are interdependent but are, at the same time, also distinct. The dual character of countries is an important concept that can help us understand and find solution for intrastate armed conflicts. The “state” describes the tangible side of countries’ organizations: the government, national and local institutions, the judiciary, the parliament, the security forces, but also autonomous institutions such as elections commissions or human rights commissions, to name only a few. The state would comprise national laws and the mechanisms to enforce them. The “nation” refers to the more elusive side of a country: national identity, the feeling of belonging together,50 and national solidarity.51 A nation is formed by a common historical inheritance, by common values, by the ability of its people to understand each other. Religion, culture, but also a common language are important ingredients in forming national identities.52 Today, national identities rarely have anything to do with ethnic identities. No state could function without both aspects coming together. On the one hand, without a national identity, common values and a common language,53 state institutions lack their legitimacy. On the other hand, state institutions, to be credible, must be built on national identities. One could say that the state is the nation’s body while the nation is the state’s 49 The use of the term “nation-state” could be irritating. It has nothing to do with nationalism, but I could not find any better term. See also Annex IV. 50 Nationality and the feeling of belonging together is still strong in individual countries of Europe – even 60 years after European integration. This could be witnessed during the enthronement of Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands in 2003. On that day, there was an outpouring of national emotion in the street of Amsterdam; the country was covered in orange, the color associated with their royal household, and in red, white, and blue, the colors of their national flag. There were no EU, NATO, or UN flags. How can one expect to build a functioning suprastate such as the European Union if one ignores the importance of such common identities and feelings? 51 This must not be confused with ethnicity. People from different ethnicities can live together, but to avoid conflicts they need a national identity, share basic common values, and be able to understand each other through a common language. 52 Today’s nation-states are mostly a mix of ethnicities that over time have formed a common identity. Despite this, many intrastate conflicts are still along ethnic or tribal lines. 53 This is not to say that all citizens of the nation-state have the same mother tongue, but the citizens of a nation-state must have a common language through which they can communicate. They must be able to understand each other – in more than one way!

The Failing of the Nation-State

79

soul. Without understanding this dual nation-state character one cannot design and peruse any resolution of intrastate conflicts. Where the nation and the state aspects are in harmony, there will be a stable and peaceful nation-state. However, if they fall apart, the country is destined to slip into an intrastate conflict. Virtually all of today’s intrastate armed conflicts appear to erupt when divided national loyalties and years of bad governance reinforce each other54 in a downward spiral that end in violent clashes. Nation-states tend not to collapse if only one aspect fails. Scotland seeks its independence through peaceful democratic process while the East Ukraine has erupted in a civil war. In both case, national identities are divided but the United Kingdom has strong state institutions while the Ukraine is plagued by dysfunctional and corrupt governments. There are many examples in which divided national identities and years of bad corrupt governance have led to intrastate armed conflicts. Divisions among Iraq’s three main communities, Arab Shiites, Arab Sunnis, and Kurds, have eroded any Iraqi national identity. This was reinforced by inept, corrupt, and violent national governments that have served only small elites of one or the other community. Years of misguided occupation has done the rest. In Syria, something very similar is happening. In both cases, the lack of common identities and loss in the credibility of common state institutions have deteriorated to a point where it may no longer be possible to rebuild the two nation-states. The Sudan was never able to properly manage its huge country, creating the space for a different national identity in the South to seek its independence after a prolonged civil war. Bad partisan national governments in Rwanda and Burundi fueled Hutu-Tutsi divisions and vice versa. In Kosovo, years of bad Serbian-dominated governance have reinforced Kosovar Albanians’ rejection of being part of a Serbian nation-state. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Dayton Agreement tried to force communities with different identities into a common state that will never function properly. In Libya, years of a Qaddafi dictatorship have simply suppressed separate tribal and community identities. Now, the confidence in common state institutions has eroded to a point that the country has fallen to anarchy. 54 To my knowledge, the argument of the dual character of nation-states has never been developed anywhere else and such an idea may raise consternations among some academics. I am not aware of any scientific study that has analyzed the interrelationship between the state and the nation that would support the hypothesis made in this book that intrastate armed conflicts are driven by the dual problem of dysfunctional corrupt governance and divided national loyalties. But based on my experiences and observations, I consider such a distinction important to get to grips with failing nation-states and intrastate armed conflicts.

80 

On Building Peace

The Ukraine is also an example of a downward nation-state spiral. A former border region among Europe’s empires, it has developed divided loyalties between originally Catholic Western Ukrainians and originally Orthodox Eastern Ukrainians. Since its independence in 1992, various corrupt and parasite governments have only deepened those divisions and foreign meddling made all of this much worse. There are many more examples, such as in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia, Moldova, Libya, and Yemen in which belligerent nonstate actors fed on dysfunctional state institutions and divided national identities. The nation-state duality may explain why foreign military interventions tend to make local problems worse. All foreign interventions will quickly fall between the cracks of divided national identities and be drawn into the problems of bad governance. They end up being partisan, supporting one side against the other. They, hence, deepen already existing divisions. The deepening of divisions is further compounded by failed foreign efforts to build an effective and transparent local administration. They tend to pour millions of dollars into local environments of bad governance and lack of absorption capacities. This further feeds corruption from which the side that is supported unduly benefits. There are many examples of such failures of foreign intervention, as in Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and now the Ukraine. Today, when rebuilding nation-states, its “nation” side is mostly ignored. The reason for this may be our post-Cold War conviction that liberal democracy fits all countries irrespective of cultural, historical, and religious difference, and that peace is a political system. The state would need functioning institutions that ensure individual liberties, provide for regular elections, build a legal system, and pursue free market policies. Liberal democracy would be win-win solutions for everyone. In such an approach, there is no place for different national identities. But nation-states cannot be reduced, as is often done in the peacebuilding approach, to being simply efficient service providers where citizens pay taxes and get in return security, a legal system, schools, hospitals and roads. The different communities that form part of a nation-state would also have to “agree” on if and how they want to live together. There must be, despite all ethnic and religious diversity, some form of a common national identity. And there must be some basic agreement among all communities about common values on which the common state and its institutions can be built. The “nation” side in intrastate armed conflict is, therefore, key to finding solutions. Ignoring it may ultimately derail all peace efforts.

The Failing of the Nation-State

81

The more elusive aspect of “a nation” seems to not fit today’s social sciences worshipping of quantitative approaches.55 To speak of divided national loyalties is easily decried as being rooted in outmoded ethnic, religious or cultural behavior that would over time disappear and be replaced by free individuals – free of any traditional constraints – who all pursue their own happiness in a global free market economy. This, however, is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. The use of the term “nation-state” may be irritating to many. Especially in Europe, the use of the term revives memories of the nationalism that had been such a destructive force in the not-too-distant past. But here it is not used to make any suggestion that one nation is above any other; in fact, it is not used at all to describe any sort of common national ethnicity. People of many ethnicities can live together perfectly well, but they still need something in common, something that brings them together, something that allows them to agree on common laws and common institutions, and something that allows them to mutually support each other. The term “nation” is not so antagonistic for everybody. In the United States, it is mostly used to describe states. While in Europe we tend to speak of state building, in the United States one is more likely to speak of nation building.56 And, of course, the term “nation” is most prominent in United Nations, even if its use here is a misunderstanding.57 Box 2.1 Do Intrastate Conflicts Come in Waves? Freed from the constraints of Cold War confrontation, the number and intensity of intrastate armed conflicts around the world began to intensify. They were no longer only proxy wars in an East-West competition for influence. They were

55 This applies also to most academic work. Even in his 2004 book State-Building, Fukuyama fails to make a clear distinction between state and nation; he appears to use both terms interchangeably. But he concentrates almost exclusively on state building, that is to say, on the organizational and institutional side of reerecting nation-states. 56 The reason for this distinction could be that, for the United States, the act of forming a new nation had gone hand in hand with creating the necessary state institutions, while in Europe nations existed long before the modern states and its institutions. 57 Confusion over the use of the terms “nation” and “state” dominated the naming the United Nations. In 1941, upon the United States’ entry into WWII, Roosevelt wanted to replace an earlier term used for the military anti-Axis alliance of “Associated Powers” with a more appealing name. He came up with the term “United Nations” to which Churchill apparently agreed while taking a hot bath in the White House. The new organization should more accurately have been called “United States” as it is essentially an association of member states and their governments. But, of course, this term had already been taken; hence United Nations.

82 

On Building Peace

now primarily about their respective intrastate contradictions. Although there are no scientific criteria for this, when looking at the number and intensity of intrastate armed conflicts over the years, one can make out certain peaks. Since the end of the Cold War, one can probably make out three to four waves of such post-Cold War intrastate armed conflicts. A first wave began in 1989, when in Namibia, Mozambique, and East Timor the fight for their independence became increasingly a fight among competing internal forces. In the same year, the first of two civil wars in Liberia broke out: an internal conflict between a weak government with limited legitimacy and two extremely aggressive and violent nonstate actors. In 1991, Somalia collapsed and the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone began while the violent breakup of Yugoslavia led to a series of separate internal wars. In 1992, Bosnia’s civil war reached the headlines as did the second phase of Angola’s civil war. In 1994, Rwanda had descended into a civil war that, despite (or because of ) the 1994 Arusha Peace Agreement, led to the terrible genocide that same year. There was also Burundi’s civil war (1993-2005) and the war between the government and a Maoist opposition in Nepal (1996-2006). Finally, largely abandoned by their former Eastern and Western patrons, the civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, Angola, and Afghanistan showed no sign of ending. A second wave of intrastate armed conflicts began in 1999 when anti-independence forces took control over East Timor and armed conflict broke out in the Central African Republic in 2001. Sudan became a matter of great concern with the intensification of its war with the Southern provinces over independence that had started in 1983, and the civil war in its Darfur province that had begun in 2003. In 1996, the Congo, once again, fell back into chaos, which triggered a series of internal wars. Even the formerly prosperous Cote d’Ivoire descended into civil war in 1994 that lasted until 2011. The US-led interventions to remove the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001 and Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003 triggered only new rounds of intrastate violence that continue today. A third wave of intrastate conflicts could be considered the Arab Spring in 2010/2011 with a mix of peaceful and violent uprisings against corrupt regimes in Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and Egypt. Unfortunately, with the only exception of Tunisia,58 these intrastate conflicts have not led to the emergence of liberal democracy. Quite to the contrary, they have resulted in military coups,

58 Even this success remains fragile. According to a count by the New York Times, the largest numbers of foreign combatants that have joint IS in Iraq and Syria are Tunisians. One day might they haunt their country?

The Failing of the Nation-State

83

brutal suppressions, and civil wars. Overall, they have increased the influence of Islamic extremist forces. A fourth wave of intrastate armed conflicts maybe the conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and the Ukraine. The worrying aspect of these intrastate conflicts is that they have turned into competitions over spheres of influence among global and regional powers. The internationalization of intrastate armed conflicts existed before, but, as in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq earlier, they have not risked confrontations among the external backers of conflict parties. This may also be the result of the decline in the Western-dominated post-Cold War peace order. While in the Kosovo conflict unilateral Western interventions may have provoked some protests, they are now increasingly objected to by force. This makes this fourth wave of intrastate armed conflicts so dangerous; they could bring us back to a world of interstate wars. If anything, this “fourth” wave would suggest that responses to failed states would need a collective, and no longer a unilateral, Western approach.

Box 2.2 Afghanistan’s Unsuccessful Liberators Afghanistan,59 more than any other country, has been at the receiving end of repeated attempts by foreign powers to modernize it through military force. In December 1979, it was Soviet tanks that wanted to prop up a procommunist government and turn Afghanistan into a communist state. In October 2001, it was US fighter planes that helped install a pro-Western government in Kabul in the hopes of turning Afghanistan into a liberal democracy. Both interventions had startlingly similar objectives: while the Soviet Union wanted to eliminate the threat posed by mujahedeen forces, NATO wanted to eliminate Taliban forces. While the Soviet Union wanted to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a staging point for anti-Soviet activities, NATO wanted to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for al-Qaida terrorists from where they could plan attacks on the West. Both wanted to turn Afghanistan into a modern, stable, and peaceful country in their own image. Both interventions relied heavily on the assumptions that traditional Afghan peasant fighters could be quickly overcome with modern military hardware and superior firepower. Both were convinced that they would be received as liberators. And both were fundamentally wrong. Both were failed military interventions in a fragile nation-state with the hopes of bringing their respective peace to the country. Both communism and liberal democracy were equally foreign to Afghan societies; in the eyes of most Afghans 59 See Von der Schulenburg, “Afghanistan’s Peace in a Glasshouse.”

84 

On Building Peace

both were, in fact, “Western” concepts. While their foreign “saviors” promised to bring a better life and to lift their traditional society into the modern world, they jointly brought almost 40 years of continued warfare and unspeakable misery to generations of Afghans. As a result, both left behind a country devastated and in great turmoil – something they had actually come to prevent. In December 2014, NATO, like the Soviet Union 25 years earlier, withdrew most of its troops from Afghanistan without having achieved victory. The residual force left in Afghanistan will not turn the situation around. The Soviet Union had collapsed only two and a half years after its withdrawal. Although the West will not collapse over the Afghan debacle, NATO’s withdrawal will, nonetheless, have a huge impact. With this, the West has lost influence in a large geopolitically important region of Central Asia. It will now be up to China, Russia, Iran, and, to a lesser degree, to India, Pakistan, and the Central Asian republics to deal with the fallout – all non-Western countries. It will leave a region in chaos that may come to haunt the West. The original aim of the United States and NATO to eliminate all safe havens for terrorists has backfired. Today, entire regions stretching from the Hindu Kush over the Arab deserts deep into Africa are controlled by extremist Islamist forces. One could argue the War in Afghanistan has now arrived at the Mediterranean shores in Libya and, with it, the doorsteps of Europe and NATO. NATO, the most formidable military alliance in the world, was unable to beat the Taliban and associated armed groups of mostly illiterate Afghans in sandals who receive hardly any outside support, have few financial resources, and were armed with rudimentary weapons. The Western military intervention (it became a NATO-led intervention only in 2003) consisted of armed forces from 47 of the richest and most advanced countries in the world, had at its peak about 200,000 foreign military and private security forces or about twice the number of Soviet forces, and has now stayed sixteen years (soon, twice as long as Soviet forces). They not only had the most modern military weapons and intelligence apparatus at their disposal, but also almost unlimited financial resources. So, what had gone wrong? Afghanistan is definitely not an example for other international interventions into a failed state. But Afghanistan reveals what may be called the seven deadly sins of foreign intervention: 1 Peace cannot be imposed with military force. In the fight against locally entrenched belligerent nonstate actors such as the Taliban, modern military is rather impotent. Military superiority that is measured in nuclear weapons, stealth bombers, cruise missiles, submarines, aircraft carriers, and drones is of little value to the fight against determined nonstate actors. In the future,

The Failing of the Nation-State

85

peacebuilding would hence have to rely increasingly on nonmilitary solutions. 2 Peacebuilding activities cannot be implemented by military personnel. In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, the dominance of Western military forces created a situation in which it increasingly subsumed peacebuilding activities. ISAF (NATO)-led Regional Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) are an expression of this. This was an intended development but was part of the US, and by extension the NATO, counterinsurgency strategy; the 2008 US counterinsurgency manual (COIN) reads in large part like a peacebuilding manual. 3 Peace cannot be bought with money. The real costs of sixteen years of Western intervention in Afghanistan will probably never be known. An often-repeated figure is one trillion dollars, of which 80% was spent on military and security and about 20% on development, humanitarian, and reconstruction activities. Whatever the real amounts may be, it would imply that the total foreign assistance to Afghanistan during the sixteen years exceeded Afghanistan’s accumulated GDP (which itself is already inflated due to the inflow of foreign money) in the same period by about five times. No wonder this facilitated unsustainable solutions, corruption, and profiteers. 4 Peace cannot be achieved through technical assistance. Peacebuilding is primarily a political process and not a technical problem. This was largely ignored by hundreds, if not thousands, of international experts that were dispatched in Afghanistan. Technical assistance became a cacophony of different advice from an incoherent aid community isolated in their “aid land” with protected living quarters, bodyguards, Toyota land cruisers, special restaurants, and bars. 5 Peace cannot be secured by “buying” nationals. The West tends to recruit large numbers of Afghan local talent into their own programs, taking them away from working for the national Afghan government they pretend to support.60 The British discovered that one can rent but not buy an Afghan. The policy of attracting expatriate Afghan nationals with high international remunerations (including clandestine payments into foreign accounts) to return to Afghanistan and take up leading positions in government has mostly backfired.61 Expatriate Afghan technocrats are generally mistrusted by their compatriots

60 Six months into the occupation of Afghanistan, it was estimated that about 55,000 Afghans had found jobs with foreign employers, often below their actual educational levels. Because of the difference in pay, it would be beneficial for an Afghan doctor to take a job as a cook in a foreign household. Refer to Von der Schulenburg, “Afghanistan’s Peace in a Glasshouse.” 61 The British had invaded Afghanistan three times, in 1839, 1878, and 1919. Each time they had to withdraw without achieving their aims.

86 

On Building Peace

and their survival depends on their foreign backers. This also applies to expatriate presidents. 6 Peace cannot be built by ostracizing opposition groups. From the very beginning, the Taliban was regarded as the enemy, often decried as a group of backward terrorists supported by a vengeful covert branch of Pakistan’s military intelligence. Sixteen years of trying to eliminate it should teach us a different lesson. By isolating the Taliban, we also ignored the fact that it represented much of local resentment and bitterness, in particular among Afghanistan’s Pashtu population. This raises one of the most important challenges for peacebuilding: how to engage with belligerent nonstate actors and how to deal with often large sections of the population that reject being “freed” by an external intervention. 7 Peace must not rely on raising unrealistic expectations. The intervention of Afghanistan created huge expectations among Afghans that the West could later not fulfill. The Tokyo Donor Conference for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan in January 2002, a month after the swearing in of the new interim Afghan government, amounted to international pledges of close to US$5 billion; future donor conferences would even pledge greater amounts. For most Afghans who earn not more than a few dollars a month, assistance in the tens of billions of dollars must have been equal to promising paradise. But instead, much of it went into international salaries, foreign contractors, and white land cruisers, and enriched a local predatory class. High expectations turned into frustration and frustration fed into the insurgency. In Afghanistan, it took four years for this to happen, in Iraq only two. One reason for the failures in Afghanistan was too much of almost everything: too much military, too much money, too many experts, too many aid agencies, too many NGOs, too many think tanks, and too many unrealistic expectations. But above all, there was too much ideology and too much acting from a point of view of assumed superiority. In short, there was too much of a post-Cold War winner’s arrogance. As a result, the West virtually suffocated Afghan society, killed local initiatives, hurt Afghan dignity, and ultimately undermined its chances for success. Lakhdar Brahimi’s calls in 2002 for a “light footprint”62 were ridiculed at the time. Instead, the international community chose to come with heavy boots and white four-wheel-drive vehicles, something they would later regret and would make their failure only more painful. Peace is not a system.

62 See also the author’s unpublished paper “Lighter Footprint for Greater Impact: A Concept for UNAMA,” written in December 2001 for the then SRSG Brahimi.

The Failing of the Nation-State

87

Box 2.3 Iraq and the Storming of a Country under Siege Waiting to board a US military C-130 aircraft at the Amman air force base in February 2005 to take me to Baghdad, I was struck by the large number of American civilians who were heading in the same direction. At the end of 2004, President George W. Bush had called on American ministries and institutions to send their experts to help rebuild Iraq. Most of those of those who followed Bush’s call, had, however, not the slightest ideas about the country they were about to enter nor what was expected of them. So many clung to the only successful examples of what President Bush called “nation building”: the turning of Germany and Japan into functioning liberal democracies following their defeats in WWII. While waiting for the flight, many of these civilian experts read therefore books about the German and Japanese post-WWII experiences. This explains why so many of the initial policies of the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) were carbon copies of Allied policies implemented in Germany between 1945 and 1947. Similarly, the 2003 US invasion code-named Operation Iraqi Freedom was understood to have come to liberate Iraqis from a dictatorship and bring them freedom and democracy. In parallel to what was done in Nazi Germany, all political organizations of the Baath regime were forbidden and all army and security forces disbanded. In copying the ideas of the Nuremberg trials, the most influential political, military, and security leaders of the Baath regime who had not been killed, were arrested and brought before an Iraq Special Tribunal. To prove that the time of the Baath regime was over, these trials were shown on television as well as the hanging of Saddam Hussein. A deck of cards was even used to identify the 52 most prominent Baath party leaders.63 Yet, the reception of those gallant “liberators” turned out very differently than hoped for. Instead of welcoming the American-led invasion, many Iraqis went on a rampage to loot government buildings, museums, public industries and the houses of former officials for weeks. They took anything they could be remove and, in the aftermath, many of these pillaged places looked like they had been struck by aerial bombing. This strange and unexpected behavior can only be explained by the fact that the Americans had entered a country that had been under devastating sanctions for thirteen years64 that had many trappings of sieges of towns and cities in the Middle Ages. The siege of Iraq and its society had lasted 63 The US army, in a macabre public relations stand, issued playing cards with the 52 pictures of the most wanted members of the Saddam government and its security apparatus with Saddam as the Ace of Pique, one of his sons as the Ace of Clubs, etc. This deck of cards was also depicted on large posters throughout Iraqi towns. When one of these men was apprehended, his picture was crossed out. 64 The UN sanction on Iraq must have been the most comprehensive and hence most devastating sanction every implemented on another country. It amounted to a type of siege. See Box 2.2.

88 

On Building Peace

thirteen years and was “home” to the most draconic sanctions ever imposed on any country, sanctions that not only destroyed lives, families, but Iraqi society. Iraqis behaved not much differently than citizens of towns that had endured years of siege. The UN sanctions hit in particular ordinary Iraqi citizen, with families enduring enormous hardships, experiencing death, illnesses and hunger. They suffered from the lack of almost anything from water to sanitation, from health services to food. UNICEF estimated that the thirteen years of sanctions had cost the lives of over half a million children – the most vulnerable under a siege. This may also explain why nation building in Iraq has failed so miserably. Most political analysts tend to argue that the failure was the result of the massive de-Baathification, the disbanding of most Iraqi state institutions and dissolution of all security organizations including that of the Iraqi army. I doubt this. By the time of the US invasion, the powers of the Baath party, its armed forces and its institutions had largely disintegrated and the government had lost control over large parts of the country. The sanctions had successively eroded not only state authority but also any remaining national identity. Iraqi nationality was something relatively new for a country forced together only by its former mandate power, the United Kingdom. Now, under the harsh conditions of sanctions, people could no longer expect much from any state institution. Instead they turned increasingly to their families, their tribal brothers, and to their coreligionists for protection and support. These informal power relationships began to replace state authority and tribal and religious loyalties replaced national identity. Under cover of no-fly zones over the northern and southern parts of Iraq new power structures emerged, most importantly the Kurdistan state in northern Iraq. When the American forces entered Baghdad and proclaimed their aim to “nation-build” Iraq, the country had long disintegrated as a nation into Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shiite Arab components. Within each of these three main blocks were even more divisions in which religious and tribal loyalties would replace national loyalties. The Baath ideology and regime that had forced some form of national unity by suppressing religious and tribal identities had long ceased to exist. Now, the main issues among increasingly hostile communities were about who would control Kirkuk, who Mosul and, even more importantly, who would control Baghdad, Basra, or the main oil and gas fields of the country. This may also be why a national army had no chance in comparison with Kurdish Peshmerga, Sunni Islamist fighters, or Shiite militia forces. This is a conflict that continues to this day and that will, in all likelihood, also determine the outcome of the latest round of intrastate armed conflicts with the so-called Caliphate. Even if it would be possible to defeat the forces of the Caliphate, it would be a much longer task of resurrecting Iraq – if this will ever be possible.

3

The Marginalization of the United Nations

In 1989, it had all begun so promisingly for the United Nations. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the days of an organization being paralyzed by an all-overpowering East-West conflict appeared finally over. All signs were now on international cooperation and the United Nations was seen as the embodiment of this. There was hardly any important politician at that time who would not refer to the United Nations. From Bush Sr. to Gorbachev, from Mitterrand to Thatcher, and from Kohl to Toshiki Kaifu; all spoke of the hope that the United Nations could now do what it had originally been created for in 1945: preserve global peace and security. The opinions of the head of governments such as those of China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, South Africa, Nigeria, Mexico, Argentina, or Brazil, not to speak of smaller countries, did not count – at least not then. While politicians in the West considered the end of the Cold War a victory for liberal democracy, most of these countries were still deeply subjugated by various forms of socialist or authoritarian government systems; South Africa, because of its apartheid system, was even suspended from the United Nations. After the East-West conflict had ended in so surprisingly peaceful a manner, both sides felt it was now time to solve the many remaining problems of war and peace in the newly found spirit of cooperation. Compared to the East-West conflicts in which huge military alliances with stocks of nuclear weapons faced each other, solving these more localized conflicts seemed to be relatively easy to achieve. Nowhere was this newly found cooperation more evident than in the revived decision-making role of the UN Security Council. Having been blocked by mostly Soviet and United States vetoes for 42 years, the Security Council suddenly sprung back into action and made decisions that had previously not been possible. But this atmosphere of cooperation within the United Nations was not to last. By the end of 1991, the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union had dissolved and many of the formerly communist Central and Eastern European countries had begun to integrate into the West by joining the European Union and NATO. What had begun as East-West cooperation had now turned into a comprehensive victory for the West. There was no longer any other global or regional power that could challenge the Western economic and military

90 

On Building Peace

powers. And there was no longer any ideological system that could be an attractive alternative to the Western model of liberal democracy. The end of the Cold War had produced a winner’s peace. From then on it would be the West, and here in particular the United States as the only remaining superpower, that would dominate international relations. Cooperation and, with it, collective security arrangements were off the books. The two successive Iraq Wars in 1991 and in 2003 exemplify how the different geopolitical situations before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union influenced decisions over peace and war. When in 1990, President Bush Sr. wanted to repulse Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait, the signs were still pointing toward international cooperation. He acted with a mandate from the UN Security Council and assembled a very large coalition of diverse forces. More importantly, he did not attempt to use military intervention to change the government in Baghdad, an essential factor that helped keep the very diverse anti-Iraq coalition together. When in 2003 his son, President Bush Jr., decided to invade Iraq, he acted knowing that the United States was the sole superpower. He went to war without – one could almost say against – the Security Council and he felt it no longer necessary to assemble a wider international coalition.1 In contrast to his father, his objective from the very beginning was to change the regime in Baghdad. Iraq was to become a liberal democracy and this in turn would, he hoped, trigger a democratic transformation of the entire Arab world. It was an effort to change the Middle East into the image of the West; a typical victor’s attitude. The first Iraq War was a success, the second ended in a disaster. Instead of creating prosperous democracies, Bush Jr. set the entire Arab world ablaze. The fires are still burning. In the positive atmosphere following the fall of the Berlin Wall something equally important took place. The UN Security Council made decisions that would trigger a fundamental shift in the United Nations’ operational activities: it approved a series of new UN peace missions with mandates designed to deal with intrastate armed conflicts.2 This was new and it amounted to interfering in the internal affairs of a member state, something that was taboo in the past.3 With this, the Security Council opened, probably unintentionally, 1 Under Bush Sr., the coalition during the first Iraq War in 1991 included 28 countries; when Bush Jr. invaded Iraq in 2003, only three additional countries came along: the United Kingdom, Poland, and Australia. 2 See Box 3.1. 3 During the Cold War, the United Nations only intervened once in an intrastate armed conflict: in the Congo. But this was rather unintentional and it ended in disaster. The mission

The Marginalization of the United Nations

91

a completely new chapter for the United Nations peace missions. In the initial post-Cold War euphoria, the significance and implications of such a fundamental departure from traditional peacekeeping missions went almost unnoticed.4 The United Nations had tumbled into a new type of peace operation – it continued wrongly to call them “peacekeeping operations” – when “peacekeeping” was not the job for which it was designed.5 This created a contradiction in UN peace missions between the official claim of being sent to keep the peace and the realities in conflict-ridden countries where there was no peace to be kept. This would plague the United Nations to this day.6 At the end of the Cold War, nobody appeared to have grasped that a new kind of warfare had developed that began to successively replace the United Nations’ traditional focus on preventing wars among its member states. Now, the United Nations would have to deal primarily with failing nation-states, belligerent nonstate actors, and intrastate civil wars. These intrastate armed conflicts were no longer the traditional proxy wars between the Eastern and the Western blocs. They took on a quality of their own over which global powers had lost control. Ironically, it would be the United States, the only remaining global superpower, that on 9/11 would first feel the blunt impact of a very different security threat that had now developed far away from the more traditional interstate confrontations. However, hopes that the United Nations would play a central role in preserving global peace and security were quickly dashed. The United Nations was unable to adapt (i) to the new winner’s peace and (ii) to the change in warfare to intrastate armed conflicts. Although this was a process that had begun in 1992 following the demise of the Soviet Union, it was the invasion of Iraq by a US-led coalition without a Security Council mandate in 2003 and the triggering of the subsequent intrastate armed struggle inside Iraq that made this all apparent. Attacking Iraq amounted to a rejection of collective security under its Security Council and forcing the United Nations later to accompany the US occupation of Iraq was an open humiliation of the United Nations.7 The bombing of its headquarters in Baghdad in August became a casualty of East-West divisions. The time for the United Nations to deal with intrastate conflicts had not yet come. 4 The ignorance of the United Nations the changes in warfare was exemplified when it created the UN Department for Peacekeeping in 1992, at a time when peacekeeping was largely over. 5 See Annex I. 6 See Annex II. 7 In March 2003, in anticipation of the US invasion of Iraq, Richard Perle, the then US assistant secretary of defense and chair of the influential Advisory Committee of the US Defense Policy

92 

On Building Peace

2003, only four months after the United States had occupied Iraq, was the consequence of an already compromised United Nations. Within only two and a half years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United Nations, in an apparently bitter repetition of history, became a marginalized organization once again. It had had a similar experience earlier. In 1947, barely two years after its formation, the beginning of the Cold War8 and East-West confrontations ended the dreams for an effective collective security system with the newly formed United Nations at its center. But this time there was a difference. During the East-West conflict in the Cold War period, the UN Charter and with it international law was simply frozen. With the end of the Cold War and, with it, the rise of a Western-dominated global peace order, the UN Charter and international law had to make room for what is best referred to as “winner’s law.” The West has done the United Nations and the idea of collective security greater damage during the last 25 years than the Cold War had in the preceding 42 years. The United Nations had, once again become a marginal player in world politics. Here are the three main reasons.

3.1

The Eroded International Law of the United Nations

The most decisive factor that contributed to the marginalization of the United Nations is, no doubt, the undermining of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the West. With the end of the Cold War, it increasingly became the West, and here in particular the United States, which would decide what was good and bad and what was right and wrong in the world. This is a typical winner’s attitude – nothing terribly new in history. The image the West had of itself as a global force of good Board, predicted the quick defeat of Saddam Hussein, and with it the collapse of the United Nations. He probably expressed the predominant views in the US government that for the only remaining superpower, a collective security system was not needed. It could formulate the rules by itself. See Perle, “United They Fall.” 8 The beginning of the Cold War is identif ied with President Truman’s speech to the US Congress in March 1947, in which he pledged to contain threats by the Soviet Union in Greece and Turkey. A principle US ally during WWII, the Soviet Union became its principle enemy for the next 42 years. What would become known as the Truman Doctrine would later apply to all threats of communist takeovers around the world. Implicitly, the Truman Doctrine was the cementation of the post-WWII division of the world into a procommunist “East” and a proliberal democratic “West” that had been decided in Yalta (February 1945) and Potsdam (July 1945).

The Marginalization of the United Nations

93

and as the world’s gold standard of how to do things, would be reflected in its actions and it dominates Western media to this day. There is not a day that passes by without the West judging others from a perspective of superiority. It became widely accepted that the West would now speak for the “international community,” even in cases where it had very little international support. Over the past 25 years, the West has increasingly redefined international law. It is not only the West that claimed the right to use armed force and it surely is not the West that committed the worst human rights abuses. But the West was globally the dominant power; what it did had hence a norm-setting character. And not only that! Much of its “norms” would became official policy – openly defying international law. The Western countries openly contravened the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the two cornerstones of international law, to suit its own political agenda. No other country dared to do this. The application of a new winner’s law can be found in all three core aspects of international law: the nonuse of military force except in selfdefense, the noninterference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, and the universality of human rights. The principle of nonuse of military force in pursuit of political aims (i) The principles set in the UN Charter are among the great achievements of humankind. Drafted in the aftermath of two devastating world wars, it banned all use of military force in pursuit of national political aims: All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.9

Military force was only permitted in self-defense: Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.”10

9 UN Charter, Chapter I, Article 1: “Purposes and Principles.” 10 UN Charter, Chapter VII: “Actions with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace and Acts of Aggression. ”

94 

On Building Peace

Military operations in defense against threats to peace and security were only allowed as an act of collective security, exclusively to be authorized by the UN Security Council. All 193 member states accepted this very significant limitation in the use of their military forces. Despite this, in the post-Cold War era the West, and in particular the United States, began to see it as their right – even responsibility 11 – used its military whenever they saw it fit. The UN Security Council was mostly relegated to confirming already-made decisions, and where this was unlikely because of a feared veto, the West ignored the Council altogether. Countries in the Council such as Russia and China, considered undemocratic by the West, should not have the right to veto decisions taken by the democratic world. Instead of each UN member being equal, the West considered itself as the winner of the Cold War superior to nondemocratic members, being entitled to make decisions that others must accept. This was a winner’s peace. Symptomatic of a winner’s peace is the confrontation over the Ukraine. On 13 November 2014, at his press conference following the G-20 meeting in Brisbane, Australia, President Obama told the assembled journalists that he scolded President Putin over what he saw as a Russian illegal intervention in the internal affairs of the Ukraine and declared: We were also very firm on the need to uphold core international principles and one of those principles is you don’t invade other countries or finance proxies and support them in ways that break up a country.12

Of course, he was right. But such arguments sound rather strange from a president of a country that has taken it as its natural right to invade countries, finance proxies, pursue regime change, and support internal opposition groups. President Obama went even further by adding that the list of what Putin was not allowed to do, would only apply to countries that have mechanisms for democratic elections. But there is no international law that gives democracies such a special status, enabling them to intervene in the internal affairs of countries that the West would characterize as undemocratic. And

11 In Germany, a latecomer to military interventions, this was justified by arguing that “we have to take greater responsibility.” See Die Bundesregierung, Weissbuch zur Sicherheitspolitik und zur Zukunft der Bundeswehr. 12 President Obama’s remarks were reported in the New York Times, 17 November 2014.

The Marginalization of the United Nations

95

in the case of the Ukraine, this would be a very doubtful claim.13 The United State there supported the overthrow of a democratically elected president, Yanukovych. President Obama’s claim would also mean that only countries that consider themselves as democracies, such as the United States, have the right to intervene in other “not-yet democratic” countries. Hence, Russia, regarded by the West as undemocratic, would not have such a right. This would give international law a new meaning. In confronting President Putin, President Obama did not defend any international law but insisted on a winner’s law. The claim to have the right to support democracy degenerates here to an ideology justifying Western interventions.14 Although Europeans are generally more circumspect when it comes to foreign military interventions, they essentially share the view that they have a right to act even if this contravenes the UN Charter. For example, when the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, justified her decision to send the Bundeswehr (German military) in support of US-led military operations against IS at the Bundestag on 3 December 2014, she stated: “At times, we need military force to create the options necessary to find political solutions” (translation by author). But the use of military force for political aims other than self-defense is exactly what the UN Charter has banned. Has she too given up on the UN Charter? The most explicit form of a winner’s law is the so-called Bush doctrine: the right to conduct preemptive wars; in other words, wars against an enemy presumed aggressive, but who has not yet attacked you. The UN Charter had wisely banned such preemptive wars. During WWII, both Nazi Germany and Japan had justified virtually all their aggressions against other countries as preemptive measures.15 This was not repeated. The 2003 American attack on Iraq was to prevent Saddam Hussein from allegedly deploying WMDs. Although this reason proved wrong and most political analysts agree that 13 There is even a deeper irony to the allegations President Obama made. He scolded President Putin over events in the Ukraine, a country in which the United States and the European Union had actively supported an opposition to topple its democratically elected – though unpopular – president in early 2014. The toppled President Yanukovych had been directly elected only three years earlier in an election that OSCE observers considered generally free and fair. 14 Such an argument is very similar to the arguments made among communist countries previously. They too felt that they had the right to intervene abroad to advance proletarian revolutions for the good of the world. 15 When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union despite a nonaggression treaty, soldiers were told that this had to be done to forestall an imminent Soviet attack; German aggression took the mantle of a preventive war. Of course, this was not true.

96 

On Building Peace

the Iraq War was a mistake, the United States still maintains its right to wage a preemptive war. This is a clear breach of the UN Charter. Already in 1999, under President Bill Clinton, NATO had unilaterally assumed the right to use military force to impose a peace order for Kosovo. It did so without a Security Council mandate. In 2011, it was NATO again that took the right to exceed a Security Council mandate meant to protect civilians,16 by militarily defeating the Qaddafi regime. In 2014, a US-led coalition began to militarily intervene in Syria. It was neither invited by the Syrian government nor did it have a Security Council mandate. Since 2015, the United States has supported a Saudi-led military intervention in the intrastate conflict in Yemen, again without a Security Council mandate. Russia and Iran have also intervened in the Syrian conflict. But they could point out that they had been invited by the still-recognized Syrian government – a questionable justification, as we will later argue.17 But Russia and Iran used a justification that the West had used many times before, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, etc. Like the situation in Syria, these “invitations” had come from governments that had a seat in the General Assembly but that were opposed by powerful belligerent opposition forces inside their countries and had lost control over much of their countries. (ii) The principle of national sovereignty After the UN principle that armed force shall not be used save in the common interest,18 the principle of national sovereignty is the second most important principle of the UN Charter. The UN Charter is clear here: “The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.”19 In other words, no member state or any alliance of member states has the right to unilaterally define, or redefine national sovereignty of others. But this is exactly what the European Union did when, faced with the breakup of Yugoslavia, it decided that the internal borders of its substates should now be recognized as international borders,20 even against the will of 16 With such unilateral action, NATO de facto harmed the new principle of the “Responsibility to Protect.” 17 See Chapter 5.1. 18 See the Preamble to the UN Charter. 19 UN Charter, Chapter 1, Article 1: “Purposes and Principles.” 20 The Ministerial European Council meeting in Maastricht announced this decision in its “Ministerial Declaration on the Recognition of New States in Europe” on 16 December 1991. Germany immediately recognized Slovenia and Croatia within their internal Yugoslav state borders and declared: “In the view of the German Government, the Republics of Slovenia and Croatia fulfill the conditions set by the European Community.” Europeans set international standards unilaterally, even if this was not supported by any international law.

The Marginalization of the United Nations

97

parts of the affected populations.21 There is no international law that would have justified such a decision. However, in 1995, NATO went to war against pro-Serbian militia forces to protect this decision and to enforce the territorial integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina within its preindependence borders. Only four years later in 1999, NATO went again to war, but this time to force Serbia to give up its province of Kosovo. Kosovo was part of the Republic of Serbia and this decision meant that NATO de facto reversed the earlier decision to maintain the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia’s republics and with it, its international borders. Suddenly, a different principle was advanced, one that NATO had denied the Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995: the principle of self-determination.22 Naked Western military power and not internationally accepted principles would decide the outcome of Yugoslavia’s civil wars. Nonetheless, as the dominant power of the post-Cold War order, the West convinced itself of having successfully achieved a fair and sustainable peace in the former Yugoslavia.23 The West’s self-assumed right to intervene militarily, and to set and reset the borders contributed to a huge internal displacement of populations. In all, it is estimated that about one-fifth of the population of the former Yugoslavia had to leave their ancestral homes. It is the winner who writes history and this displacement was hence never called ethnic cleansing. The West also assumed the right to intervene in the internal affairs of other UN member states. On 5 December 2013, German foreign minister Westerwelle visited the antigovernment demonstrators at Kiev’s Maidan Square. When Russia accused him of interference, he justified his open support to an opposition by arguing: we are European, we do not allow anyone to tell us how and when we unite.24 Also, the investment of the United States of around US$5 billion in support of the Ukrainian opposition was justified as being spent to empower the forces of democracy25 and in the words of the State Department, to give the Ukraine “the future it deserves.” 21 Such a decision had huge consequences. Both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were authoritarian regimes and the borders of their respective part-republics were often drawn to divide populations and hence reduce the risks of independence movements. The EU decision cemented in many ways injustices that were committed during the communist era. It later even went to war to defend these decisions. 22 In 1999, NATO conducted an intensive air campaign against Serbia over Serbia’s refusal at the Rambouillet peace talks to accept a referendum for the independence of Kosovo – an act of self-determination. The independence of Kosovo was ultimately the result of military force since an independence referendum was never held. 23 Refer also to Chapter 1.3. 24 Reported by Der Spiegel online. 25 Mearsheimer, “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault.”

98 

On Building Peace

This may only be the tip of the iceberg symbolizing Western investment in the internal politics of the Ukraine with the aim of luring the country away from Russian influence.26 When in June 2014, the US-led coalition27 began to attack IS targets inside Syria, it did so without the permission of the Syrian government and without any mandate from the Security Council. Even if one agrees that defeating IS is necessary, this was a clear breach of the UN Charter. Also, the United States conducted drone strikes against alleged terrorist targets in foreign countries with which it is not at war – clear breaches of national sovereignty. When in a meeting with President Erdogan of Turkey in August 2016, President Obama suggest that Turkish troops would invade deeply into Syrian territory to conquer the IS capital of Raqqa, he ignored the UN Charter and made himself the ruler over international law. As the winner of the Cold War, the West appears to have unilaterally established two types of sovereignties: that of democratic and that of nondemocratic countries. President Obama did not misspeak when, during his 2014 Brisbane press conference, he limited the principle of noninterference to countries that have mechanisms for democratic elections. Although there is no international law to this effect, this reflects deeply felt Western thinking. This implies that nondemocratic countries are open to interference and even military interventions without any recourse to any international law. Which country is democratic and which not, the West decides unilaterally. Such double standards in applying the principle of national sovereignty is the end of any collective security system, marginalizing the UN Security Council and the international law the United Nations stands for. The universality of human rights (iii) Mainly in its reaction to the 9/11 terror attacks, the United States began to undermine human rights by setting its own standards that were clear contradiction with UN conventions. Unfortunately, there are many countries that are far worse abusers of human rights, but they usually try to do this secretly. It is only the United States that so openly formulated and justified its own policies in defiance of UN human rights conventions. 26 John J. Mearsheimer only mentioned official US aid flows in his essay; one would probably also have to add funding from European and other, more clandestine, resources. The amounts spent to influence political developments in the Ukraine might hence have been substantially higher. Whether such huge foreign investment has paid off by bringing democracy to the Ukraine remains highly questionable. 27 Not all coalition members agreed initially to bomb targets inside Syria, fearing that this would infringe on Syrian sovereignty. Today, all Western shyness has gone.

The Marginalization of the United Nations

99

The United States unilaterally created a new category of prisoners it called “enemy combatants.”28 Enemy combatants were all those suspected by the United States of having supported terrorist organization and committed acts of terrorism. The United State took the unilateral right to kept keep them outside any national jurisdictions and hence denying them basic legal rights. In its Military Order of 2001, the US government determined that such subjects could be held indefinitely without charge or trial, and if put on trial it was to be before a military commission. In these cases, they would not have the right to independent counsel or judges.29 Guantanamo Bay detention camp became a sad symbol of the arbitrary detention and torture of hundreds of prisoners. There are other governments that maintain similar detention centers for people they consider dangerous, but none has done this so openly, indicating that international law would not apply to them. The perversity – and there is no other word to describe this – of the Guantanamo prison facilities is symbolized by signs that are prominently displayed at the entrances of each detention bloc, displaying the motto of these prisons: “Honor bound to defend freedom.” The rejection by the US Congress of efforts to close the Guantanamo facility is justified by the argument that the United States might have to fight other terrorist organizations and would need such a prison in the future. Against all UN conventions, the United States introduced torture as legitimate during interrogations. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA’s “detention and interrogation program”30 listed many forms of torture. Most prominent was waterboarding, a torture that was found acceptable by the US Justice Department. This stood, although the United States had prosecuted and convicted Japanese interrogators who used waterboarding as war criminals after WWII. Even worse was a policy the Pentagon called “extraordinary rendition.” Under this policy, hundreds of prisoners suspected of Islamist sympathies or membership in a terrorist organization were sent to be interrogated in 28 The Geneva Conventions apply essentially only to wars among sovereign states and their armed forces. It regards illegal combatants from this perspective and treats them as franc-tireurs or partisans acting in parallel to regular armed forces. However, today belligerent nonstate actors fight without supporting any armed force. They are hence a new category of combatants for which there is no international agreement on how to treat them if taken prisoner. This, however, does not imply that they no longer have basic human rights. 29 UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, “The Situation of Detainees at Guantanamo Bay.” 30 US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program.”

100 

On Building Peace

countries with harsh practices. Prisoners under this policy often faced terrible human rights abuses. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, former CIA agent Robert Baer summarized extraordinary rendition as follows: If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to be seen again – you send them to Egypt.

In fact, Syria was the preferred destination for the CIA to send it prisoners for “special” treatment, a country the United States accused only five years later of human rights abuses and insists that its once so cooperative president step down. Since 2009, the United States has intensified its program of extrajudicial killings of terrorist suspects and their leadership in many foreign countries. Much of this was done through drone strikes. Drones are guided by off icers from within the United States, thousands of miles away from the actual targets while on-the-ground intelligence is often sparse. For this reason, drone strikes are terribly inaccurate and many innocent civilians, family members as well as friends and bystanders are killed in the process. In none of these cases was any proper legal process observed. Those targeted were de facto condemned to be part of a mass execution. Europe is much more prudent about openly questioning human rights conventions, but as allies of the United States, Europeans have done little to rectify this worrying trend. The hollowing out of human rights itself is lamentable. We have begun to distinguish whom we grant human rights to, and whom not. This loss of universality is probably the greatest damage to international law, the idea of collective security and the United Nations. The fact that it is done by countries that had once been the champions of human rights creates bad precedents and is a worrying omen for the future of human rights. Going to war or conducting military operations inside other countries is always a serious infringement on national sovereignty. The West too often used justifications that would later turn out to either not be true or at least questionable. Could this be the result of superpower arrogance? The NATO air attacks on Serbia were justified – especially in the German parliament – as a preemptive strike to prevent the Serbian army from forcing Kosovar Albanians out of Kosovo in order to make it a Serb-populated

The Marginalization of the United Nations

101

province. What was then called the “horseshoe operation”31 would later turn out to have been a false claim, but by that time the German parliament had already approved German participation in NATO air raids on Serbia. The US-led Iraq invasion took place on false claims that Saddam Hussein had WMDs and was about to use them. The then British prime minister Tony Blair went so far as to tell the British parliament that Saddam Hussein could attack London with WMDs in 45 minutes. The justification for NATO to conduct an air campaign in Libya and militarily support local opposition fighters against Gaddafi’s forces were humanitarian concerns for the civilian population. The argument was that Gaddafi had deliberately targeted civilians and that the fall of Benghazi to Gaddafi troops might end in a massacre. However, from hospital records we now know that this was not true.32 These military operations were justified as preemptive strikes needed to prevent the other side from attacking or creating a humanitarian disaster. Instead, these foreign military interventions created their own humanitarian disasters or made ongoing humanitarian hardships worse. The founding fathers of the UN had been wise to ban preemptive wars. Yet, in their post-Cold War hubris, this wisdom disappeared. France has justified its intervention in Syria with Article 51 of the UN Charter and with its right to self-defense. In December 2015, at a speech at the Dome des Invalides honoring those killed in the November terrorist attack in Paris, President Hollande declared that IS had now declared war on France.33 France has the right to self-defense and would now hit back and not rest until IS is destroyed. However, by the time President Hollande made his speech, France had already been bombing IS targets in Iraq and Syria for over a year. 31 In 1999, the German minster of defense, in a very emotional speech to parliament, made the claim that German secret services had obtained a Serbian army document called the “Horseshoe Operation” in which it had planned to expel all non-Serbians from Kosovo. The Germany’s then-foreign minister in an equally emotional speech told parliamentarians that by attacking Serbia, Germany would help prevent new Auschwitz extermination camps to be set up in Kosovo. 32 See Kuperman, “Obama’s Libya Debacle.” Interesting is also the response by Derek Chollet and Ben Fishman in their article “Who Lost Libya?” Both were senior members in the Obama administration that decided the Libya operation. Although they forward many arguments in defense of this decision, one gets the impression the underlying tenor of their article is that it all went so fast that they had not the time to be fully informed. 33 The argument that IS by conducting a terrorist attack in France is declaring war is a rather questionable claim. Islamic State, despite its name, is not a recognized nation-state but rather a belligerent nonstate actor. Can such nonstate actors declare war? And how can France argue that it is now hitting back under its right to self-defense given in the UN Charter (Article 51)?

102 

3.2

On Building Peace

The Inherent Limitations of the United Nations

While the erosion of international law is caused by political developments outside the United Nations, the organization’s work is also impeded by inherent limitations. The reason for this is that the United Nations was not created to respond to today’s main threats to peace and security: intrastate armed conflicts. The United Nations was created in the aftermath of two devastating world wars in 1945. At that time, the main concern for peace and security was to prevent wars among nation-states. The motto was: war never again. But by war, only interstate wars were meant. In the post-WWII era, civil wars, revolutionary wars, violent secession struggles, or armed struggles with transnational crime syndicates existed, but were essentially considered matters of internal affairs of member states. They were not yet on the radar screen of international politics. Not surprisingly, the United Nations became an organization to help prevent and, where this was not possible, to help end interstate wars. The UN Charter drawn up in San Francisco in 1945 was therefore exclusively about setting international law and norms for relations among its member states and designing a framework to deal with outbreaks of wars among them. Nowhere in the UN Charter are intrastate relations mentioned or specific rules developed that would help deal with intrastate armed conflicts. In fact, the UN Charter explicitly prohibits the United Nations from getting involved in the internal affairs of a member state. The Charter states specifically: Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter.34

With the increasing need to intervene in intrastate armed conflicts, the United Nations found itself facing a huge dilemma. It had now to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of a member state – to use the words of the Charter – but was prevented by its Charter in doing so. The emergence of intrastate armed conflicts created a huge dilemma for the United Nations. It never solved this dilemma but tried to

34 UN Charter, Chapter I: “Aims and Purposes.”

The Marginalization of the United Nations

103

circumvented it by simply ignoring it, an unsurprising approach for anyone who knows how the political processes within the United Nations work. Even the 2014/2015 comprehensive review of UN peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations kept this approach of denial. The peacekeeping review came to the strange conclusion that “labels such as internal, intrastate, regional, ethnic, sectarian for conflicts have become increasingly irrelevant.”35 Have they? In the realities of global threats, intrastate armed conflicts and no longer interstate wars dominate the United Nations’ security agenda. Today, the UN spends over 90% of the resources for its peace missions on intrastate armed conflicts.36 With the end of the Cold War, UN peace missions underwent a massive shift from intervening in interstate wars to intervening in intrastate armed conflicts. The shift was so sudden that the United Nations was neither prepared nor equipped to deal with these new, very different environments. Between 1945 and 1989, the UN Security Council had approved a total of sixteen peacekeeping missions; all except one were traditional peacekeeping missions37 aimed at overseeing the implementation of various ceasefire agreements and similar deescalation agreements to help end wars among UN member states. The only exception had been the UN mission to the Congo, Opération des Nations Unies au Congo, or ONUC, between 1960 and 1964. Even this mission had originally started as a typical peacekeeping mission to monitor the withdrawal of Belgian and mercenary forces in support of the Congo obtaining its full independence. However, once deployed, it became increasingly drawn into the internal conf licts among feuding parties within the Congo. Not surprisingly, ONUC turned into a disaster, falling victim of East-West tensions. The time had not yet come for the United Nations to intervene in intrastate conflicts. This contrasts sharply with the type of peace missions the Security Council has approved since 1989. Encouraged by a newly found atmosphere of East-West cooperation, the Security Council approved, in quick succession, 68 new peace missions over the next 27 years. Apart from 4 small and relatively short-term traditional peacekeeping missions to sort out border 35 See Annex II. 36 Calculation based on UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations, “Peacekeeping Fact Sheet.” 37 The term “traditional peacekeeping” is used to describe peacebuilding interventions the help end intrastate wars – as compared to peacebuilding interventions in intrastate armed conflicts. See Annex IV.

104 

On Building Peace

conflicts,38 all other 64 UN peace missions were interventions in intrastate armed conflicts. In these conflicts, the United Nations no longer came to keep any peace or monitor any cease-fires. It now intervened increasingly in ongoing armed conflicts.39 The time for what we call in this book “UN peacebuilding interventions” – had finally come. A new type of UN peace mission had begun to develop. While during the first 44 years there were probably never more than 20,000 to 25,000 peacekeepers deployed at any one time, 40 their numbers jumped, with annual fluctuations, to between 100,000 and 130,000 deployed peacekeepers during the post-Cold War era. 41 The number of UN civilian experts and administrators assigned to these missions also increased substantially. Nowadays, UN peacekeepers increasingly work side-by-side with other UN agencies to provide humanitarian and development assistance, something that did not exist – and was not necessary – for traditional peacekeeping. Although there are no reliable summary statistics, the total number of UN staff engaged in countries with intrastate armed conflicts are considerably higher than in UN missions responding to interstate wars. For example, the UN intervention in Sierra Leone’s civil war (UNAMSIL plus UN agencies) was in staff terms about 30 to 40 times larger than the UN intervention to end the Iran-Iraq War (UNIIMOG). 42 Unfortunately, the United Nations’ normative system did not develop along with these geopolitical and operational changes. The United Nations still operates its peace missions in intrastate armed conflicts based on a Charter that was not made for those kinds of operations. There is still no legal framework that could be applied to intrastate conflicts, no policy on how to deal with failing governments and armed nonstate actors, and, above all, no internationally acceptable standards for rebuilding the state and its institutions. 38 These were still a number of traditional peacekeeping missions that included the Observer Mission Uganda-Rwanda (1993/1994), the observer group of the Auzou Strip (1994), the EthiopiaEritrea border monitoring mission (2000-2008), and the interim security force for Abyei (since June 2011). Interestingly, the two last mentioned “traditional” peacekeeping missions took place within what had been formerly intrastate armed conflicts: Ethiopia and Sudan. 39 See Von der Schulenburg, “Keeping or Building Peace?” 40 This number is diff icult to verify as the United Nations did not keep the same level of statistics as with its later peacekeeping missions. In fact, until 1992 there had not been a separate department for peacekeeping. 41 Since the end of the Cold War, in sheer numbers, UN peacekeepers were the second-largest actively deployed armed force in the world, competing only with United States’ armed forces deployments. 42 See also Box 3.2.

The Marginalization of the United Nations

3.3

105

The Loss of Innocence of the United Nations

Any illusion that the United Nations could play the role of an impartial and conciliatory pale blue “angel of peace” in intrastate armed conflicts literally exploded in the Canal Hotel bombings. On 19 August and again on 22 September 2003, the UN mission headquarters in Baghdad was attacked by successive suicide bombers with trucks loaded with explosives driven into the compound. Twenty-three UN staff, associates, and guards were killed and over a hundred staff injured; some of them carrying injuries to this day. The United Nations had to, temporarily at least, abandon its mission in Iraq. On that day, it become evident for everybody to see: the United Nations had lost its innocence. 43 When the United Nations returned to Iraq seven months later, nothing was the same. From then on, concerns over the security of UN staff dominated the work of the United Nations not only in Iraq but in UN operations all around the world. In Baghdad, the United Nations began to withdraw to the relative safety of the so-called Green Zone, a heavily fortified area that housed the headquarters of the US occupation administration, the Coalition Provisional Authority, and the embassies of coalition countries. From now on, every move of UN mission members was guarded by heavily armed US military personnel in their Humvees. For Iraqis, the United Nations became undistinguishable from US occupation forces. It was its reaction to the bombing of its compound in Baghdad and its decision to set security over political considerations that ultimately hurt the United Nations even more than the bombings themselves. As security measures increased, the United Nations’ credibility as an independent peace broker in Iraq and possibly in the world, began to fade. The United Nations’ access to people and people’s access to the United Nations was now heavily restricted and the United Nations lost much of its freedom of movement. The United Nations had literally become isolated, something that especially reflected in its impossibility to interact with opposition politicians. For fear of being attacked, many UN missions no longer flew its pale blue flag in public and all UN signs on their vehicles were removed. This was fundamentally different from the United Nations’ 43 In fact, the United Nations has lost its innocence much earlier. The Rwanda genocide in April 1994 and the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 were early signs of a loss of innocence for the United Nations. But for UN peace operations the Canal Hotel bombing probably had a much greater impact. This incident was the first time that a large numbers of senior UN staff were killed at a headquarter facility, including the head of the UN mission.

106 

On Building Peace

traditional peacekeeping missions. Then, the United Nations wanted to be seen. Its security was guaranteed and not threatened by flying the UN flag and by painting big blue “UN” letters on the sides and roofs of their cars. Now, its security was jeopardized by the very same UN flags and UN signs. This change is symbolic for the changes in its peace operations in intrastate conflicts. The Baghdad bombings were not the first and not the last attack on UN compounds. And there will be more attacks on UN compounds in the future. UN offices and staff have been attacked from East Timor to Bosnia-Herzegovina, from Afghanistan to Nigeria, from Iran to Algeria, from the Gaza to Somalia, from Mali to Syria, and from South Sudan to Myanmar. UN staff have been taken hostage for ransom, served as human shields to prevent military attacks,44 or have been paraded naked as trophies.45 Everywhere, the United Nations began to protect its operations behind high protective walls and established rings of armed security guards. It now spends huge resources on its own security. The security of those the United Nations came to help protect seemed, at times, to only come second. 46 But the highest cost of increased security was that the United Nations became “bunkerized” – not only physically but also mentally. It was as if the soul of the United Nations had died. The United Nations began to lose grip of the realities of the conflicts that burned around it. The bureaucracy of security had taken over and insurance companies now regulated the move of UN staff. 47 The time when the UN staff interacted freely with local stakeholders and mingled with the local population at large was over as was the time when UN staff were protected by the blue flag of the United Nations, by their blue helmets, or by their large UN signs on their vehicles. It became a shocking realization for many UN colleagues that they had turned from welcomed keepers of peace into mistrusted players in an intrastate 44 The most spectacular taking of hostages of UN peacekeepers took place in BosniaHerzegovina by Serbian forces in 2000 who attached them to bridges and other installations in the hope that this would protect them from NATO air strikes. 45 In 2000, parts of the so-called Revolutionary United Front (RUF) had, after decapitating their commanding officer, captured about 300 UN peacekeepers and marched them almost naked across the country into captivity. 46 According to an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26 August 2014, UN peacekeepers in the UN mission in Mali, MINUSCO, are locally nicknamed “armed tourists” because they appear to be primarily concerned about their own security and the preservation of cultural sites. 47 Insurance companies refused to pay families of UN staff members who died in the Baghdad bombing any indemnities for the simple reason that their travel into to Baghdad (on an official plane) had not had prior approval from a UN security officer.

The Marginalization of the United Nations

107

war. This was not a misunderstanding or simply the doing of crazy radicals – this was a new reality. The reason why the United Nations had turned into a target is relatively obvious: in intrastate armed conflicts the United Nations is no longer only an impartial third party hovering above adversaries, in intrastate armed conflicts UN peace missions become party to the conflict. It can no longer simply physically separate forces of conflicting parties that had agreed to stop fighting, the new UN peace missions must now operate amid ongoing conflicts that require taking positions for or against conflict parties. The attacks on the United Nations are, therefore, not due to any misguided management decisions by the United Nations or the result of being misunderstood by local adversaries. It is the inescapable consequence of intervening in intrastate armed conflicts. The political roles the United Nations plays in intrastate conflict are fundamentally different to those it played in interstate conflicts. UN interventions in intrastate conflicts have fundamentally changed the character of UN peace missions. In these new types of peace missions, the United Nations will never be impartial or neutral. With this, the United Nations may have lost its innocence, but not necessarily its credibility. The loss in the credibility of UN peace missions has two other roots, both of which could be avoided: the loss of independence and absence of any guiding principles that could replace it now obsolete operational principles of mutual consent, impartiality, and minimum use of force. 48 (i) The United Nations’ slide into dependencies UN peace missions face two operational risks that undermine their independence: they operate at the “invitation” of an existing national government, and increasingly also in the shadows of Western military interventions. Both risks are largely the result of the fact that member states have never given the United Nations a clear mandate to intervene in intrastate conflicts and that rescuing nation-states had never become part of the United Nations’ core concept for preserving global peace. – Operating at the invitations of local governments In an effort to avoid challenging the principle of national sovereignty, all UN peace missions in intrastate conflicts operate at the invitation of an existing national government. 49 But inviting national governments are 48 See also Annex I. 49 In cases where there is no government, the United Nations tends to “appoint” an interim administration or interim president who in turn will issue the invitation to the United Nations,

108 

On Building Peace

also always a conflict party in such intrastate armed conflicts. Rarely, if ever, do UN peace missions have the consent of belligerent nonstate actors who oppose these governments. In fact, it is probably fair to say that most UN peace missions are dispatched without any prior contacts with most of the armed opposition groups in the country. Instead, the United Nations tends to turned to Western-based expatriate opposition groups with little influence on the ground in their home countries and on the outcome of such conflicts. In most cases, the Security Council even mandates the United Nations to directly support an existing or newly elected government, as, for example, in Afghanistan, the Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Mali, and Libya. This brings the United Nations automatically into conflict with belligerent nonstate actors. While the United Nations is mandated to help the government by building national institutions, it is also required to act as a mediator between a government and nonstate actors that may regard any support to the government with suspicion. This dilemma between direct support to a government and the hopes to be able to mediate in a conflict is particularly troubling when the United Nations is asked to provide what is now called “robust military assistance.” This can go so far as to mandate UN peacekeepers to openly fight on the side of government forces against armed opposition groups. This is a far cry from traditional UN peacekeepers who were to only use force in self-defense. – Operating in the shadows of Western military interventions In intrastate armed conflicts, the United Nations tends to lose its independence in relation to international players in the conflict. The United Nations’ traditional peacekeeping missions operated independently from any other national or military alliances’ armed forces. Indeed, there were never any other peacekeeping-type operations from other countries competing50; traditional peacekeeping was left only to the United Nations. This is very different for UN peace missions intervening in intrastate armed conflicts. The United Nations increasingly acted as the junior partner in much larger Western-led interventions.

as, for example, in Afghanistan. 50 For example, Western forces act as peacekeepers along the Sinai Peninsula. The Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) became necessary after the USSR indicated that it would veto a UN peacekeeping force.

The Marginalization of the United Nations





109

With the end of the Cold War, it was the West through NATO, a US-led “Coalition of the Willing,” other ad hoc coalitions, or former colonial powers that intervened militarily in intrastate conflicts. This happened in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Kosovo, in Sierra Leone, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and more recently in Libya, Mali, and Syria. The United Nations began to exist only in the shadows of these much larger Western military operations. This became particularly problematic for UN missions in places such as in Iraq and Syria where the original military intervention had not been legitimized by the Security Council.51 The United Nations became an auxiliary force and a conduit for Western policies. With this, the United Nations abandoned the idea of representing a collective security system and decisions were increasingly made by the West.52 Over time, this could make the United Nations obsolete. The West would not need an unwieldy international organization; it would work better alone. And other countries would increasingly mistrust the United Nations; they too would prefer to deal with the West directly. This raises a fundamental question about the role and future of the United Nations as an international organization.

(ii) The lack of guiding principles What do UN peace missions stand for? What makes them different from other military interventions? In terms of the traditional peacekeeping missions of the United Nations, the answers to these questions were relatively well understood. The UN missions were to be deployed only after there was a peace agreement – or more likely, a ceasefire agreement – reached between the warring countries and their governments. In other words, the United Nations deployed only after both sides had agreed to end fighting. This is why the United Nations came to call its blue-helmeted soldiers “peacekeepers.” To make it clear that the actions of UN peacekeepers were fundamentally different from military interventions by other foreign powers, the United Nations established three basic operational principles that would guide their missions: (i) all UN peacekeepers were to operate only if there was mutual consent for their deployment by the warring countries; (ii) in its operations, UN peacekeepers would maintain strict political impartiality; their only task was to oversee the separation of opposing military forces, 51 This was also the case for UN missions in Kosovo and Libya. 52 Recent efforts to reduce the veto powers of Russia and China, the two non-Western permanent members of the Security Council, must be seen in this light.

110 

On Building Peace

and; (iii) UN peacekeepers would not use force and only act in self-defense if and when necessary. These three basic principles made perfect sense for traditional peacekeeping operations. They were, however, useless for UN peace missions in intrastate armed conflicts. Now, UN peace missions are sent to deal with ongoing armed conflicts and, instead of keeping a peace, had to try finding a peace. UN peace missions in intrastate conflicts no longer operate with the mutual consent of all parties to the conflict and are never impartial. Instead, the United Nations is taking sides in the conflicts, mostly, but not always, on the side of the government and against nonstate actors. In fact, most UN peace missions would not even talk to belligerent nonstate actors, considering them as being too radical to be part of any future peace solution. But if the United Nations – in taking the position of the government or other international players – does not negotiate with belligerent nonstate actors, the only other option available to achieve “peace” would be to destroy them militarily.53 But the United Nations would never be able to do this, it would never master the military strength to impose a military solution on belligerent nonstate actors. Even more robust Security Council mandates for some UN peacekeeping missions to use military force “in pursuit of its mandate” will not change this.54 Indeed, are belligerent nonstate actors ever beaten militarily?55 Are UN peace missions set up to fail from the very start? If the three basic principles no longer make sense for UN peace missions in intrastate armed conflicts, what principles could replace them? The United Nations has failed to answer this most important question. In fact, it appears not even to recognize that its traditional peacekeeping principles pose a problem. The 2015 High-Level Independent Panel on United Nations Peace Operation that was to comprehensively review UN peacekeeping simply ignored this core question. Without any analysis or explanations, it only states: The Panel has heard many views on the core principles of UN peacekeeping. The Panel is convinced of their importance in guiding UN 53 The use of military force by peacekeepers affects the local population. and changes the nature of UN peace interventions. To leave operational principles vague is highly problematic. 54 In 2009, the United Nations adjusted its third guiding principle to allow UN peacekeeping not only to use force in self-defense but also “in pursuit of its mandate” – whatever this means. For a debate on the use of force by UN peacekeepers, see UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations. United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines [The Capstone Doctrine]. 55 Far more potent military forces such as NATO forces have failed to impose military solutions as in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya.

The Marginalization of the United Nations

111

peacekeeping operations. Yet, these principles must be interpreted progressively and with flexibility in the face of new challenges, and they should never be an excuse for failure to protect civilians or to defend the mission proactively.56

Not surprisingly, the report remains vague what it means by flexibly interpreting principles. What a strange and unsatisfying conclusion for what is – literally – a vital matter of UN peacekeepers risking their lives in the pursuit of peace. Box 3.1 Shifts in UN Peace Operations Since the United Nations dispatched its first mission of UN military observers, the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), to monitor the Israeli-Arab armistice agreement of 1948, it approved sixteen UN peacekeeping missions during the Cold War period between 1948 and 1988. Except for its Congo mission, they were all traditional peacekeeping missions designed to monitor ceasefire agreements between countries, separate hostile armed forces, or oversee the departure of occupying military forces. These included helping end combat between India and Pakistan over Kashmir (1949 to the present); separating Israeli and Egyptian forces along the Suez and Gaza (1956 to 1967 and 1973 to 1979); verifying the withdrawal of foreign fighters in Lebanon (1958); monitoring the disengagement of Saudi and Egyptian troops from Yemen (1963 to 1964); separating Cypriot and Turkish troops along a ceasefire line in Cyprus (1964 to the present); monitoring the withdrawal of all forces along the Indian-Pakistan border outside of Kashmir (1965 to 1966); overseeing the disengagement of Israeli and Syrian forces along the Golan Heights (1974 to the present); monitoring the withdrawal of Israeli forces from South Lebanon (1974 to the present); facilitating the implementation of the Geneva Accords for Afghanistan (1988 to 1990); and overseeing the ceasefire agreement between Iran and Iraq (1988 to 1991). Since the end of East-West confrontations in 1989, the Security Council approved 68 new peace missions57 in quick succession, over three times the number of UN peace missions in 25 years as compared to those during the 42 preceding years. Except for four, all these missions were UN interventions in fail56 See UN High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, “Uniting our Strength for Peace.” Unfortunately, the vagueness over this core aspect of peacekeeping are kept throughout the report’s 94 pages. See Annex II. 57 There are still f ive ongoing traditional peacekeeping operations: UNTSO, UNMOGIIP, UNFICYP, UNDOF, and UNIFIL. The establishment of all these five traditional peacekeeping missions date back to the Cold War era.

112 

On Building Peace

ing member states with intrastate armed conflicts: Namibia (1989-1990), Angola (1991-1995), Cambodia (1991-1993), Mozambique (1992-1994), Somalia (1992-1993), Liberia (1993-1997), Rwanda (1993-1994), and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1995-2002). After some initial failures in this new type of peacekeeping, it took the Security Council a few years before approving a new series of UN peace missions for Haiti (1997), the Central African Republic (1998), Kosovo (1999), Sierra Leone (1999), the Congo (1999), East Timor (1999 and again in 2006), Afghanistan (2002), Liberia (2003), Iraq (2003), Burundi (2004), Cote d’Ivoire (2004), Lebanon (2007), Sudan (2005), and Sudan/Darfur (2007). This list continues with UN peacebuilding missions sent into Guinea-Bissau (2010), the Democratic Republic of Congo (2010), South Sudan (2011), Syria (2012), Libya (2011), Somalia (2013), Mali (2013), and again into the Central African Republic (2014). The four relatively smaller traditional peacekeeping operations were mandated to help end interstate conflicts: Uganda-Rwanda (1993), Aouzou Strip (1994), Ethiopia-Eritrea (2000), and Sudan’s Abyei region (2011). This list of UN peace missions relies on information from DPKO and DPA only and is therefore incomplete. A typical peacebuilding mission not on this list is, for example, Operation Salaam (1989-1991), which was sent into Afghanistan immediately after the withdrawal of the Soviet forces. It also does not include the many political missions nor the many humanitarian missions that now almost exclusively respond to the negative political and humanitarian effects of intrastate armed conflicts. The United Nations is therefore more deeply involved in intrastate armed conflicts than the DPA and DPKO lists suggest. This points to a more fundamental problem – the distinctions the United Nations makes among its interventions. Today, one would have to consider all UN interventions be they in character political, security, development, humanitarian, or human rights or – more likely – a mix of several of these aspects, as UN peacebuilding interventions aiming to help solve, or at least contain intrastate armed conflicts. This would reflect the realities of UN operational activities in such conflicts and give a far more upbeat image of the complexities of the work the UN is doing.

Box 3.2 From the Iran-Iraq War to the Sierra Leonean Civil War The two UN interventions in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and the Sierra Leonean civil war (1991-2002) are just about ten years apart but they signify the fundamental shift in peacekeeping operations: the first is an intervention to end an interstate war and the second is an intervention to end an intrastate armed conflict. A short comparison may help to grasp the huge changes that have taken place to UN peacekeeping during this period.

The Marginalization of the United Nations

113

In August 1988, Iran and Iraq, after eight years of a devastating war, agreed to accept UN Security Council Resolution 598 that called for an immediate ceasefire. Both sides asked the United Nations to help implement this ceasefire. In response, the United Nations set up the UN Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group (UNIIMOG) in August 1988. It lasted two and a half years until February 1991. UNIIMOG was a typical traditional peacekeeping operation that included about 400 lightly armed military observers (mostly officers) who monitored the implementation of the ceasefire agreement; they were essentially assigned along the Iran-Iraq border. They had no other military or civilian objectives and did not have to train or provide any assistance to anyone. UNIIMOG operated with the mutual consent of both sides. They remained impartial (that meant at the time that they did not get involved in any local politics) and carried only side weapons to be used for self-defense. Except for an attack by irregular (Iraqi-sponsored) mujahedeen forces on Iranian territory, the ceasefire held and UN peacekeepers were neither attacked nor harassed. The only fatality was the result of a vehicle accident. When, in July 1998, the United Nations had sent its first of a series of different UN peace missions into Sierra Leone, the conditions it found and the tasks it had to perform were dramatically different to what UNIIMOG had to deal with. Sierra Leone was still in the middle of its civil war and there was no mutual consent to respect the safety of UN peacekeepers. The UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone was almost immediately attacked. About 500 peacekeepers were taken hostage and about 300 peacekeepers lost their lives. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) was, therefore, a much more robust UN peacekeeping force. Despite its rather innocent-sounding name, this was a UN peacekeeping mission under Chapter VII of the UN Charter mandated to use force if necessary in the pursuit of its mandate. UNAMSIL started off with 6,000 peacekeepers and included, at its height, over 17,000 peacekeepers, 42 times the number of UNIIMOG. UNAMSIL became deeply involved in Sierra Leone’s civil war; in fact, UNAMSIL took over the security inside the country and at its borders and hence performed typical sovereign functions. It began to fight rebel forces and to take and hold territory, even against the resistance of various rebel groups. Instead of being concentrated on any specific border area, UN peacekeepers had to now operate over the entire territory of Sierra Leone. Despite a peace agreement in 1998 (the Lomé Peace Agreement), UNAMSIL was repeatedly attacked. By 2000, about 500 UN peacekeepers had been kidnapped and held for months and several had been killed. Their commander was beheaded in full view of his troops by renegade rebel forces. Between 1999 and 2005, 192 peacekeepers lost their lives in Sierra Leone. There was no longer any

114 

On Building Peace

pretense that UNAMSIL operated with the mutual consent of all conflicting parties, that it remained impartial in this conflict, or that it used force only in selfdefense – however, the three principles were still part of the official UN policy. With its intervention in Sierra Leone, the United Nations become responsible for virtually all of the problems in the country. UNAMSIL was not only responsible for the decommissioning and reintegration of ex-combatants or the rebuilding of national security forces. With the support of other UN agencies, it was now also involved in all sorts of civilian tasks from organizing elections to promoting national reconciliation, from assisting the return of refugees and internally displaced to food assistance to the vulnerable, from rebuilding a basic justice system to organizing a transitional justice system, and from rebuilding state institutions to organizing basic health and education services. The list of its tasks is endless. A comparison of the numbers is revealing: while the Iran-Iraq War affected a total population of about 100 million, the population affected by the civil war in Sierra Leone amounted only to about 5 million. And while the Iran-Iraq War must have cost the lives of about half a million military and civilians, the civil war in Sierra Leone, despite all its brutality, may have cost the lives of “only” about 75,000 people. Nonetheless, the UN intervention in Sierra Leone cost substantially more and lasted much longer. UNIIMOG had cost only US$178 million while UNAMSIL had cost about US$2.8 billion. And not only that. If we also include the civilian activities of the United Nations necessary to end Sierra Leone’s civil war, we are talking about US$6 million in UN peacekeeping, humanitarian, legal, and development assistance. By contrast, UNIIMOG operations were never connected with any humanitarian or development activities. And while UNIIMOG lasted only about two and a half years (August 1988 to February 1991), the entire duration of the various UN peace missions in Sierra Leone lasted almost sixteen years (July 1998 to April 2014). In 1991, the United Nations had to manage in Sierra Leone a very different intervention from what it was used to. This was no longer a traditional peacekeeping mission and it was also not a multidimensional peacekeeping mission. Peacekeeping was now only a component of a much greater undertaking. This had become a more complex, more complicated, more dangerous, and more expensive UN mission. And because of this it should never have been called a UN peacekeeping mission. In fact, it was one of the first UN integrated peacebuilding missions. While in the Iran-Iraq War, the United Nations was called to keep a peace, in the Sierra Leonean armed conflict the United Nations had first to help build a peace. While in the interstate Iran-Iraq War “peace” meant simply the end of the fighting; in Sierra Leone’s intrastate war “peace” meant reerecting a functioning state able to provide peace, security, justice, and prosperity to its people.

The Marginalization of the United Nations

115

Box 3.3 Rwanda, the Peacekeepers’ Nightmare Even today, looking at the Independent Inquiry report into the actions of the United Nations in Rwanda in 199458 makes chilling reading. Within the three months between April and June 1994, about 800,000 Rwandans, almost all civilians, are estimated to have been brutally killed by members of the army, of the presidential guard, and other militant groups while UN peacekeepers idly stood by. What unfolded in front of UN peacekeepers was a nightmare scenario, a genocide that they were unable to prevent or stop. This was, and probably still is, the single worst failure of UN peacekeeping. What went so terribly wrong? The 1999 Independent Inquiry identified several failures, starting with those of member states to muster the political will to get involved, and the chronic lack of resources that they provided to UN peacekeeping to respond to situations in the country. They also blamed the United Nations’ Secretariat for the failure to establish clear command-and-control chains, for a general reluctance among its high officials – and that included the then-Secretary-General – to take responsibility, and to act decisively. But in its final conclusion, the report pointed to a far more fundamental problem that is inherent in UN peacekeeping: While the presence of United Nations peacekeepers in Rwanda may have begun as a traditional peacekeeping operation to monitor the implementation of an existing peace agreement, the onslaught of the genocide should have led decision-makers – from the Secretary-General, the Security Council to the Secretariat officials and the leadership of UNAMIR – to realize that the original mandate, and indeed the neutral mediation role of the United Nations, was no longer adequate and required a different, more assertive response, combined with means necessary to take such actions. Couldn’t one have come to very similar conclusions for other failures of UN peacekeeping, past and present? What the Independent Inquiry failed to point out, however, is that these failures could have been prevented had the United Nations listened to the Rwandese regarding what was needed. Both the Rwandan government and the opposition Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) had a very different and far more assertive UN intervention in mind. The Arusha Peace Agreement that was concluded between the two Rwandan conflict parties in August 1993 called for a Neutral International Force (NIF) with a robust mandate that would include a wide range of security tasks, from providing overall security to maintaining 58 See UN Security Council, “Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda.”

116 

On Building Peace

law and order in the country. The peace agreement lists even very precise tasks for the NIF, such as the recovery and destruction of illegal weapons, conducting demining operations, and ensuring the safety of humanitarian assistance. And, as if the belligerent Rwandese parties knew what was to come, the peace agreement foresaw that the NIF would be made responsible for searching and neutralizing arms caches and armed gangs. On 15 September 1993, that is, one month after concluding the Ashura Peace Agreement, a joint (!) government-RPF mission met with Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali in New York to press for the sending of UN peacekeepers to take responsibilities along the lines of the NIF as spelled out in the agreement. They warned that any further delay in deploying UN peacekeepers could risk the collapse of the peace agreement. They also stressed that the UN would need to deploy a force of 4,260 peacekeepers if it wanted to succeed. They would be disappointed. Sadly, events would later prove them right; the Rwandese simply knew better what was needed for preventing violence and for regaining peace in their country, but had come to a United Nations that was mentally and politically not ready to help implement a peace agreement to end an intrastate armed conflict. When on 5 October 1993 the Security Council finally approved setting up the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), its mandate fell far short of what the conflicting Rwandese parties had in mind when concluding the Ashura Peace Agreement. UNAMIR would not have an assertive and proactive mandate as outlined for the NIF. Instead, UNAMIR would become a typical peacekeeping mission with a Chapter VI mandate that foresaw more passive tasks of monitoring, assisting, investigating, and reporting. Accordingly, the Security Council authorized a troop strength for UNAMIR of only 2,548 – roughly only half of what the joint government-RPF delegation had requested. Even that number was never reached – UNAMIR would never have more than 1,500 peacekeepers. And it took until December 1993 – four months after concluding the peace agreement – for these reduced numbers of peacekeepers to finally be deployed. By this time, the Ashura Peace Agreement had collapsed – just as predicted by the Rwandese delegation. When, in May 1994, the Security Council finally responded to the deteriorating situation and approved UNAMIR II with a more assertive mandate and a troop strength of 5,000 peacekeepers, 800,000 Rwandans were already dead and the RPF had taken over Kigali and formed a new government. By that time, much of the conflict had already spilled over into neighboring Congo where most supporters of the previous government had fled. The important lesson here is that, long before any peacekeepers arrived in Rwanda, the United Nations had failed Rwandans in helping to find peace as a

The Marginalization of the United Nations

117

matter of principle. At the core of UNAMIR’s failure was that the United Nations – and this includes its member states – refused to accept that they were now faced with the very different situation of intrastate armed conflicts, but could only agree to apply a recipe that it had developed for interstate wars: traditional peacekeeping. In its communications with UNAMIR at that crucial time, the UN Secretariat insisted again and again that UNAMIR operate along the three peacekeeping principles of mutual consent among all conflicting parties, impartiality in dealing with conflicting parties, and minimum use of force in self-defense. And the United Nations continued to insist that its role would only be to help implement a peace agreement. It even threatened to withdraw if the Rwandans would not make peace among themselves. The United Nations could hardly have gotten this more wrong. Like in almost all other intrastate armed conflicts the United Nations has intervened in since the end of the Cold War, in Rwanda there was no peace to keep. The Arusha Peace Agreement was, in fact, not the end of a conflict but the trigger for the renewed and a far more murderous sequence in the country’s intrastate conflicts. All this would require a new and very different approach. The United Nations would have to accept that this required to first build peace before it could keep any peace in intrastate armed conflicts. We have called this approach, for lack of any other term, peacebuilding.

4

Rescuing the Nation-State

Critically discussing the term “nation-state” in Chapter 2 may have been irritating for many readers. Suggesting in this chapter that we must also rescue the nation-state to preserve global peace must, hence, be awfully provocative. But this is exactly the argument this book is making.1 This book is not about any kind of resurrection of nationalism nor is it against closer integration of nation-states as, for example, in the European Union. It makes, however, the argument that human societies must continue to be built around social communities that have some common identities and values and form structured organizations that reflect these identities and values. Despite the huge advances in globalization, in international travel, transnational trade, and in information technologies, these social organizations will continue to be based on clearly defined territories and hence have borders. Such a social organization is the nation-state and there is no other known form of social organization that could replace it. In the foreseeable future, the nation-state will hence remain a social framework that ensures – or fails to ensure – peace, security, justice, and prosperity to defined groups of citizens living within clearly defined territorial borders. The nation-state will also continue to remain the basic building block on which international relations are built. If nation-states fail, one of these building blocks will break, and if several nation-states fail, this risks bringing down the entire international building. Today, through instant communication, global travel, and an international economy, these broken building blocks could easily contaminate neighboring societies and bring down the entire building of the international system. Instead of replacing the nation-state, globalization makes functioning nation-states ever more important – even indispensable. Nation-states can take many different forms. They may not need to remain the way we know them today; they will no doubt continue to evolve. There is for example the suggestion that the future belongs to city-states2 such as Singapore or to autonomous regions.3 We may also see new territorial nation-states emerge. New nation-states may be the result of breakups 1 The choice of the term “nation-state” is somewhat an unhappy one, but there is no other. See also the discussion in Annex IV. 2 City-states used to be very successful forms of social organizations as the ancient Greek city-states, the Northern European Hanse, or the Renaissance city-states of Northern Italy attest. 3 In the European Parliament, there is a group called the European Free Alliance that claims to represent 48 regions within Europe that aspire for greater regional autonomy or outright

120 

On Building Peace

of once larger nation-states as it happened following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Developments could also move in the opposite direction and we could see larger nation-states emerge through integration such as the European Union. New nation-states could also be created by force, following a period of armed conflicts, on the ruins of defunct nation-states, as could happen in the Middle East in the form of an Arab Sunni Caliphate. What all these new forms of nation-states will have in common with already-existing territorial nation-states is that they too must be built on some form of common “national” identity/identities and be based on functioning state institutions. 4 In other words, whatever the shapes and formats of future nation-states may be, to be sustainable they must have a stable dual nation-state character. However, nation-states will rarely be built on a drawing board5 and most nation-states will continue to be the result of historical and cultural developments that took centuries to emerge. The likelihood is therefore that, in the foreseeable future, we will continue with the historically developed territorial nation-states as we know them today. A great advantage of nation-states over any form of global governance is that it allows communities within defined territories to form social organizations that suit them, their historically developed cultures, and value systems. At the same time, such national differences would not threaten nation-states that have developed a different system of national values and forms of governance system. In other words, territorially defined nation-states tolerate a variety of different solutions for social organizations without creating a conflict with neighboring nation-states. In a world that is increasingly becoming multipolar, we simply must accept that individual countries will have different answers for a nation-state framework. To accept difference in governance systems is of paramount importance today as post-Cold War hopes that liberal democracy would become a globally unifying form of governance have evaporated. independence. It wants to dissolve the present form of nation-states and instead create a Europe of regions. 4 Today’s problems of the European Union are based on exactly that. It suffers from both weak common identities and shared values among Europeans and from badly functioning European governance structures that nobody understands. To overcome these two problems will take time and will need a greater buy-in by citizens. This cannot simply be decided behind closed doors by heads of states meeting in the European Council. 5 However, there are historic examples for that. For example, Prussia and the United States in the eighteenth century were such artificial creations. In modern time, Singapore comes to mind. But their survival too will ultimately depend on creating a common identity and building around it efficient state institutions.

Rescuing the Nation-State

121

Expectations that global liberal peace would progressively overcome national borders and slowly replace individual nation-states have proven – so far at least – unrealistic. Indeed, if we look at developments since the end of the Cold War, we see a marked return to territorial nation-states. The present trend goes against super-states and even larger nation-state associations. Since the end of the Cold War, countries have split up rather than united. The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and, within it, Serbia broke up – often accompanied by great human suffering and pain. Czechoslovakia has split in two peacefully. Although the European Union was meant to overcome national divisions in Europe, one of the most important members, the United Kingdom, is now leaving the Union. What makes the United Kingdom decision more significant is that it was a plebiscite decision: a majority of UK citizens that wanted to leave the European Union after having been 43 years as one of its leading members. Old regional divisions and secessionist movements within Europe have gained strength as in the cases of Scotland,6 Catalonia, Flanders, and Eastern Ukraine – to name only a few.7 There are many more secessionist movements outside of Europe. A report on Wikipedia lists 110 active separatist movements around the world – many of them using force. The importance of nation-states for humankind can be best understood by what happens when they collapse. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, but also in many African countries, such a collapse has disastrous consequences for the population – especially the poor who cannot escape the violence. Such a collapse can destabilize entire regions and have a global impact. Collapsing or failing nation-states are increasingly becoming the dominant risk to global peace and stability.8 And there is another aspect that underlines the importance of nationstates for peace and security. All foreign interventions into failing nationstate – be they military or civilian – are ultimately about rebuilding state institutions. From Afghanistan to Iraq, from South Sudan to Somalia, from Sierra Leone to Mali, and from Guatemala to Haiti we always engage in 6 It is a great irony that some supporters of greater European integration now court Scotland to split from the United Kingdom and remain in the European Union. Are those Europeans trying to defend integration by promoting regional separations? 7 Only Germany appears to have defied this trend with its successful reunification in 1990. Yemen, the only other country that united following the end of the Cold War, is on the verge of a renewed break-up. 8 In a recent interview with Gurdun Harrer for the Austrian newspaper Der Standard (14 October 2016), Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry rejected Western criticisms of Egypt’s human rights record by reminding Europe that a collapse of Egypt could send many millions of refugees across the Mediterranean. This is a real danger. Egypt’s population will grow from its current 100 million to about 150 million by 2050.

122 

On Building Peace

what some call nation building and others state building or peacebuilding. They all have in common that foreign assistance tries to help reform the police, the justice system, the education system, the health system, and the economic system. The list of capacity- and institution-building programs extend even further. In other words, we build or rebuild state functions. In the real world of peace interventions, there is no known case where we tried to find solutions to intrastate armed conflicts through regional solutions or by promoting a global citizenship. The nation-state, hence, remains key to maintaining local as well as global peace. That is why we must focus on rescuing nation-states from collapse. The nation-state will continue to be central to building peace. The questions are rather what have we done wrong in the past and how can we do this better in the future? Finding new solutions to these questions will determine how peaceful and secure our future world may be. To achieve this, we have to rethink peacebuilding9 and free it from its present constraints.

4.1

The Nation-State and Peacebuilding

Since its creation, the United Nations has developed two principle approaches to intervene in wars and armed conflicts around the world: peacekeeping and peacebuilding. Although they were never clearly defined and are hence often mixed up in today’s discussions, they present two approaches that need to be distinguished. And that has more to do with changing historical circumstances for which they were developed. While UN peacekeeping was a child of the Cold War, UN peacebuilding became the child of the post-Cold War era. Therefore, both peacekeeping and peacebuilding do not simply reflect two different operational approaches for UN peace missions – both approaches reflect the response to two different global political peace orders. With a fading of the Western-dominated global peace order, they will now have to change, too. Peacekeeping was first introduced into the United Nations in 1948 when the Security Council approved two missions to monitor the implementation of ceasefire agreements, first between Israel and various Arab states, and secondly between India and Pakistan.10 In an atmosphere of superpower 9 See also Von der Schulenburg, “Rethinking Peacebuilding.” 10 The first UN peacekeeping operations were the UN Truth Supervision Organization (UNTSO) and UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP). Both still exist today,

Rescuing the Nation-State

123

rivalry, they helped freeze potentially dangerous armed conflicts in which both the East and the West had a stake. By sending in the United Nations, they aimed to prevent these conflicts from spilling out of control and heighten East-West tensions.11 When Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali introduced the concept of peacebuilding into the United Nations in his 1992 “Agenda for Peace,”12 the global environment had fundamentally changed. The Soviet Union had collapsed only a few months earlier. It was the same year in which Francis Fukuyama had published his euphoric book The End of History and the Last Man,13 predicting that social development had found its final form of social organization with the spread of liberal democracy. Peacebuilding was to help all those countries with internal problems and conflicts to adopt liberal democracy as a remedy for their problems. Then peace meant liberal democracy and peacebuilding was the tool to achieve this. Had peacekeeping originally aimed only at ending the fighting between two warring national armies, peacebuilding was far more ambiguous in aiming at introducing a political system with a conflict-ridden country that would ensure peace among communities. While peacekeeping was apolitical, peacebuilding was highly political – one could even say ideological. Roland Paris, one of the leading scholars and critic in this field, described peacebuilding to be “in effect an enormous experiment that involves transplanting Western models of social, political and economic organization into war-shattered states in order to control conflict: in other words, pacification through political and economic liberalization.”14 Peacebuilding was always meant to be liberal peacebuilding. Such liberal peacebuilding was only possible in a post-Cold War peace order that was dominated by the West.

68 years later, and are symbols for peacekeeping that helped freeze but not necessarily solve the conflicts that led to the wars. They also deserve credit for having stopped the killings in wars – most of the killings, at least. 11 Winrich Kuehne, founding director of the German Center for International Peace Operations in Berlin, made a very similar observation for traditional peacekeeping in 2001. In his reply to the 2000 Brahimi Report (UN Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, “Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations”), he called (traditional) UN peacekeeping a child of the Cold War. He argued that the interest of superpowers in UN peacekeeping was essentially limited to freezing regional conflicts and preventing them from escalating into global – and possibly even nuclear – conflicts (Kuehne, “Zukunft der UN-Friedenseinsätze”). 12 Boutros-Ghali, “An Agenda for Peace.” 13 Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man. 14 Paris, “Peacebuilding and the Limits of Liberal Internationalism.”

124 

On Building Peace

Now, 25 years later, we must accept that liberal peacebuilding has largely failed to bring peace to countries with intrastate armed conflicts and that, with global Western dominance fading, liberal democracy as a predominant concept for peacebuilding is losing its appeal. Liberal peacebuilding may no longer be a feasible concept for bringing peace to intrastate conflicts. Peacebuilding must therefore be reinvented to reflect the changing global political environment. Here are three – admittedly insufficient – suggestions that may indicate the direction in which peacebuilding should develop. Peacebuilding must focus on rescuing the nation-state (i) In the United Nations, peacebuilding is leading an increasingly marginalized existence. The main reason is that peacebuilding has never accepted that its real focus should be to rescue failing nation-states from collapse. Instead, peacebuilding was considered a postconflict activity 15 and hence a largely a technical activity aiming at stabilizing a situation after a peace deal was struck through capacity- and institution-building programs modeled on Western concepts of liberal democracy. Peacebuilding, despite its name, was therefore never about building peace but rather about consolidating peace. Peacebuilding was hence about finding postpeace solutions. Once conflict parties had stopped fighting, liberal peacebuilding would consolidate this peace by helping adapt liberal democracy to local conditions through (liberal) capacity building. What constituted the peace in the first place was never considered. If the liberal state system could be made to work, this would automatically create a win-win situation from which all belligerent parties and communities would benefit. Renewed fighting would no longer be necessary or likely.16

15 In its latest review of UN peacebuilding, an advisory group suggested to drop the additive “postconflict” in relation to peacebuilding. But if there is no longer any “postconflict” peacebuilding, this would fundamentally change this concept. However, the panel failed to explain what, in this case, peacebuilding is or should be. See UN Advisory Group of Experts, “Challenge of Sustaining Peace.” 16 In 2007, during late heydays of foreign military interventions when the assumption was that peace was technically achievable, the RAND Corporation issued a Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building in which it lists six priorities to turn failing nation-states around: security, humanitarian relief, governance, economic stabilization, democratization, and development. Despite calling this nation building, there was nothing in this proposal that considered whether those people in question want to live together and, if yes, what form this would take. RAND reflects the typical attitude of liberal peacebuilding that there is no alternative other than a Western concept for a nation-state.

Rescuing the Nation-State

125

However, this postconflict peacebuilding has not worked and we need a very different peacebuilding approach, one that would do what its name suggests: help build peace. To achieve this, peacebuilding would have to transform from essentially being a technical to becoming a political task. And this political task must be to resurrect failing nation-states. There is, however, a politically tricky consequence of such a proposal: peacebuilding would become a deliberate and temporarily limited interference into the internal affairs of a UN member state. While peacekeeping had dealt essentially with interstate relations, peacebuilding would now have to deal with intrastate relations. This proposal would bring peacebuilding in conflict with the present UN Charter.17 Peacebuilding would hence require a change in the UN Charter and a reform of the United Nations. Chapter 5 discusses this in more detail. Peacebuilding would have to become what may be best described as the “art of rescuing nation-states from collapse.” In this, peacebuilding must recognize the full complexity of nation-states and accept that peace is not a predetermined state system but that peace in intrastate conflicts requires solving conflicts over the entire spectrum of the dual character of nation-state. In other words, one would first have to find answers to the question what will hold a country and its feuding communities together and only then consider what form of state institutions would fit best. This can only be the result of negotiations among warring parties – all warring parties! Peacebuilding, therefore, must be stripped off its ideological origin and be placed into the nasty realities of intrastate armed conflicts. Defining peacebuilding as the art of rescuing nation-states would help doing just that: – “Rescuing failing nation-states” would recognize that peacebuilding is an activity that applies solely to solving intrastate (armed) conflicts. It establishes peacebuilding as a separate category of peace interventions that have as their objective the rebuilding of failing, conflict-ridden nation-states. The definition hence makes the distinction between achieving peace in intrastate armed conflicts and achieving peace in interstate wars, an important difference that is, surprisingly, mostly ignored.

17 This is probably the reason why peacebuilding is often so opaque and descriptions of peacebuilding activities shrouded in do-gooding language. The 2015 advisory group report is no exception (UN Advisory Group of Experts, “Challenge of Sustaining Peace”). See also Annex II.

126 

On Building Peace

– “Rescuing failing nation-states” would recognize that peacebuilding interventions would have to reflect an international political will of purposefully interfering in the internal affairs of a failing member state with the aim of protecting a global security and peace order based on individual nation-states. Peacebuilding interventions would hence be primarily justified by the United Nations’ mandate to maintain global peace and security, and less by any humanitarian concerns or the need to protect civilians – although these would remain important considerations! – “Rescuing failing nation-states” would recognize that peacebuilding must be embedded in a collective security system under the United Nations. With this, the proposed definition introduces the principle of legitimacy as a core component for conducting international peacebuilding interventions and distinguishes peacebuilding from unilateral military and civilian interventions driven by national security-related interests. By insisting on a Security Council mandate, it sets the bar high for any international peacebuilding intervention in a member state. While legalizing the interference into the internal affairs of failing member states, it would, in fact, contribute to upholding the principle of national sovereignty by protecting smaller nation-states from arbitrary unilateral interventions. – “Rescuing failing nation-states” would recognize that peacebuilding is not only state building but must also include the subtler aspect of nation building. In other words, this definition acknowledges that it would not be enough to concentrate peacebuilding on a limited number of technical institution- and capacity-building activities, but that peacebuilding has the political task of helping to create greater national unity as a necessary precondition for achieving a lasting peace. This would also imply that UN peacebuilding would have to give much greater room for national solutions that are based on traditional and local customs, history, and experiences. – “Rescuing failing nation-states” would recognize that peacebuilding interventions must act on a mandate given by the Security Council and be independent of all local conflict parties, including of an existing government. In helping to bring peace among communities and political players, peacebuilding must take a comprehensive approach and, in addition to the governments and their institutions, also involve political parties, local communities, religious and traditional leaders, civil society, and even belligerent nonstate actors. Peacebuilding interventions would hence act as an outside party between government forces, local players, and belligerent nonstate actors.

Rescuing the Nation-State

127

(ii) Peacebuilding must lead peacekeeping and not vice versa Even today, most UN peace missions, despite a recent change in name,18 are essentially peacekeeping operations. And although these have become – in the words of the UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) – multidimensional missions, they are still dominated by the deployment of Blue Helmet UN peacekeepers. The United Nations’ continued dependence on peacekeepers has historical roots, but it is no longer the appropriate response. In intrastate armed conflicts, there is rarely, if ever, any peace to keep; these missions must first help build peace.19 Since the end of the Cold War, almost all UN peace interventions are in countries with intrastate armed conflicts, a type of conflict for which UN peacekeeping had not been made. Despite having lost its original raison d’être, UN peacekeeping is still by far the largest UN field operation while peacebuilding remains a marginal activity.20 This is a fundamental mistake. To respond to intrastate armed conflicts, it should be the other way around: UN peacekeepers should be part of a larger UN peacebuilding mission. The reason for placing peacebuilding before peacekeeping is that in intrastate armed conflicts the notion of “peace” has broadened considerably. To bring about peace can no longer be limited to establish security and to end the killings – this of course, too – but must primarily aim at finding political solutions to an ongoing intrastate conflict. Negotiations and not military actions should have the priority. UN peace missions must be political missions – and more importantly, be seen as political missions by all warring parties. With this, the United Nations would indicate that it is ready to talk to all sides and is open to finding political solutions and not imposing them. Today’s UN peace interventions in intrastate armed conflicts demand a combination of assistance efforts unknown to traditional peacekeeping such as caring for the war victims, integrating combatants, supporting transitional justice, and finding compromises among belligerent communities. It means returning those who were internally displaced, promoting 18 In response to the 2015 review of UN peacekeeping operations, the Secretary-General decided to rename all peacekeeping missions as “UN peace missions.” But renaming does not change the fundamental issue of what future UN peace missions should look like. 19 See also Von der Schulenburg, “Keeping or Building Peace?” 20 In fact, the UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations was created in the second half of 1992, hence at a time when traditional peacekeeping to separate feuding armed forces of member states had already ended. It speaks to the deep misunderstanding of the geopolitical changes that happened around and within the United Nations.

128 

On Building Peace

national reconciliation, and fostering national unity. Peace now includes access to justice and the protection of human rights, it means creating national institutions that can provide services, and it means health, education, and job opportunities. Intrastate peace means the rebuilding of more democratic and inclusive nation-states with functioning institutions in which all the formerly belligerent parties and communities can settle their disputes and find a common “home.” The widely held notion that one needs to establish security before building institutions or beginning any recovery/development does not work. In the reality of fragile countries with armed conflicts, there is no such thing as a clear sequence of activities with peacekeeping first and peacebuilding later. In fact, all these aspects are intertwined and must be applied in combination. Building peace in fragile countries with intrastate armed conflicts requires a holistic approach. This holistic approach cannot be a peacekeeping approach – it must be something that could be better called “a comprehensive peacebuilding approach.” Peacekeeping will in most cases remain an important component, but it would only be one of many components. Peacebuilding must develop new operational principles (iii) Traditional peacekeeping applied three basic operational principles: mutual consent, impartiality, and minimum use of force.21 These operational principles had served the United Nations well in situations where it was called upon to help end a war among member states by overseeing the implementation of ceasefires or peace agreements. These peacekeeping principles had been very carefully and wisely chosen. The idea behind them was to give UN peacekeeping interventions – and that meant the engagement of military personnel – a special UN character to distinguish them from other forms of foreign military interventions that were not mandated under the UN Charter. For peacebuilding interventions, these three principles no longer make any sense. In intrastate armed conflicts, the United Nations can no longer be deployed with the consent of all warring parties; it can no longer claim to remain impartial and it often must use greater force if it wants to remain relevant in what are more hostile environments. The United Nations must therefore develop new principles that are internationally accepted and can serve them when intervening in intrastate armed conflicts.22

21 Refer also to Chapter 3.3. 22 See also Annex I.

Rescuing the Nation-State

129

New principles for peacebuilding missions in intrastate conflicts must replace the three operating principles meant for traditional peacekeeping and these must help preserve the special character of UN peace missions. For this, the United Nations must determine what would distinguish its interventions from interventions by countries, regional organizations, or military blocks. What is it that would makes UN peace missions different from aggressive military interventions by foreign countries as, for example, in Syria today? How could such principles help draw a line between the United Nations and military interventions by the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the European Union and NATO, or any other kind of foreign ad hoc coalitions? Such new operating principles for UN peacebuilding interventions are essential for the success or failures of these missions. They must be an in a format that can be understood by the people the United Nations has come to help. This would decide if local communities under the stress of violent internal conflict would accept the United Nations’ special character or reject it as an empty promise. Ultimately, the answer to these questions would define the credibility of UN operations in fragile countries afflicted by armed conflicts. These peacebuilding principles should apply to all aspects of UN operations: from its peacekeepers to its political activities, from its humanitarian to its development assistance, from human rights to legal reforms. These operational principles could help future UN peace missions navigate through increasing complex political environments of intrastate armed conflicts. They could also help manage increasingly complex peace missions and reign in the negative effects of the United Nations’ inherent organizational fragmentation. But, most importantly, such principles should help give UN peace missions greater credibility as a core political player in solving conflicts. Here are seven core operational principles that might help peacebuilding missions: – Legitimacy: Legitimacy is paramount for the credibility of all UN peacebuilding missions. The United Nations must be seen as acting on behalf of the overwhelming majority of its members and not only as serving the special interests of some countries. Although the Security Council is the ultimate decision-maker, greater legitimacy may be created by involving the Peacebuilding Commission23 with its wider and more representative membership. UN peacebuilding missions 23 For a more detailed discussion on UN governance, see Chapter 5.3.

130 

–

–

–

–

On Building Peace

should, if not approved, at least be welcomed/endorsed by regional and/or subregional organizations. By contrast, “invitations” by local governments, as mentioned earlier, are only of a limited political value. They may even be counterproductive. Values: To underline the special character of UN peacebuilding missions, the United Nations must better identify and publicize the core political values it stands for. These should be formulated in easy understandable language(s) and be made public through the local media. They could even be painted on the walls of each UN compound for everybody to see that the United Nations acts on internationally accepted principles and not in its self-interest. Most of these core values will probably be the same for all missions (e.g., human rights, protection of civilians, etc.) but others may be more mission-specific (e.g., society free from transnational crime). Such clearly spelled core values would help protect UN missions from being accused of siding with one side against another and would go a long way to replace – or better, reinterpret – the notion of “impartiality.” Purpose: This is not so much an issue of determining the exact mandate but an issue of communication. A UN peace mission must have a clear vision of what its purpose is. This must be stated in clear language for everybody in the country to understand. The language of Security Council resolutions would simply not do, nor would any of the United Nations’ strategy documents. For a United Nations that is used to a mystifying and often vague bureaucratic language to state the purpose of a UN mission is very difficult. Making its purpose clear would be a healthy exercise also for the UN mission itself. Like its core values, the mission’s purpose should also be manifested on the walls of UN compounds. Independence: UN peace missions must be empowered to act independently – also from host governments. This is of particular importance in intrastate armed conflicts. Inviting governments claim the right to question UN missions and look suspiciously at any UN contact with opposition forces. There must, therefore, be a general understanding that the United Nations would have the right to contact, speak, or invite anyone linked to the conflict. There may be times when Special Representatives must be withdrawn because he/she has lost trust and access to either of the main parties, but a government of a country placed under “peacebuilding” by the UN Security Council should no longer have the right to decide on staffing and troop levels, or have the right to kick out SRSGs. Ownership: UN peacebuilding missions intervening in an intrastate conflict must accept that national ownership is a wider concept than

Rescuing the Nation-State

131

just dealing with a government and national institutions. The UN mission would hence have to develop several alternative approaches and use traditional mechanisms to ensure greater national involvement and ownership. Also, a clear exit strategy would help underline national ownership. This would require determining, at the onset of a UN intervention, the criteria/benchmarks that would trigger a UN exit strategy and the country’s return to full national sovereignty. – Inclusiveness: UN peacebuilding missions must strive to engage all local parties in a conflict – and not only the government or those they like. This will not be easy in the case of armed nonstate actors with extremist agendas. But even the most radical groups have a political rational and are supported by local communities. If the nonstate actors are unwilling to engage, local communities that are sympathetic to their cause may nonetheless be open to negotiated solutions. For this reason, military interventions are mostly counterproductive as they tend to alienate those communities instead of engaging them. Inclusiveness would require the capacity to clearly analyze the root causes of the conflict, to identify the various interests of communities in the conflict, and to understand the motivation behind those armed groups that claim to represent the interests of those communities. – Trust: The United Nations must create trust among all parties involved, even among those nonstate actors that object to the United Nations’ presence. This can only be achieved by “keeping all hands above the table” and conducting a policy of openness, even when admitting mistakes or problems. If people feel that they can trust the United Nations, they will also develop sympathies. The United Nations does not have to be a strong and powerful player; modesty is often a greater door opener. For this to happen, a UN peacebuilding mission must observe a fine line between confidentiality and secrecy. For example, meetings with any one party to the conflict may be held confidentially, but not secretly. Confidential meetings will contribute to building trust; secret meetings will erode trust.

4.2

The Nation-State and Belligerent Nonstate Actors

What is a just war? This was a central issue in Christian Europe for church leaders such as St. Augustine (fifth century AD) and St. Thomas Aquinas (fifteenth century AD). Although their thinking on just wars is largely forgotten today, they deserve a new look. There is much that would still

132 

On Building Peace

apply to wars of today, including intrastate armed conflicts.24 One of the central questions in the theory of a just war was: Who has the right to go to war? At the time the answer was very clear: only princes had the right to go to war. All other armed conflicts were regarded as rebellions and considered high treason. Their leaders, if apprehended, would be hung, drawn and quartered, an exceptionally brutal death penalty. Today, we could probably make the analogy that only governments have the right to go to war. The reason was – and still is – to prevent anarchy in which each and every local leader could try to gain power and wealth through the use of force. Could this be the reason why peacebuilding largely ignores the powerful and crucial role of belligerent nonstate actors in intrastate armed conflicts? Belligerent nonstate actors, whether we like it or not, are conducting wars and are now crucial political players who represent the “other” side in intrastate armed conflicts. This makes them integral parts of the nation-state, despite them acting outside of national (and international) law by usurping the monopoly of the state to use force. Belligerent nonstate actors are both the result of nation-state failure and contributors to nation-state failure. Weak state authorities and belligerent nonstate actors are, in many ways, two sides of the same phenomena: collapsing nation-states. As we see in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or South Sudan, intrastate armed conflicts can be enormously destructive. For local communities on both sides of the conflict, these conflicts are mostly “loser-loser options”; there are only a few profiteers of intrastate violence. But it also appears that it is this loser-loser aspect that makes intrastate armed conflict last so much longer than interstate wars normally do.25 Like weak states, nonstate actors have existed throughout history. But it is only now that their influence and outreach has become a global security threat of previously unknown proportions. Hence, there cannot be any meaningful peace processes without first recognizing their existence, and without developing a strategy of how to deal with nonstate actors. Such an approach does not exist today. There is currently no policy and guidance of 24 In his Summa Theologica written sometime around 1270 AD, St. Thomas Aquinas not only set the principle to limit those who could go to war, he also set two further principles for a just war, namely (i) that there must be a just cause and (ii) that its ultimate aims would have to be to bring peace. These would be good principles to be applied today for our interventions in intrastate armed conflicts. I try to reflect them in the suggested seven new operational principles for peacebuilding missions. 25 WWII lasted “only” six years, whereas the intrastate armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, depending on how one measures them, have lasted many more years: in Afghanistan since 1979, and in Iraq since 2003 – and there is no end in sight.

Rescuing the Nation-State

133

when and how to deal with belligerent nonstate actors. Instead, we follow a policy of bedeviling nonstate actors as people that are so bad that no dialogue is possible. Unfortunately, this leaves only the military option of trying to annihilate them. However, all peacebuilding interventions in intrastate armed conflicts will, at one time or another, have to make a decision between fighting or negotiating, and between including or excluding belligerent nonstate actors. Of course, there is also the more likely possibility to decide for a mix between fighting and negotiating. Here, however, let us look only at the two principle options. They are both tricky and risk having unpredictable consequences that could decide between success or failure of a UN peace mission: Fighting belligerent nonstate actors i The clear preference was, and still is, to confront belligerent nonstate actors with military force.26 The West, and here in particular the United States, felt militarily so strong that it could strike against any enemy anywhere in the world and be successful. Why then negotiate with belligerent nonstate actors who were portrayed mostly as ramshackle, ill-equipped groups of disturbed radicals with mostly criminal and obsolete Middle Age ideologies? The 9/11 attacks only reinforced this perspective. The “war on terror” was born and with it a new type of global “war” that was exclusively directed against belligerent nonstate actors, mainly but not only against extreme Islamist organizations such as the Taliban, al-Qaida, al-Shabaab, Islamic State, or Boko Haram. The “war on terror” also became a convenient cover for other governments facing their own belligerent nonstate actors to justify the use of military force against them. They simply decried them as terrorists.27 After all, these nonstate actors used force against the state to achieve their aims, so why not respond with force? 26 There are also cases where the West sees the government as its enemy, as in the case of Syria, and sides with some of the opposition forces. A war with government forces is mostly a quick affair, as seen in Afghanistan (if one considers the Taliban a regular government force), Iraq, and Libya. However, in all these cases, this leads to an armed conflict with nonstate actors that lasts much longer. 27 Immediately after taking power in June 2014, President Poroshenko of the Ukraine branded those who had taken over local governors’ and mayors’ offices in Eastern Ukraine as terrorists and sent in an array of militia and the remnants of the national army. This made a negotiated resolution no longer possible – at least not for the time being. The uprising in Eastern Ukraine had started very much like events in Kiev’s Maidan Square by taking over government buildings. Who is a terrorist and who is not primarily depends on who has the greater powers and the better friends, it seems.

134 

On Building Peace

The rise of belligerent nonstate actors completely changed the role of the military. Largely freed from having to deal with the threat of interstate wars, national armies were now almost exclusively engaged to fight in intrastate armed conflicts with the aim of dislodging and destroying belligerent nonstate actors. Today, virtually all armed forces fight irregular belligerent nonstate actors, and no longer regular armed forces from an enemy country. Countries such as the Philippines, Nepal, India, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Chad, Mali, DRC, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, and recently also the new rump government in Libya are examples. Many of these national armies receive armaments as well as financial and logistical support from foreign powers, mostly, but not only, from Western powers, in the hopes of influencing the outcome. The Russian army fought the Chechnya uprising against Russian rule at great human and f inancial expense.28 The ex-Yugoslav/Serbian army fought against Kosovar Albanian rebel forces in what was then an intrastate armed conflict.29 In Afghanistan and Iraq, the West helped create, train, equip, and finance new national armed forces for the sole purpose of fighting local armed nonstate actors. In all these cases, the job of national armed forces was essentially to protect the state from an internal armed opposition, and no longer against any outside enemy30 – a fundamental change that has long-term consequences for global peace and security.31 In the past, Western armed forces have been called upon in the fight against nonstate actors in their respective countries. The most striking example was the British army that fought the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland for almost 30 years before a negotiated settlement ended 28 These were in fact two wars, the first from 1994 to 1996, and the second from 1999 to 2009. 29 There is also now the conflict over the Ukraine and the allegation that Russian troops support directly, or through volunteers, the Ukrainian secessionist movements in Eastern Ukraine. Whatever the truth may be, this would still be an involvement in an intrastate armed conflict. 30 This has not always meant fighting nonstate actors. NATO forces fought the Serbian army over Kosovo, and Russian forces fought the Georgian army over South Ossetia and Abkhazia. But these conflicts were also essentially part of intrastate armed conflicts. What these conflicts have in common is that outside military powers took the side of secessionist movements that were, strictly speaking, belligerent nonstate actors. 31 One such consequence of intrastate warfare is the emergence of private foreign security contractors that behave increasingly like mercenary armies. Over the last 20 years, the West – and here in particular the United States – must have recruited, trained, and led into combat hundreds of thousands of such “mercenary soldiers” officered by US-owned companies but recruited from all over the world.

Rescuing the Nation-State

135

the conflict. The Spanish army fought the Basque National Liberation Movement, ETA, for almost 52 years. With the perceived threat of terrorism32 in the wake of 9/11, the tendency in Western countries to rely on its armed forces to ensure internal security has increased. When in January 2015 three individual terrorists killed seventeen people33 in Paris, both France and Belgium not only armed their police with submachine guns, they also mobilized large sections of their armed forces to patrol the streets and protect public places. Germany has cleared the legal grounds to call on its Bundeswehr in the case of terrorist attacks. In the optimism following the end of the Cold War, the use of national armies as internal security forces had been unthinkable. However, far more important is that NATO, US-led coalitions, or simply forces of the former colonial powers of France and the United Kingdom now also increasingly intervene militarily in intrastate armed conflicts outside their own regions. It was the relative ease with which Western armies could depose existing governments in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya that would contribute to misjudging the consequences of such violent regime change such as the threats emanating from anarchy, intrastate armed conflicts, and the rise of armed nonstate actors. Overwhelming military force is still successful in f ighting regular armed forces. However, if the opponents are belligerent nonstate actors, overwhelming force is rarely, if ever, successful. In Afghanistan, US forces needed only five weeks to oust the Taliban government in Kabul,34 but once facing the Taliban in an intrastate armed conflict it could not prevail in sixteen years; in Iraq, it took a US-led coalition only three weeks to defeat the armies of Saddam Hussein, but ten years of fighting with various belligerent nonstate actors without success; in Libya, NATO’s air forces needed six months to smash Gaddafi’s regular forces, but this left behind an anarchy it could no longer control. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the costs in blood and money to fight nonstate actors were probably hundreds of times that of 32 Of course, in the past, terrorists could also impact political events. It was, after all, a terrorist attack by the Bosnian-Serbian separatist Gavrilo Principe whose assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo triggered events that would lead to WWI. However, it was only after 9/11 that terrorism has become an all-defining issue for Western governments and the war on terrorism – whatever this may mean – a global issue. 33 During the two days of the terrorist attack in Paris on the satirical paper Charlie Hebdo (7 to 9 January 2015), seventeen people were killed. 34 In Afghanistan, one could hardly speak of a regular armed force – but, for the Taliban it was also not possible to hold cities and fixed positions. Only after they melted into the villages and mountains of Afghanistan did they become a force that proved impossible to defeat.

136 

On Building Peace

the initial military campaigns against state forces.35 But this meant that foreign armies could not win these wars. In fact, in all these cases, Western military interventions have made a bad situation only worse. When in 2001 the United States went to war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, its main objective was to destroy, for once and forever, any safe haven for terrorist organizations. Now, sixteen years later, the opposite has happened. There are not only more safe havens for terrorist groups in many more countries, extremist Islamic groups now control large chunks of territories with millions of people. They have mutated from clandestine terrorist cells into creating de facto state institutions. The West had greatly underestimated the resolve and resourcefulness of belligerent nonstate actors. Nonstate actors can rely on the motivation and loyalties of their followers, and even on their willingness to sacrifice their lives for the cause.36 Their fighting ability is based on simple and readily available technologies such as small arms, RPGs, homemade bombs, and weapons they can take during successful raids on government forces. And while we tend to perceive belligerent nonstate actors as misguided loners, we underestimate the often substantial open or hidden local support they have. Nonstate actors have another important comparative advantage. While the costs for Western military responses easily reach the trillions of dollars, the costs for nonstate actors’ in operating their forces may be counted in only tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of dollars. No fighting force, not even that of a rich West, can maintain wars in which its costs are a thousand or even ten thousand times higher than those of enemy forces. Despite the bad experiences made by the far more sophisticated and stronger military forces of NATO and US-led coalitions, the United Nations 35 In Afghanistan, US forces lost “only” twelve soldiers during the initial campaign to unseat the Taliban government, but 3,481 of its men and women during the subsequent intrastate armed conflict phase; in Iraq, the US-led coalition lost 211 soldiers in its efforts to overcome the Iraqi army, but 4,800 soldiers during the subsequent uprising and armed intrastate conflict. These numbers do not include private security contractors nor do they include casualties of US security companies that were (and are) operating on behalf of the Pentagon in the two countries. See “Iraq Coalition Causality Count.” 36 In 2001, the United States had promised a reward of $25 million for any information that could lead to the arrest or killing of the Taliban leader Mullah Omar. But Mullah Omar was never betrayed and died twelve years later in a Quetta hospital without the United States knowing about it. By contrast, a US Navy Seal who was among those sent to kill Osama bin Laden in May 2011 broke his silence after only a year, despite having been sworn to silence. This suggests a strong moral code among the Taliban fighters (compared to US military forces) who regard the West offering such a reward as being morally corrupt.

Rescuing the Nation-State

137

somewhat belatedly followed the trend of seeking predominantly military solutions. In 2008, DPKO adjusted its principle of a “minimum use of force for self-defense” with to the “use of force in fulfillment of its mandate.” That can mean almost anything. In the Congo and now also in Mali, UN peacekeepers have a robust mandate that allow them to conduct military operations against armed nonstate actors. Whether this is a wise development remains to be seen. In any case, this makes UN peacekeepers themselves, more than in the past, a belligerent party in an already-complex intrastate armed conflict. Maybe we should better listen to the 2015 recommendations of the High-Level Independent Panel on United Nations Peace Operations that reminded the United Nations and its members that “politics must drive the design and implementation of peace operations.”37 ii Engaging belligerent nonstate actors Proponents of military solutions overlook that most belligerent nonstate actors often have a considerable local following and support. Their support is mostly due to local grievances over corrupt national governments, selfishness of national elites and the meddling of foreign powers in their internal affairs. While foreign interventions are quick to decry belligerent nonstate actors as terrorists, they tend to support the very governments and elites that are at the root of the problems. “Regular” government forces behave abominably and many communities may feel better protected by nonstate actors. This also includes the manner in which foreign militaries conduct war.38 Western military operations to hunt down belligerent nonstate actors can have the opposite effect; they dramatically enhance local support to those nonstate actors. In Afghanistan, the arrival and spread of NATO forces appeared to have contributed to swelling the ranks of the Taliban – even in non-Pashtun regions. In Iraq, the emergence of Islamic State was a direct consequence of ten years of US-led occupation. Western military operations tended therefore to find themselves in a vicious cycle: the more they fight belligerent nonstate actors, the stronger they seemed to become. Even

37 UN High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, “Uniting our Strength for Peace.” 38 In 2005, the US army conducted an all-out assault on Fallujah, Iraq. When the United Nations visited the city a year later, virtually all houses and public buildings were destroyed, a terrible scene of destruction. Today, the same appears to have happened in Ramadi, Fallujah, and Aleppo, and may now be happening in Mosul. The fight against Islamist forces takes place in cities and not in the open field, and civilians as human shield have become military assets against overwhelming foreign military forces.

138 

On Building Peace

so-called “military surges by US forces” in Iraq and Afghanistan could not break this vicious cycle.39 Wouldn’t failures to achieve decisive military victories over local nonstate actors suggest the need for considering negotiations instead? Neither the West nor the United Nations have developed any concise policies on how and when to engage belligerent nonstate actors politically. Quite to the contrary, the tendency is to support national governments and treat armed nonstate actors as spoilers or terrorists. This can lead to contradictory positions. For example, the Security Council resolution that established the UN mission in Mali first reaffirms the need for mutual consent and impartiality, but condemns in the next paragraph belligerent nonstate actors as “terrorist, extremist and armed groups,” only to urge all national and international players to “cut off all ties with terrorist organizations such as AQIM, MUJAO, Ansar Eddine.”40 It is, therefore, not surprising that those belligerent nonstate actors consider the UN mission in Mali, MINUSMA, as a legitimate target. By August 2016, a total of 106 UN peacekeepers and staff were killed in Mali, making it one of the deadliest UN peace missions. Fighting belligerent nonstate actors without opening the door to negotiations may hence lead to failure. Without involving them, there may not be any real peace process. Concerns that this would give visibility for the ideologies of nonstate actors and credence to their demands is the reason why negotiations rarely take place. Negotiations would raise belligerent nonstate actors to a status that would potentially make them equal to governments of nation-states. Local governments are likely to reject this for fears that this could further undermine their already shaky state authority and question the state monopoly on the use of force. Local governments may also reject negotiations due to self-interest(s). Any negotiation would most probably end in sharing power and national wealth with groups of people who had no access to this previously. Making concessions is often linked with losing face, and ultimately in losing the grip on power. The Western-dominated post-Cold War peace order has not helped negotiating with belligerent nonstate actors either. Negotiated settlements are compromise solutions and it is feared that any compromise could include 39 In the fight over Mosul, we are repeatedly told that Islamic State is about to be beaten. But looking at the experience of dealing with the Taliban, it remains to be seen if the conquest of cities and territories will be a decisive victory over IS. 40 UN Security Council Resolution 2100 (25 April 2013) establishing MINUSMA with a robust mandate.

Rescuing the Nation-State

139

elements that are seen contrary to the ideas of a liberal democracy and other values that the West upholds. A particularly sensitive issue here is gender equality. The choice between amnesty or international court is often a controversial issue. Peace settlements tend to give amnesty and respectability to warlords, human rights abusers, and leaders of criminal syndicates. This could have awful results, send the wrong messages, and undermine negotiated solutions. For example, the 1998 Lomé Peace Agreement for Sierra Leone made the leader of the notorious United Revolutionary Front (UDF), Foday Sankoh – a man personally responsible for some of the worst atrocities41 – the de facto vice president. In an ironic twist, he was put in charge of Sierra Leone’s blood diamonds, which played such an awful role in financing his former henchmen during the civil war. But sending those who have committed atrocities to an international court is easily seen as a victor’s justice imposed by a West that excludes its own culprits from any such justice. In Afghanistan, the 2001 Bonn Peace Agreement brought back many of the former predatory warlords that had plagued and robbed Afghan society for decades. Although many were, by any definition, war criminals, they returned to power and recognition under Western-sponsored peace negotiations – hardly an argument for a negotiated peace. Today, with the help of the West, one of the worst human rights abuser among them, General Rashid Dostum, 42 is the country’s first vice president. Recently, the Afghan government made peace with one, if not the most notorious Afghan 41 Foday Sankoh was responsible for “short sleeves or long sleeves,” a choice given to victims to tell his torturers if they should sever their arm at the wrist or at the elbow. In a grotesque effort to make Foday Sankoh internationally more acceptable for peace talks, the then-personal representative of President Clinton, Jessy Jackson, called him the “Mandela of West Africa.” After Somalia and Rwanda, the United States had no interest getting involved in any new African civil war and wanted this peace accord at almost any cost. Sankoh later rebelled again, lost his job and died while in the custody of the UN/Sierra Leonean Special Court in 2003. 42 Rashid Dostum is now the f irst vice president of Afghanistan and the alleged grantor for stability after the withdrawal of most of the Western troops. He has, however, one of the most horrible human rights records, first for working for the communist regime, and later for working in support of the US military. During the times of procommunist President Najibullah (1986-1992), he led an Uzbek militia force and was reported to be responsible for brutal killings of mujahedeen prisoners and the mutilation of Pashtun women. After the US-led invasion, he reappeared from exile to join American forces to defeat the Taliban. After the fall of Kunduz, he took about 3,000 pro-Taliban combatants as prisoners and forced them into large, airtight containers. During their transportation to the Sheberghan Desert they either suffocated or were shot upon arrival. What became known as the Dasht-i-Leili massacre was a terrible war crime; worse, US Special Forces were present during, if not also implicated, in these atrocities.

140 

On Building Peace

warlords, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, nicknamed “the butcher of Kabul.” He has been removed from the Security Council list of sanctioned war criminals while the Taliban, who control large parts of the country now, remain bedeviled. What message for peace in Afghanistan can this be? In an effort to circumvent any negotiation with undesirable belligerent nonstate actors, the West often tries to create its own pro-Western local opposition by promoting expatriates into high government positions. For example, during the second round of presidential elections in Afghanistan in 2014, a mysterious 2.5 million new voters emerged that made Ashraf Ghani, a Pashtun expatriate43 close to the US administration, the new Afghan president. We have seen similar developments in Iraq with the promotion of the US-based Ahmed Chalabi or in Libya with the support to the largely expatriate Libyan National Council. In Syria, the West backed the largely expatriate Syrian Opposition Coalition. 44 On the flip side, many belligerent nonstate actors may not be prepared to negotiate – or worse, internal conflicts make it impossible for them to negotiate. In fact, they may see their very existence dependent on maintaining an armed conflict at a distance to foreign invading forces. For example, the Taliban had been excluded from the original peace process in Bonn in November/December 2001. The United States had come to destroy the Taliban and its regime and, at that time, was sure that this could easily be achieved.45 Any negotiations with the Taliban, it was feared, would have given a defeated Islamist group a new lease of life. In retrospect, it was very different. Three years later, the Taliban was back in force and today it is close to toppling the Afghan government, and with it, to sink a Western trillion-dollar investment to turn the country into a liberal democracy. When the United States finally came around and wanted to negotiate, it was too late. By this time, the withdrawal of NATO had been

43 After relying mostly on Afghan leaders from minority groups during their occupation, the Soviet Union prepared its departures by making a member of the majority Pashtun ethnicity, Mohammad Najibullah, the president of Afghanistan. The West appears to have followed this example. It only felt the need to go through a phony election to achieve this. 44 The SOC has had so little influence on developments inside Syria, that the United States had stopped supporting it. 45 The Afghan Northern Alliance, a Tajik-dominated Afghan armed opposition to the Taliban, had, with the massive support of American Special Forces and air strikes, conquered Kabul from the Taliban in mid-November 2001 and, hence, created facts on the ground for the ongoing negotiations in Bonn. There no longer was any real transition possible. To allow the Northern Alliance to take Kabul would later turn out to have been one additional fatal blow to the credibility of the Bonn peace process.

Rescuing the Nation-State

141

announced and the Taliban no longer wanted to speak to the United States and its NATO allies. Today, the chances of Ashraf Ghani’s survival depend largely on his ability to strike a deal with the Taliban. This has its irony. For years, the Taliban was described as a group of religious zealots, killers, women abusers, etc. that could only be dealt with through a gun barrel; now, the Taliban has turned into the guarantor of Afghanistan’s future stability. 46 In Sudan, after more than 20 years of civil war with secessionist movements in the South, the government finally agreed to negotiate. In this case, the solution was a secession and the creation of a new state, South Sudan. But this went wrong; only two years later the newly created country submerged into an intrastate armed conflict of its own making. This being said, there are qualified successes in implementing negotiated peace deals with belligerent nonstate actors. Angola, Cambodia, Nepal, Burundi and the Central African Republic are some of the examples for this. The 2016 peace deal in Colombia with FARC, which has brought Colombia’s president the Nobel Peace Prize, is another such example. Engaging nonstate actors in the hope of finding negotiated settlements may not guarantee success. However, negotiations have the advantage that they kill fewer people, bring less destruction, and do not destabilize entire regions. Despite the mixed outcome, we should develop clearer guidelines under which such peace negotiations with belligerent nonstate actors could take place. However, such guidelines would have to be based on internationally accepted norms for intrastate relations – and these norms do not yet exist.

4.3

The Nation-State and Peace Agreements

Peace settlements and peace agreements for intrastate armed conflicts are far more challenging to conclude than those for interstate wars. This makes intrastate armed conflicts last for very long periods. Even when it is possible to halt the fighting temporarily, it tends to reignite again. For example, Afghanistan has been going through a succession of intrastate armed conflicts now for over 40 years, while the Korean War lasted only 46 Already in 2010, James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation and former US representative to Afghanistan, had urged President Obama to begin negotiating with the Taliban. See Dobbins, “Talking to the Taliban.” Unfortunately, by then it was too late and such efforts have led to nothing.

142 

On Building Peace

three years; the Colombian armed conflict with FARC lasted for 52 years, while WWII lasted only six years. 47 Despite their differences, peace negotiations to end intrastate armed conflicts follow very similar practices than those applied to end interstate wars. With the help of foreign mediators – not necessarily UN mediators – the leaders of warring parties are taken to secluded locations in other countries. The idea is to isolate the conflict parties from their troubled environments and reduce the chances that local interests could spoil the negotiations. Such isolation allows foreign mediators to exercise considerable pressure on the leadership of conflict parties and to influence the terms of emerging peace agreements. The outcomes are out-of-country peace agreements on which the affected populations back home have virtually no influence. Typical examples are the Geneva Accords for Afghanistan in 1988, 48 the Bicesse (Portugal) Peace Accord for Angola in 1991, the Chapultepec (Mexico) Peace Accord for El Salvador in 1992, the Dayton Agreement for BosniaHerzegovina in 1995, the Lomé Peace Agreement for Sierra Leone in 1999, the Bonn Accord for Afghanistan in 2001,49 the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement for Liberia in 2003, and the Naivasha (Kenya) Comprehensive Sudan Peace Agreement of 2005. This list is not complete. Out-of-country peace negotiations are generally acceptable in the case of interstate peace agreements. Here, governments, though their entrusted 47 This assessment is only right if we consider the duration of actual f ighting. Interstate armed conflicts tend to become mostly frozen conflicts such as the Korean War as well as the India-Pakistan or the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. 48 The 1988 Geneva Accords for Afghanistan were still a more traditional peace agreement between two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan – and this, although both countries were, formally at least, not at war and the aim of the agreement was a intrastate peace. While the United Nations Good Offices Mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan (UNGOMAP) had the traditional peacekeeping role of monitoring the withdrawal of foreign forces, it was also asked to help find internal Afghan political solutions for the divided country. Concluded just before the end of the Cold War, this made the 1988 Geneva Accords a bridge between traditional peacekeeping and what would later become peacebuilding interventions in intrastate conflicts. 49 What is often referred to as the Bonn Peace Accord was, strictly speaking, not a peace agreement but rather an agreement for a transitional process toward peace. Lakhdar Brahimi, the chief UN negotiator, gave it, therefore, a realistic name (see UN Security Council, “Agreement on Provisional Arrangements in Afghanistan Pending the Re-establishment of Permanent Government Institutions”). However, a second more inclusive local peace agreement never materialized. In 2004, the Constitutional Loya Jirga (a more traditional Afghan constitutional assembly) adopted a typical Western-style constitution for Afghanistan. The Taliban and other belligerent opposition groups were not included in these consultations. With this, Afghanistan missed the opportunity to turn its constitution into a real peace agreement.

Rescuing the Nation-State

143

delegations, negotiate and the outcome is mostly decided only after repeated consultations between the delegations and their governments.50 However, such out-of-country peace negotiations are far more problematic for reaching peace agreements to end intrastate armed conflicts. Those represented in peace negotiations for intrastate conflicts rarely reflect the full spectrum of the many groups and interests involved in the conflict. They often exclude powerful nonstate actors who were not invited for fear that their demands could be unacceptable. To overcome the shortcomings of initial out-of-country peace negotiations, they may have to be followed by a second round of in-country peace negotiations. In fact, intrastate armed conflicts would need two peace agreements: a first focusing on creating the conditions for an in-country dialogue and a second that would consist of a wider dialogue among belligerent communities over common national identities and over the state institutions they would have to build. While the initial peace agreement would mostly be reached out-of-country and should aim at transitional power-sharing arrangements, the second peace agreement would have to have to be the result of an in-country process and aim at agreeing on a new national constitution. Initial peace agreements: transitional arrangement (i) Out-of-country peace talks will never be able to negotiate a comprehensive peace agreement. Whatever they agree on, it will most likely not end the intrastate conflict. It may only be an initial step toward a more lasting settlement. Accepting this truth would make peace negotiations easier. There are at least seven aspects that make initial peace agreements for intrastate conflicts so much more difficult, something further emphasizing the need to only aim for a preliminary agreement mapping a transitional phase: – Inconsequential peace negotiators In the case of interstate wars, it is generally clear who negotiates peace agreements: the delegates representing their respective governments. It is assumed that the same governments that send their armed forces into war can also withdraw their armed forces and end the war. Governments may

50 This can also go wrong. The Treaty of Versailles was a dictated peace agreement and strongly rejected by much of the German population as unfair and unacceptable. This contributed to a chain of events that cumulated in WWII.

144 

On Building Peace

change in the process of negotiations,51 but, as a rule, one could expect that those who negotiate a peace settlement will later also be able and willing to implement it. This is rarely the case when negotiating a peace deal to end an intrastate armed conflict. Those sitting around a table isolated in a resort hotel may not reflect the real powers on the battlefield. They may also not represent the different interests of affected local communities. On the one side, there is often a weak government that has either lost its legitimacy, or the control over much of their country, or both. On the other side, there is even greater uncertainty of who represents nonstate actors. Often only moderate nonstate actors are invited. And there are those who are considered too radical to be invited for peace talks. These may include some of the most powerful nonstate actors.52 They are excluded on the assumption that they make demands that are too radical to be considered for peace deals. To fill the vacuum, mostly at the insistence of Western countries, these peace deals include groups of expatriate politicians, many of whom have no roots in their former home country as they had often lived abroad for decades. In other words, in peace negotiations for intrastate armed conflicts nobody has the power to implement what has been agreed to. They neither control all the territories nor all the armed forces and militants. That these agreements are negotiated out-of-country only exacerbates the adopted unrealistic peace deal that are unlikely to be observed by field commanders.53 – Failing ceasefires A standard feature of peace negotiations for interstate wars are ceasefires and an agreement for the separation of warring armed forces. In fact, most such interstate peace agreements are nothing more than a glorified ceasefire agreement. However, ceasefires make little sense in intrastate 51 In 1917, after having taken power in a revolution, the Bolsheviks negotiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany and its allies, and in 1919 the representatives of the newly formed German Republic signed the Treaty of Versailles following WWI. In both cases, these were governments that were not responsible for the wars they wanted to end, but accepted the deeper responsibility as representatives of their respective countries. 52 In virtually all of today’s peace negotiations, Islamist groups are excluded (i.e., in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Mali, etc.). 53 The September 2016 Russian/US-agreed ceasefire for Aleppo could not hold because some of the main propagandists in the f ight over East Aleppo were not party to this agreement. This created a pointed problem with the al-Nusra front, an aff iliate of al-Qaida in Syria. It controlled much of East Aleppo and had no interest in keeping to this ceasefire. Had the ceasefire succeeded, they might have become the joint target of both Russia and the United States. The ceasefire collapsed therefore within only a few days.

Rescuing the Nation-State

145

armed conflicts and where they are concluded they never last. This deprives peace mediators in intrastate armed conflicts of one of the most important preconditions of peace negotiations: a halt in fighting and, with it, the creation of space for further negotiations. For ceasefires to work, it must be possible to separate the conflict parties. This is relatively easy in wars between countries. There are front lines and national borders behind which fighting armies can be withdrawn. In such wars, affected civilians are likely to flee battlefields to seek protection in their respective countries. Rarely are civilians stuck in a no-man’s-land between clashing armies, and where they are, ceasefire agreements can help evacuate them. This is a very different situation in intrastate armed conflicts. There are no clear front lines and no national borders. Local communities are often too intermingled to be able to separate and regionally divide them. This would be made more difficult by the fact that most intrastate armed conflicts are not fought in open spaces but inside heavily populated urban centers. Today’s battlefields in Aleppo, Mosul, and Ramadi are examples of this. Ceasefire agreements in intrastate armed conflicts aimed at separating hostile communities risk taking on the character of ethnic cleansing. In addition to the suffering this would entail, it would create a patchwork country of disjointed communities. This would make peace even more difficult. Ending intrastate armed conflicts would require keeping communities together, as well as those that support different sides in the conflict. Civilian populations are part of intrastate armed conflicts – if only as human shields – and must also be party to conflict solutions. – Evasive peace terms Peace following interstate wars is mostly identif ied with stopping the fighting, or what Johan Galtung called a “negative peace.” Such negative peace would allow each of the warring countries, instead of pursuing war, to begin focusing on rebuilding their respective countries. Even if there is no final peace settlement, the relations between the two warring countries would, over time, normalize. However, for intrastate armed conflicts the situation is very different. The end of fighting would not bring peace; if indeed such a negative peace could ever be achieved. The problem is that separating hostile communities and fighters would not be possible. A peace settlement in an intrastate armed conflict must find solutions that would allow formerly belligerent parties to live together again. This means people who once fought each other

146 

On Building Peace

must live as neighbors in the same streets that had previously been their battle grounds. This is difficult to achieve and, what Gatlung described as a “positive peace,” might hence remain highly evasive. To have any chance of success, intrastate peace agreements would have to be far more complex peace agreements or, as we suggest here, consist of a succession of peace agreements. – Unclear visions for postconflict governance Peace agreements in interstate wars never consider issues such as what political system and what governments the warring countries have or should have. It is not needed to conclude an interstate peace agreement. This is the opposite case for peace negotiations in intrastate armed conflicts. Now, what postconflict political system and what kind of government – even if this only for a transitional period – are crucial questions that would have to be set up to ensure peace. What would be the power-sharing agreements, how to allocate and control power and national wealth are vital issues conflicting parties have to find answers to before any peace agreement can be concluded.54 Hopes that any postconflict governance would take on the form of liberal democracy are now fading.55 But what could then replace this concept? Like the notion of an evasive peace, the question over the right postconflict governance system will plague any peace negotiations. This becomes an even greater issue if the peace negotiations include nonstate actors who have radically different ideas on how to organize a future common nationstate. Extreme Islamist groups, especially, may insist on an Islamic state and the introduction of Sharia law. One should also not forget the demands of separatist movements, which may derail peace negotiations over the issue of the unity of a future nation-state. A compromise solution may result in a nonviable nation-state.

54 Following a 1988 negotiated ceasefire between Iran and Iraq, the role of UN peacekeepers was mainly to monitor the separation of the forces of both countries. In doing this, the United Nations never considered what kind of governments both sides had. This was a “luxury” the United Nations no longer has when dealing with intrastate conflicts. See also Box 3.2. 55 While the 2003 US-led intervention in Iraq had come with clear – though unrealistic – ideas of what nation building in a post-Saddam Iraq should look like, the 2014 US-led intervention in Iraq against Islamic State appears to have abandoned promoting concepts of what a post-IS Iraq could look like. This is a major shift in US military interventions, and therefore US foreign policy – an indication that the post-Cold War hopes of creating a world in the image of the West no longer exists.

Rescuing the Nation-State

147

– Transitional justice A decision over what should happen, in any postconflict environment, to those guilty of major crimes such as crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing or genocide will hang over all peace negotiations. The answers are quite different for interstate wars and intrastate armed conflicts. After the Iraqi invasion, it was the United States deciding who would go on trial and who would not. Whereas Saddam Hussein and some of his most important lieutenants faced trial, and some the death penalty, those who were responsible for the US-led invasion walked free.56 This was a victor’s justice. To end an intrastate armed conflict, justice will be far more difficult to implement. Indeed, a general amnesty may be the price that must be paid for a peace settlement to work. Alternative international justice systems built to deal with such cases such as the Special Tribunal for Rwanda, Sierra Leone’s Special Court, or the International Criminal Court in the Hague have considerable credibility problems themselves and will not advance postconflict justice. A much better experience was made by the Truth and Reconciliation processes.57 The guilty are not punished for crimes committed, but proceedings are very public, therefore making this an open process to deal with past atrocities. – Early elections Peace negotiations in interstate wars are never about elections. Elections are, however, a major feature in virtually all peace negotiations in intrastate armed conflicts. It is hoped that early elections would give a new government democratic legitimacy that would make it accepted by the wider population in a conflict-ridden country. Early elections are hence seen as a tool to accelerate a national peace process. However, recent history has proven that early elections carry great risks of deepening already-existing divisions. In societies divided by ethnicities, religions, and tribes, elections do not work – especially not if these elections follow a Western model with competing political parties. Elections cannot solve the deeper rifts of 56 The Iraqi invasion was illegal by international law. It was a breach of the law that killed approximately 460,000 Iraqis in battle-related actions and due to lack of medical attention, nutrition, etc. Nobody was ever charged for that. This, of course, does not make Saddam Hussein any less guilty. See also Iraqi Mortality Study, 2003-2011. 57 Although TRC processes are not justice systems, they have generally been very successful in analyzing what has happened and in making aggressors and victims face each other in public hearings. They had an important healing impact in, for example, South Africa as well as Sierra Leone.

148 

On Building Peace

conflicts among belligerent parties and communities. In internal conflicts, different communities tend to seek security among their “own” people, deepening already-existing divisions along ethnic, religious, and tribal lines. Political parties standing in early elections reflect such divisions. Under these conditions, elections become population censuses indicating one’s affiliation to different communities rather than to political programs. This only further deepens divisions and mutual mistrust. Elections are seen by warring parties, rightly or wrongly, as “the winner takes all” approach: they give one belligerent party the “majority” and hence allow it to win through a ballot box what it could not win on the battlefield. A sad example for this is Iraq. In 2005, Iraqis went three times to the polls: first, to elect a transitional parliament, then to vote in a referendum for the new constitution, and again to elect a national assembly, this time for a full legislative term of four years. These were the first ever free elections in Iraq’s history. But what should have been an event of national pride turned into a national nightmare: the elections caused a relatively low-level insurgency to turn into a full-blown civil war. The US-led invasion had, probably unintentionally, reshuffled the cards of winners and losers in an already-divided Iraqi society. With the elections, it dawned on Arab Sunnis that they had lost control of Iraq to the relative majority of Arab Shiites.58 This would be the first time since the advent of Islam in Iraq in the seventh century that Arab Shiites would take over the government in Mesopotamia. Until then, they had been the perpetual underdogs – a momentous social change. There are many examples of electoral voting process leading to a resumption of civil wars and violence. In 1992, the elections in Angola erupted into a new round of civil war and in 1999 the referendum in East Timor led to a renewed explosion of violence. Various democratic elections in Afghanistan could not prevent the insurgency from regaining strength; constant cheating in elections only fueled local opposition to a West-promoted democratic transition process. In South Sudan, the 2010 elections and a 2011 referendum could not prevent communal forces from fighting over control of the newly formed state. In Libya, national election results in 2012 and 2014 were never accepted by the warring parties who appeared to prefer deciding with the gun who wins and who loses.

58 The reason why the Islamic caliphate wants to do away with previous borders is to recreate a state in which Sunni Arabs would, once again, be a majority. In Iraq alone, they are a minority and Syria is presently not controlled by Sunni Arabs.

Rescuing the Nation-State

149

Why we often insist on early elections may have a completely different reason: we seek legitimacy for our (mostly Western) military interventions. Once a democratically elected government is installed, it can then ask for foreign military assistance. With this, a foreign military intervention loses the stigma of being an occupation force. The elections are to legitimize foreign interventions and not necessarily a newly formed government. It would also bring such interventions in line with the UN Charter – at least how the Charter is presently interpreted. But, the fact is that none of this ever helps the local peace process. – Foreign-driven constitutions Peace negotiations in interstate wars never include any redrafting of national constitutions, but peace agreements to end intrastate armed conflicts always do. Constitutions are a Western concept, and it is all too well known that Western experts draft these constitutions and, thus, push Western governance standards. These constitutions concentrate on the relationship between citizens and the state and focus on individual rights, freedoms, and other Western values such as gender equality. For example, both the Afghan and Iraqi constitutions demand that 30% and 25% of all parliamentary deputies be women. Such constitutional articles do not even exist in Western constitutions. The worst case of a Western-dominated constitution drafting process took place in Somalia. Since 2008, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law led a consortium to write the new Somali constitution in Heidelberg, far removed from Somali realities. Somalia was then and still is a country in the middle of a civil war in which the government controls only small urban areas. Shouldn’t a Somali constitutional process first try to define what all Somalis might have in common or provide a vision of how this fragmented country could find its national unity before defining the functions of state organs? In the words of the Max Planck Institute, a constitution is “a set of legal norms that define the fundamental political principles and establish the structure, procedures, powers and functions of all organs of the state.”59 This is far removed from a process aiming to unite feuding parties and communities to live peacefully and prosperously in a common future nation-state. There are many other cases where the constitutional process has gone wrong. In Iraq, the draft constitution was negotiated by a “leadership 59 Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Manual on Constitution Building.

150 

On Building Peace

council” behind closed doors within the premises of the heavily fortified US embassy.60 This leadership council had never been democratically elected or transparently formed. Worse still, the final draft was only circulated to the public two days before the referendum. At the same time, in the hopes of appeasing Arab Sunni fears, it was announced that even this draft was still subject to further unspecified changes. When the constitution was adopted in a referendum in 2005, no Iraqi could have known what was in the constitution he/she had just approved or rejected. Not surprisingly, the vote went along ethnic and religious lines.61 In Libya, efforts to develop a new national consensus for a new constitution has led nowhere. The constitution for South Sudan has been written with foreign assistance with little nationwide involvement or debate. It has hence no local ownership. For Bosnia-Herzegovina, a provisional constitution was decided as part of the Dayton Agreement. Motivated to end a civil war, this provisional constitution created ungovernable state structures of a weak federal government, two powerful federations, and ten ministate like cantonments. Efforts to revise this imposed constitution have so far failed due to the diverging interests of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s distrustful communities and a West that wants to maintaining the unity of this country at all costs. Amid these failures, there are also more successful experiences. For example, Kofi Annan brokered a peace agreement for Kenya that led to a transitional power-sharing agreement in February 2008. This “first” (incountry) peace agreement was followed up by a genuine constitutional review that resulted in considerable changes in the political system of the country. When the new Kenyan constitution was approved in a referendum two and a half years later, it triggered public celebrations throughout the country. Kenya had its “second” peace agreement and, with it, the best chance for achieving a lasting peace!

60 The Iraqi public had no idea who was on this leadership council, who decided its membership, and on what grounds its membership was selected. 61 In the end, about 78% of voters “blindly” accepted the new Iraqi constitution. Virtually all Iraqi Kurds and all Iraqi Shiites voted for and all Arab Sunnis voted against the constitution. This division along ethnic and religious lines was a sure sign that the constitutional process had gone wrong. Instead of uniting the country, it had further deepened divisions. It also dawned on Sunni Arabs, once the masters of Iraq, that they would no longer be able to control the government, regarding civil war as the only option.

Rescuing the Nation-State

151

(ii) Second peace agreements: national constitutions National constitutions should become a sort of “second peace agreement” complementing initial peace agreements for countries emerging from intrastate armed conflicts. In contrast to initial peace agreements, constitution making has two important advantages: (i) it can – and should – be negotiated inside the country involving all local communities and (ii) it can provide the capstone holding the nation and state aspects of countries together. Although the concept of national constitutions is foreign to most societies with intrastate armed conflicts, the questions that a constitutional process raises are not: what is the common identity among the various communities that would hold a country together, and how could state laws and institutions be organized to reflect this common identity? There is, however, a basic difference in the roles constitutions play in the West compared to the role they play in conflict-ridden countries. While Western constitutions primarily determine the relationship between citizens and the state, constitutions in conflict-ridden countries would have to focus more on defining the relationships among a country’s communities. For people and communities that went through the anarchy and carnage of intrastate armed conflicts, a too-powerful state is not their prime concern – it is rather a dysfunctional state. Issues over the control and allocation of power and national wealth among a country’s ethnic, religious, and social communities rather than individual rights and freedoms are likely to dominate such constitutional debates. The Western constitutional experience is therefore of limited value. The following seven aspects of national constitution making – there might be more – are important for turning them into a second peace agreement: – Constitution making should create an environment of compromise and trust constitutional processes in fragile conflict-ridden countries must deal with belligerent parties and feuding communities that have made very different and often traumatic experiences. These parties will accuse each other of having committed brutalities and of breaking earlier agreements. They will come to the negotiation table with often mutually excluding aims and with the threat of (re)using force in pursuing these aims. Also, international peacebuilders are likely to face a wall of suspicion for fear that they may want to favor one side over the other. To overcome such an atmosphere of mistrust will require more mediation skills rather than technical assistance. This is not achieved by insisting on liberal democratic constitutions.

152 

On Building Peace

Constitution making must overcome mistrust. This will not be easy as all armed conflicts tend to create winners and losers. To minimize the winnerloser dilemma, compromises must be found. With compromise comes also respect and tolerance for the position and interests of others. Without compromise and trust peace will not be sustainable and communities will not be able to live side by side without old resentments resurfacing. A constitution may not be able to achieve all of this but it must try to lay the grounds for building sufficient trust to allow future intercommunal solutions to emerge in time. – Constitution making must aim at communal rights Constitution making in conflict-ridden countries must accept the role family plays in tribal and religious communities. Except for a small elite, Western individualism is far less predominant in these societies. Individual freedoms, individual human rights, and equal citizenship are hence less important concepts. Instead, constitution making should aim at communal freedoms, communal human rights, and equal communal citizenship. In other words, that all members of the different communities within a country share equal rights and equal access to justice, security, education, and health services. This may also impact the way elections are organized. The very principle on which elections are organized: “one person, one vote” is a reflection of Western individualism. Such individualism may not be shared in many countries in which communities play a much greater role. This may be one of the reasons why elections in conflict environments tend to increase tensions. Lakhdar Brahimi was right when in 2004 he warned that the time for general elections in Iraq had not yet come, and instead recommended creating a caucus in which each community was more equally represented. But general elections were held. After all, the US-led coalition had come to bring democracy and general elections on the basis that “one person, one vote” is what democracies are about.62 Iraq still suffers from the negative consequences to this day. – Constitution making must establish a state monopoly of force All intrastate armed conflicts are characterized by the state having lost its monopoly of using force; “it” now competes with one or even several nonstate actors who also impose their rule with the use of force. The most difficult aspect of any constitution making would be how to reestablish the principle 62 This is not quite true for the United States where an Electoral College is placed between the voter’s choices and the final election of a president. Also, electoral systems in the United Kingdom and France are designed to eliminate votes for nonmainstream parties.

Rescuing the Nation-State

153

of the monopoly of force within a nation-state. This is an issue that goes far beyond standard peacebuilding programs of demobilizing, decommissioning and the reintegration (DDR) of ex-combatants. It would ultimately be a question of how one can ensure that a monopoly of force is not misused against any community. It would include the difficult question of who should exercise the use of force, and how this should be controlled. This is a long-term process that should be decided not so much a desire for security sector reform (SSR) as much as by an understanding the underlying problems that led to the civil war. – Constitution making must bring greater justice Equally important, if not more important, is a fair and equal delivery of justice. But justice, like control over the use of force, is usually in the control of one or the other community or elite. The notion of fair justice is therefore highly underdeveloped. In ending intrastate wars, justice is a tricky issue and often the alternative is to forego justice to achieve peace. Some of the local stakeholders, if not all, who negotiate initial peace agreements are likely to be responsible for atrocities, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The introduction of a formal justice system can make the mistrust in justice only worse. Judges and lawyers are often considered the most corrupt, a perception – even if not always true – that is difficult to overcome. Constitutions aiming at consolidating peace must take a wider view of justice and allow traditional justice system – even if not codified – to be included. And they may be prepared to give communal rights preference over individual rights. – Constitution making must foster national unity In the aftermath of armed conflicts, conflicting parties may conclude that it is no longer possible to share the same national destiny. This raises the question to what extent this may lead to a breakup of the country or if there are other less drastic options available such as creating federal or autonomous regions. To ignore such questions only strengthens calls for complete secession. There is obviously a tradeoff between preserving national unity and granting self-determination. – Constitution making must deal with the nation-state duality Intrastate armed conflicts suffer from the dual problems of divided national identities and bad governance. Constitutions must bridge the gap between the “nation” and the “state” aspect of a country. In other words, constitutions must try to bring about greater national identity, emphasize common values and a common vision for their countries’ future. This must come

154 

On Building Peace

before defining state institutions to improve governance. Building these institutions, controlling corruption, and providing better services are all elements that would help create national identities, but cannot be part of a self-standing initiative. Box 4.1 Is Peacebuilding Trying to Cheat History? Traditional approaches to liberal peacebuilding rely on the assumption that it will not only be necessary but also possible, with international help, to rebuild nation-states through peaceful and democratic means, and that this can largely be done within a relatively short time span63 of Security Council mandates. But looking at history, nation-states never emerged from democratic and peaceful processes, and even less in a relatively short time. Quite the opposite: nationstates were almost always the result of excessive violence and autocratic rule. And it often took centuries for nation-states to develop. The borders of countries, the groups or elites that dominate a nation-state, the communities that find themselves in a common nation-state, the language that is spoken, the prevailing culture, the political institutions, the form of government that shape people’s lives, and the ethnic and religious mix of a country have mostly been the result of wars, civil wars, colonial wars, independence wars, military annexations, genocides, ethnic cleansing, forced evictions, revolutions, authoritarian rule, the suppression of minorities, and other violent events. There can be little doubt that the creation of nation-states was – and to a certain degree still is – an awfully bloody affair. Nation-states were never the result of democratic processes. “Older” nationstates in Europe and Asia had developed from empires, kingdoms, emirates, dictatorships or other kind of rules by small elites. “Newer” nation-states in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia were the creation of foreign military invasions, colonial conquests and wars of independence. Their violent history still resonates in the political systems of many countries today in the form of elitist groups controlling national governments in many regions. Even the United States, despite its 1789 democratic constitution declaring all people as equal, was initially anything but democratic – at least not by today’s standards. Back then, voting rights and the right to take political office were restricted to a small

63 The Security Council, though for different reasons, only approves peacebuilding missions for a maximum of twelve months. And although the Security Council tends to extend these missions regularly for further one-year periods, this creates uncertainties and short-term approaches to peacebuilding. UN peacebuilding missions appear to last between ten and twenty years – an extremely short period of time when put in historical perspective.

Rescuing the Nation-State

155

minority of wealthy men.64 Women, Blacks, Indians, Catholics and the poor were all excluded.65 The development of nation-states took time. Some countries can look back at hundreds of years of history that formed their respective nations to what they are today. How can we expect peacebuilding to be successful in the short time spans of Security Council mandates? Ending internal wars, reconciling conflicting societies, rebuilding functioning institutions, establishing a justice system, selecting a democratic and widely acceptable government, and bringing more prosperity to its citizens are mammoth tasks that cannot be achieved by outside powers within a short time frame.66 Aren’t we asking failing and weak (and often artificially created) countries to achieve something that has never been achieved in history before? By perusing a liberal peacebuilding, aren’t we trying to cheat history?

Box 4.2 Who Is Responsible for Lynching Farkhunda? In 2016, the New York Times released the gruesome videos showing the lynching of a poor, ill-fated young Afghan woman, Farkhunda Malikzada, by a mob of equally young men in March of 2015. The vague and probably not true accusation that she had used pages of the Koran to light the fire in a stove of a mosque of Kabul triggered an impulsive outpouring of hatred that ended in her being lynched in broad daylight, in view of Afghan police officers. As shocking as this very public lynching was, her brutal killing may also throw a troubling light on Western efforts to export its notion of women’s emancipation into Afghan society. The lynching took place at the center of Kabul only a few hundred meters from the presidential palace thirteen years after US-led Operation Enduring Freedom overthrew the Taliban. In 1999, the Taliban had publicly executed a young woman in Kabul’s central stadium, accused of adultery – a shocking event that was repeatedly shown in Western media to decry the backwardness of the Taliban and to justify the invasion of Afghanistan. But a mob lynching of a woman was something completely new in Afghan society. Indeed, there is no knowledge 64 The large majority of those white male voters in the United States were probably slave owners then. Of the first eighteen US presidents, twelve are known to have owned slaves, eight of them even while they were in office. 65 The extraordinary power of the US constitution is that its basic principle of all men and women being born equal with fundamental rights has, over time, won out – a process that is still ongoing (e.g., the civil rights movement of the 1960s or the fight over equal rights of minority groups such as LGBT). 66 Germany and Japan following WWII are often taken as examples to prove that it is possible, through a well-intentioned foreign occupation, to successfully introduce liberal democracy. But both countries already had long governance traditions and, most importantly, had no issue with their respective national identities.

156 

On Building Peace

of any mob killings of women in a major city such as Kabul either during the Taliban reign, during the intermezzo of mujahedeen groups, or during the previous procommunist regime. So why now? Over the previous thirteen years, empowering Afghan women had been a top priority of virtually all Western assistance agencies and there must have been hundreds of millions of dollars invested in programs to benefit women’s equality, empowerment, and development. Looking at the video, this was a spontaneous outburst by a mob of young men that appear not to have been affiliated with the Taliban or IS. These were young, clean-shaven, short-haired urban men, virtually all of them dressed in Western-style clothes, some with baseball caps. Most of them were young enough to have spent their entire formative years in schools supported by the West in which they were exposed to liberal gender values. Many had mobile phones and were taking pictures or videos of the awful scenes. Some were even so familiar with modern technology that they uploaded their grisly videos on to social networks. Not only that. Several of the men attacking Farkhunda accused her also of working for the French embassy – for them, France being apparently a symbol of decadent Western values.67 Could it be that this lynching was, in part at least, a reaction to the exporting of Western values? Has the Western-driven intervention created large groups of frustrated and disorientated young Afghan men who lost all constraints imposed by traditional Afghan values while, at the same time, despising Western values? The sudden outbreak of such terrible brutality against a defenseless woman may be a warning that we may have created – very like what we have seen develop in the suburban areas of Paris and Brussels – a potential monster among an angry disenfranchised urban youth in Afghanistan void of social constraints and values. Such radicalized urban men are more likely to follow the calls of IS than to follow the Taliban, which is more rooted in traditional Afghan society. Has our intervention therefore created an environment for Islamic State ideology to thrive? There are other indications that Western military invasions and the promotion of liberal values may have done no good for women’s rights. During the time of the procommunist Najibullah regime (1987 to 1992) one would hardly ever see women in burkas in Kabul’s city center.68 Now there is hardly a woman that would dare to roam the streets of Kabul without a burka – young Farkhunda wore such a black burka. We can see a similar development in Baghdad. During the time of the Baath regime, hardly any woman would cover her hair

67 The bloody terrorist attack on the French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo for publishing cartoons, seen by most Muslim as insulting the Prophet Mohammed, had just been two months earlier. 68 Like the West would do a decade later as part of its liberal values, the Soviet invasion had promoted women empowerment as part of its communist ideology to Afghanistan.

Rescuing the Nation-State

157

when walking through the town. By the time, I left Baghdad at the end of 2007, all women would wear long overcoats and a tight headscarf in public, some even gloves. Had our efforts to promote gender empowerment backfired? And could this be a reminder that values should develop from within a society and that they cannot be simply imposed from outside – especially not through military force? A country such as Iran with an Islamic regime but that was spared Western gender experts appears to have done more for women – especially in equal access to education and health – than any country in which we have poured billions of dollars on gender programs. And maybe we do not even need to go that far to witness our failure in promoting gender equality. In Vienna’s Favoriten district, home of a large Turkish population, one can pass by makeshift mosques with many young Muslim men standing idly around. They are young enough to be the third generation of Turkish immigrants, most were probably born in Vienna. Still there was not a single woman among them; only two young women covered from head to toe in dark clothing looking down and with shopping bags in their hands walking on the other side of the street.

Box 4.3 Holy Books and Secular Constitutions The parallel events of the large influx of mostly Muslim refugees and of terrorist attacks in Europe have raised the question of what are the values that unite Europeans. We suddenly speak of our values that we must shield from extremist attacks and even claim that by bombing IS we defend what many politicians refer to as “our way of life.” Confronting terrorism touches our fundamentals. In a stirring speech at the German Green Party conference in November 2015, party cochair Cem Oezdemir declared that “no holy book is above the German constitution”69 and called on Germany’s Muslims to bring their religion in line with modern Western liberal thinking and values by “reinterpreting the words of the Prophet.” His speech received enthusiastic acclamations among the delegates of the Green Party. Most Germans would probably agree; integration is adaptation, what else could be meant by integration? However, it is unlikely that Oezdemir’s words will get a similar reception among most Muslims that have recently arrived, not even among those who are living in 69 Strictly speaking, Germany has no constitution. Instead, Germany has kept what it calls its Fundamental Law (Grundgesetz). This Fundamental Law was drafted in 1947 and adopted by the Constitutional Committee by a majority of only one vote, that of its chair, Konrad Adenauer. It was meant to be a provisional arrangement until a full constitution could be approved in a referendum by a reunited Germany. But this did not happen in 1989. To raise this “constitution,” as done by Oezdemir, above all other religious guidance, may hence have its ironies.

158 

On Building Peace

European countries for two or three generations. To begin with, for believing Muslims, the Koran is not the word of the Prophet as Oezdemir claims, but the word of God. While Green Party members may see in Oezdemir a bridge between the Muslim and Western worlds, many Muslims may object to be told how to interpret the Koran by someone who turned his back on Islam. In fact, according to Islamic jurisprudence, Oezdemir committed apostasy that at least some fundamentalists he tried to address may consider justifies capital punishment. Now, many European countries have begun to oblige arriving refugees, most of them Muslims, to attend European value classes. Whether a few short courses – in Austria these last eight hours – would help “converting” them to the secular values of European constitutions is more than doubtful. They may even lead to greater misunderstandings. When we “teach” arriving Muslims that in Europe they must respect women and not molest them, one appears to forget that in Islam women are far more protected from being molested than in the West and penalties for those who transgress these norms are much harsher. The problem is that each side understands something different – values systems are different. Unless we argue that our value system is superior, what right would we have to insist that Muslims adapt to our “way of life.” Despite all differences that exist among Muslims, Islam is a coherent value system that is not easily adapted to the liberal value system of the West. Different from Christianity, the origin of Islam is linked to building an Islamic state and to creating a legal framework for Muslims to live such a state or society (Sharia – translated “the way,” is meant to guide the right social behavior). Islam, therefore, makes a much greater claim to not only provide religious guidance to reach salvation after death but to organize the social and political life of Muslims in this world. There is nothing wrong about this – it is only different. This would clash with Western demands that Muslims arriving in Europe must secularize their religion. It would imply banning Islam from public life and to confine it to the private environment of homes and mosques. This would touch the core of Islam and may hence provoke hostile reactions. Arguing that a national constitution is above the Koran would elevate this constitution to a kind of secular “Holy Book.” However, as constitutions are man-made and should reflect common social values of a society, one could also argue the opposite and demand that the German constitution be successively adjusted to incorporate the values of a growing religiously active Muslim community. After all, the debate over common European values does not only take place in the context of an aging and shrinking Western population, but also in the context of the erosion of Europe’s traditional Christian faith and its values. Oezdemir might have to adjust his speeches in the future.

5

Building Peace on Collective Security

At the end of WWII, two events of enormous importance occurred that continue to frame our choices about peace and security to these days: the signing of the UN Charter in San Francisco, California, on 26 June 1945, and the first explosion of a nuclear device in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on 16 July 1945. These were like twin events; they took place within only 20 days of each other and within a radius of only about 900 miles (or 1,500 km) within the same country, the United States,1 the country that would dominate world politics to this day. By the time the UN Charter came into effect on 24 October 1945 when the first 29 member states2 had ratified it, the first two nuclear bombs with the bizarrely cute-sounding names of Little Boy and Fat Man had killed about a quarter of a million people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, almost all civilians. Never in human history had such a far-reaching international agreement curtailed the use of any military force as drastically as the UN Charter. And never before in human history had single weapon killed so many people in a single firestorm. Global peace became cornered between these two extremes – to these days. Efforts to create collective security systems or to build ever more powerful weapons in the hope that this would protect from attacks and wars3 are nothing new in human history. Nonetheless, the global impact of both, the UN Charter and the nuclear bomb, marked a pivotal change for human society. The logic of peace and war changed after the summer of 1945. From then on, most political decisions had effects at an international level. With the UN Charter and the nuclear bomb, peace and security became irrevocably global. The UN Charter and the nuclear bomb could hardly represent more opposite ways of wanting to maintain peace and security. While the UN Charter stands for efforts to maintain peace and security through a collective security system based on internationally accepted laws and norms, the 1 This also meant a shift in the center of international relations from Europe to the United States. While the 1919-formed League of Nations was located in Geneva, hence in Europe, the newly created United Nations in 1945 would be headquartered in New York. 2 The initial number of UN member states meeting in San Francisco were 51. The two-thirds needed for the UN Charter to go into effect were 29 member states. 3 Of course, powerful weapons were and still are built not only to defend, but also to attack and conquer. However, we are looking here at the introduction of nuclear weapons that are primarily defensive weapons meant to threaten any attacker with massive retaliation.

160 

On Building Peace

nuclear bomb stands for keeping peace and security through the threat of force and mutually assured destruction (MAD). It is as if the twin Zoroastrian spirits of Ahura Mazda (the spirit of wisdom) and Ahriman (the spirit of destruction) had returned to rule the world. 4 Both claim to secure global peace and security – one through multilateral decisions by the UN Security Council, the other through unilateral decisions by a single superpower. They reflect international versus national perceptions of securing global peace, and the peace orders they both envision are not the same. And still, collective security based on norms, on the one hand, and the threat of MAD based on WMDs on the other, are inseparable twins ever since. Important geopolitical developments such as the decline of interstate wars and the overall reduction in battle-related deaths, but also the rise of international cooperation, are all successes that the twins share.5 There will probably never be a world in which the good spirit of collective security through international norms and cooperation will defeat the evil spirit of national protection and interests through the threat of WMDs. Hopefully, the opposite will also never happen. However, the balance between the two can shift, and presently it appears to have shifted dangerously toward Ahriman. It is no longer only NATO or a US-led coalition that conduct major military operations abroad. Now, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, and the UAE have also begun to pursue their political interests with military force. For the last 20 years, there has never been a time without one or more military interventions in foreign countries in operation. US Special Forces are now operating and directing airstrikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and probably in many other more clandestine locations. This is not what the UN Charter had envisioned when in San Francisco the first 51 member states vowed never again to use military force – or even the threat of military force – to advance their political interests. We have entered a spiral in the use of force without any end in sight. Today, more countries have become nuclear powers. What makes this proliferation so dangerous is that these nuclear weapons are no longer only meant to ensure the stability of a bipolar world peace order. Now, countries 4 In Persian Zoroastrian teachings, Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, who reign over the world, were twin sons conceived by their common father Zurvan (meaning Time, or Eternity). 5 In 2014, the world may have slid into open war over the conflict of who controls the Ukraine. It was the fear that such a war could become nuclear that probably “saved” us from yet another war along the lines of the Crimean War (1853-1856).

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

161

like Israel, Pakistan, and India, but also North Korea, have nuclear weapons to pursue very different national interests – and none of these countries are party to the UN Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons of 19706 or any other international safeguards. A nuclear weapon is still the best guarantee for nation-states to protect it from any attack. This makes them so attractive, we only have to look at North Korea. The only laudable – and, I would like to add, heroic – exception from perusing protection through developing a nuclear bomb is Iran’s decision to disband its facilities for developing such a weapon and allow a suspicious international community to conduct intrusive and, for a proud nation 2,500 years old, painful on-site inspections.7 But how will the post-WWII twin spirits of collective security and military coercion work out in the new global threat scenario of weakening nation-states, strengthened belligerent nonstate actors, and intrastate armed conflicts? Different to interstate conflicts, in intrastate conflicts nuclear threats lose their bite. Belligerent nonstate actors will not be intimidated by such threats. Not only that! In battling with nonstate actors, military superiority measured in nuclear-powered submarines, aircraft carriers, supersonic fighter aircrafts, cruise missiles, and intercontinental missiles loses its significance. How else could a NATO coalition assembling the most powerful and best-equipped military forces from almost 50 countries be beaten by Taliban forces in the Hindu Kush? How could a US-led coalition not end a Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq? How can a well-financed and highly modern Saudi-led military alliance not beat the isolated Houti rebels in Yemen? How could Nigeria with its huge military and with a general as its 6 It is estimated that there are today 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world ready to be used. They can destroy all of humanity many times over – how many times is still a matter of scientific debate. Even if these weapons will never be used, their risk of malfunctioning due to technical error(s) or old age represents a considerable danger. For 2017, the General Assembly plans a conference with the objective to ban all nuclear weapons – hardly a realistic undertaking. See the Ploughshares Fund, “World Nuclear Weapon,” latest estimate of March 2016. 7 With its decision not to develop nuclear arms, Iran has done humanity a gigantic service for which it has never been fully recognized. This was only possible for a country that represents one of the world’s oldest and greatest civilization. For Iran’s own security, becoming a nuclear power made lots of sense and it had the know-how and resources to do so – compare this with North Korea, which decided to go ahead with its nuclear program. The much discussed sanctions were not a deterrent for Iran nor were they for North Korea. If ever anyone deserved the Nobel Peace Prize over the last 25 years, it was Hassan Rohani, the Iranian president, and Mohammad Jawad Zarif, his foreign minister. But to make such a decision, the little Norwegian committee is to far removed and ideologically fixed on what they see as contributions to peace.

162 

On Building Peace

president not beat Boko Haram? How could NATO and various US military interventions not dislodge Islamist fighters in Libya and why, after almost two and a half years of massive US-led military operations, are we still not sure whether we will be able to defeat Islamic State? The list of such military failures is much longer. Instead of being able to threaten belligerent nonstate actors into submission with an arsenal of nuclear weapons, these cards may ultimately turn against us. One day, some of the more radical and well-organized nonstate actors may threaten us with WMD attacks. While it was the Iraqi state that first used sarin gas8 – one of the most lethal nerve agents ever produced – during the Iran-Iraq War in their battle to retake the al-Faw peninsula in 1988,9 it was later also used by Iraqi insurgents against US forces in Iraq in 2004.10 In the Syrian civil war, sarin gas was repeatedly used. The most reported attack was the one in Ghouta near Damascus in 2013. Although the Syrian government was immediately accused, there are increasing reports that this sarin attack was carried out by al-Nusra,11 an al-Qaida affiliated, armed Syrian opposition group, in the hopes of drawing the United States into the fight against the government.12 WMDs in the hands of radical and ideologically driven nonstate actors would completely change the present-day’s military equations. WMDs owned by nation-states – and this would even include so-called rough states – are deterrent weapons to protect against being attacked, in the hands of radicalized nonstate actors they become offensive weapons. Whereas nation-states would refrain from the use of WMDs for fear of a devastating retaliation, nonstate actors are much less likely to feel such restraints. The technical and financial threshold for the development and 8 Sarin gas had been developed in Nazi Germany in the 1940s, but was never used militarily during WWII. It is extremely dangerous and easy to apply. Even in low concentrations, sarin could wipe out entire cities. In 1997, the Chemical Weapons Conventions banned the use of sarin gas in warfare, a ban that has been accepted by 192 UN member states. But this will not deter aggressive nonstate actors from acquiring and using sarin, a most effective agent that could dramatically change the way intrastate armed conflicts are conducted. 9 It was the then-Iranian president Rafsanjani who called chemical and biological weapons “the WMDs of the poor.” It is this logic that could make chemical and biological weapons so attractive to belligerent nonstate actors. 10 The Iraqi and Syrian Islamist opposition includes many former off icers from Saddam Hussein’s army and secret services. They hence knew how to deliver and handle sarin gas from the Iran-Iraq War and the attack on Kurdish populations in Halabja. 11 In 2016, the al-Nusra front changed its name to al-Fatah Shams. As I will speak about it before and after the change in name, I will generally keep the name al-Nusra. 12 See Hersh, “Who’s Sarin?”

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

163

delivery of WMDs will be much lower for nonstate actors. They would not have to develop weapon-grade nuclear, biological, or chemical agents – a dirty bomb would do to create havoc in Western cities. The would also not need any sophisticated delivery systems. A suicide bomber, a car, or a sports plane would suffice. In a world in which belligerent nonstate actors deploy only very rudimentary conventional weapons, the use of Western military superiority does not intimidate them and often ends in failures. This should make the second option of a collective security approach more attractive. But is there any indication that seeking peace based on international norms and laws – instead of on arms – has a better chance in dealing with intrastate armed conflicts? So far, the collective security system of the United Nations is largely perceived as weak in providing satisfactory answers to the problem of intrastate armed conflicts.13 To suggest that the United Nations should take over where the Western military – above all the US military – has failed, would probably seem a remote, if not a foolish, proposition.14 And still, this is exactly what this book is suggesting. After all, the UN Charter has achieved what it had been created for: ending the scourge of humankind, wars among its member states. The Charter and collective security must share this success with its twin brother, the nuclear bomb, but nobody can deny that the United Nations played an important part in achieving this. So why not trying to do the same for dealing with intrastate armed conflicts? However, the United Nations and its collective security system must first be adapted and enabled to respond effectively to these new threats of intrastate armed conflicts to global peace and security. For this, the United Nations would have to overcome three core constraints: – Compliance with the UN Charter and international law and the acceptance of its universality has been systematically hollowed out over the last 25 years.

13 Among the few exceptions where international cooperation has worked are the successful P5+1 talks with Iran over its nuclear program in 2013 and the joint US-Russian deal to destroy all government-owned chemical weapons from the Syrian civil war in 2013/2014. Unfortunately, there is too little of such cross-political system cooperation. What’s more, in all of this, the United Nations only played a marginal supporting role. 14 Foreign Affairs dedicated its September/October edition to the topic “Tomorrow’s Military – How Much Is Enough?” None of its articles even remotely mentions the use of collective security or international law to regulate international affairs. The United Nations is, as much as I can make out, not mentioned at all.

164 

On Building Peace

– International norms and laws have never been sufficiently developed for a collective security system to deal more effectively with the new threats to global peace and security: failing nation-states, powerful armed nonstate actors, and intrastate armed conflicts. – The United Nations has been unable to reform its collective decisionmaking mechanisms, a crucial precondition that many member states would have to adhere to before any prospect of reviewing the principle of national sovereignty could be put on the table. The following suggests a three-step approach of, first, restoring the primacy of the UN Charter; second, expanding the mandate of the UN Charter to include intrastate armed conflicts; and, third, broadening UN decisionmaking in respect to interventions in intrastate armed conflicts. What may sound like relatively simple and straightforward proposals would, in fact, profoundly reform the UN system. They would touch two of the most sensitive issues in current-day international affairs, namely, (i) the relationships between big and small powers and (ii) the upholding of the principle of national sovereignty.

5.1

Restoring the Primacy of the UN Charter

A first step to restoring the collective security system would be for all UN member states – powerful or weak, large or small – to renew their commitments to the UN Charter and international law. Such a commitment must include two interlinked aspects: (i) to accept the UN Charter as it is today, and (ii) to accept that international law applies to all member states equally. (i) Restoring commitment to the principles of the UN Charter Before aiming to change the international legal context and wanting to adapt the UN Charter to changing geopolitical environments, we must begin accepting the Charter as it is – with its present-day limitations. This would have to include accepting that the present UN Charter was developed to deal with very different threats to peace and security and does not provide sufficient legal grounds for dealing with failing member states, the emergence of belligerent nonstate actors, and intrastate armed conflicts. This implies that we would first have to reinforce the principle of national sovereignty before we could move to redefine national sovereignty in order to respond to intrastate armed conflicts.

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

165

The UN Charter is quite explicit in excluding all aspects of interventions by the United Nations and its members in what it calls “domestic jurisdiction”: Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter.15

This should not come as a surprise; the United Nations was never designed to deal with intrastate conflicts. Moreover, the UN Charter continues to describe the obligations of UN member states in helping to preserve global peace. These obligations are exclusively directed at international relations and not at intrastate relations. Also, here it may be useful to recall the relevant text of the Charter as stated in Chapter 1: Purposes and Principles: All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.16

As it stands today, the UN Charter does not provide a legal framework for militarily intervening in member states with intrastate armed conflicts. Nonetheless, this is exactly what is regularly done when approving UN peace missions. The consequences are international interventions, including by UN peace missions that are ill-designed and badly implemented. It creates situations for UN peace missions that can easily turn into tragedies such as in the cases of Srebrenica, Rwanda, and now Syria. Presently, UN-sanctioned military interventions – and that includes those of UN peacekeepers – follow a three-step approach. First, the UN Security Council determines that a situation inside a country has gotten so much out of hand that it constitutes a threat to global peace and security. 15 UN Charter, Chapter I, Article 2, paragraph 7 16 UN Charter, Chapter I, Article 2 paragraphs 2, 3, and 4

166 

On Building Peace

Second, the Security Council authorizes a UN peacekeeping mission to deal with this situation. Third, it asks the host government to invite the UN peace mission. Where there is no government, a transitional arrangement is made and an interim president or governing council issues the invitation. This invitation is considered crucial as it would imply that the respective UN peace mission involved in an intrastate conflict conforms to the UN Charter. Invitations to foreign powers to assist struggling governments in surviving a challenge from internal opposition by belligerent nonstate actors are also considered sufficient to satisfy international law. In Article 51, the UN Charter states: Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.17

Is the mentioning of “collective self-defense” enough to justify a military intervention to protect a state and its government against its internal enemies? Hardly! The Charter clearly refers to an outside attack against a member state – not an attack by an internal opposition. The justification by the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State that it acts at the invitation of the Iraqi government and the justification by Russia that it acts at the invitation of the Syrian government, stand therefore on shaky grounds. There is a very small step between claiming to be invited – often by a government that has lost its legitimacy – and committing a complete breach of the UN Charter. When the United States and its allies decided to extend their fight against Islamic State into Syrian territory in June 2014, they no longer bothered about breaking international law.18 This attitude one state believing itself to be above any international law continued when President Obama met with President Erdogan in September 2016. CNN reported that Obama invited Turkey to participate in an assault on Raqqa, deep inside Syria – a clear violation of international law. Today, Turkish troops fight inside Syria and Iraq without any pretext of either an Iraqi or Syrian invitation.

17 UN Charter, Chapter VII: “Action with Respect to Threats to Peace, Breaches of the Peace and Acts of Aggression.” 18 In fact, France argued that it acted in self-defense following the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015. But by this time, France had conducted the war against IS for over a year.

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

167

Article 51 continues and sets strict conditions to individual and collective self-defense: Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.

But none of the UN member states who intervened militarily in Iraq and Syria ever reported their actions to the Security Council or allowed the Council to formulate a collective security approach to the intrastate armed conflicts in these two countries. Iraq and Syria are only the most shocking examples of ignoring international law. We can find similar attitudes in almost all foreign military interventions in intrastate armed conflicts. In the late 1990s the argument of humanitarian intervention gained prominence. Foreign military forces – that is, Western military forces – began to intervene in humanitarian catastrophes. Behind such an argument was the claim that international law no longer reflected geopolitical realities and that noble aims justified ignoring the Charter. Humanitarian military interventions became a concept that would allow the use of force in a situation where the UN Security Council could not pass a resolution under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations due to a veto by a permanent member, such as in the case of Kosovo. The West felt empowered – for the good of humanity – to unilaterally make humanitarian interventions. This aims justified the means. The adage “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” applies here. Military interventions based on humanitarian justifications19 have left a trail of destruction and anarchy. We need only look at NATO’s intervention in Libya under the pretext of the “Responsibility to Protect” or at the bombing campaigns carried out by various powers on Iraq and Syria. These actions did not and do not prevent humanitarian disasters; instead, they contribute to further suffering and dislocation. The central argument in all of this is that there is no explicit international law applying specifically to intrastate armed conflicts. It is this vacuum of 19 This argument must not be misunderstood to be against all humanitarian interventions. Quite to the contrary, today’s humanitarian interventions are key element to stabilize conflict zones and a way for the international community to remain human in adverse situations. But it is an argument against using humanitarian arguments to justify unilateral military interventions.

168 

On Building Peace

international norms that has contributed to the anarchy in Libya and the carnage in Syria. It is time that we fill this vacuum and agree on a normative collective security framework that specifically deals with responding to failing nation-states, rising belligerent nonstate actors, and intrastate armed conflicts. Accepting the equal application of the UN Charter (ii) But before considering the development of such norms and change international law accordingly to deal with intrastate armed conflicts, all member states – and here in particular by the strong and powerful – must accept that the UN Charter and international law applies to all equally. This a fundamental requirement for all law; there cannot be one law for some and another law for others. However, what appears to be legally obvious, is in the political world probably the most difficult aspect to get accepted. Indeed, one of its core principles is that of unconditional equal sovereignty among its member states, a principle that would not allow one member state to take a superior attitude by intervening in another member state’s internal conflicts: The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.20

Especially for the West it will not be easy to accept that international laws apply to it as to all others. After the end of the Cold War, the West had acted like all victors before it and assumed rights it denied to others. Any winner’s peace relies on applying such double standards. It now felt it had the right to decide unilaterally if and when to conduct preemptive wars, to invade other countries, to support regime change, to finance political opposition movements, to authorize drone attacks, to carry out extrajudicial killings of alleged terrorists (and in the process many innocent civilians), to deny prisoners legal rights, etc. It no longer felt bound by any collective decisions made by the Security Council – although it continues to use the Security Council to accuse other member states of not complying with international law. When, in September 2014, President Obama castigated Russia in the General Assembly for invading the Crimea, he acclaimed his unilateral decision to extend the US air campaign against Islamic State in Syria – and never felt obliged to even try

20 UN Charter, Chapter I, Article 2, paragraph 1.

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

169

to get the approval of the Security Council.21 Chancellor Merkel accused Syria, Iran, and Russia of war crimes for its air attacks on rebel-held areas in eastern Aleppo, yet Germany is party to a Western alliance that bombs other cities that are held by rebel forces. If we accept that a German foreign minister can appear at a demonstration of the opposition in Kiev, we would also have to accept that the Chinese or Russian foreign ministers can go to Paris to support demonstrators against Holland22; if we accept that billions of dollars go to Ukrainian opposition groups, we should also accept foreign meddling in our elections; if President Obama insists that it is illegal for Russia to finance proxies in other countries,23 it should also apply to the United States; if we accept that we go to war over Kosovo, we will also have to accept Russia’s occupation of the Crimean. This list could be extended. The same would apply to the international justice system. How can we bring leaders from mostly small African states to the International Criminal Court while the leaders of more powerful states go free? How can we judge the former president of Liberia, Charles Taylor, for having supported a rebel movement in neighboring Sierra Leone while the American leaders who waged an illegal war against Iraq go free? In Sierra Leone, an estimated 75,000 people died and Taylor was never held directly responsible for these atrocities; in Iraq, an estimated 460,000 were killed as a result of the US invasion.24 There is no uncertainty about who was responsible for the invasion, but no one was ever brought to court. Unless, we accept that international law must be applied to all countries – Western democracies or not – there could never be any collective security system. We cannot claim any exceptionalism or argue that our allegedly more noble aims would justify illegal means. It has never worked and made the situations only worse. An international law applied equally has still its advantages, also for the West. 21 Immediately after his speech at the General Assembly, President Obama chaired a meeting of the UN Security Council and did not try to obtain a mandate for the United States to expand its military operations inside Syria. 22 Western support to the opposition to former president Yanukovych of the Ukraine is often justified with the argument that he was unpopular. Although his popularity was indeed low, that of President Hollande was even lower. What would then be the criteria that may justify such interventions? 23 See Obama’s press statement at the end of the G-20 meeting in Brisbane, Australia, on 16 November 2014. 24 Casualty figures of the Iraq War and occupation vary greatly. However, this figure has been taken from one of the most recent academic studies. See Hagopian et al., “Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003-2011 War and Occupation”.

170 

5.2

On Building Peace

Expanding the Mandate of the UN Charter

A second step would be to empower the collective security system by giving the United Nations a second mandate. In addition to being the collective security system to intervene to prevent and/or end interstate wars, the United Nations should now also be empowered to intervene to prevent and/or end intrastate armed conflicts. This would finally allow the UN to stand on two legs: one for interstate relations and the second for intrastate relations. This would require a change in the present UN Charter. Virtually all of today’s UN peace missions25 are – to different degrees – interfering in the internal affairs of UN member states. This is even more so in the case of military interventions by NATO, the European Union, the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and/or other countries. Although the UN Charter never directly mentions any principle of “non-interference in the internal affairs of another member state,” it nonetheless states in its Chapter I, Article 2/7, that “nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.” Chapter 1, Article 2/7, must, therefore, be revised to explicitly allow – though, under strictly defined conditions – UN interventions into intrastate armed conflicts if judged necessary by the UN Security Council to confront what could become a global threat to peace and security. Although the United Nations would continue to seek the consensus of all warring parties, such interventions should – in the most extreme situations – also be possible without the invitation by a national government or the consent by all belligerent nonstate actors. An extended UN mandate would also require a change in Chapter 1, Article 1/1, which deals with the purposes and principles of the organization. Reference to intrastate armed conflicts should be added to read: To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international and intra-state disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.

25 See also, Box 3.1.

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

171

Furthermore, any UN reform to this effect must recognize that intrastate armed conflicts are fundamentally different to interstate wars. This needs further attention and international agreements in order to appropriately set the framework for such interventions in place. The following seven elements have to be clarified before the intervention in intrastate armed conflicts: – National versus state sovereignty One way to deal with intrastate armed conflicts is to distinguish in the UN Charter more clearly between national sovereignty and state sovereignty. National sovereignty would remain sacrosanct, while state sovereignty could be limited or – in extreme cases – even waved by a decision of the UN Security Council. This would assume that national sovereignty belongs to the people of a country, whereas state sovereignty is related to the powers of governments. Bad governance could hence lead to a loss in state sovereignty. With such a distinction, the UN Security Council could target any government it considers illegitimate without targeting an entire country and its people. UN peace missions would hence only be those missions that interfere, under a strict Security Council mandate, temporarily in state sovereignty but aim at protecting national sovereignty. This possibility alone would probably help to get more cooperation from troubled and authoritarian governments and discourage it from committing human rights abuses against its own people. Such distinctions between types of sovereignty would fit the idea of the dual nation-state character of countries as discussed in Chapter 2.3 and again in Chapter 4.2. A distinction between national and state sovereignty may not even contradict the UN Charter.26 The Charter – though only implicitly – makes a distinction between nation and state. In its Preamble, the very first words refer to us as people of nations (and not states) in: “We the people of the United Nations, determine.” In Chapter 1, Article 1, the Charter speaks again about “nations,” such as in paragraph 2: “To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights” and again in paragraph 4: “To be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.” On the other hand, in Chapter 1, Article 2, the Charter refers to “the state,” such as in paragraph 4: “the threat or use of force against the territorial 26 In fact, the UN Charter only once refers to sovereignty without ever trying to define it. In Chapter I, Article 2, it states: “The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.” That is all!

172 

On Building Peace

integrity or political independence of any state,” and in paragraph 7: “in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.” Whether the separate use of nation and state was intentional or not can no longer be determined. At the time, the drafters of the Charter could not have foreseen that, one day, intrastate conflicts would replace interstate wars. That one day it may become necessary to redefine – or rather, to define – sovereignty they could not have imagined. In fact, sovereignty was considered such an obvious principle that the drafter of the UN Charter never tried to clarify what is meant by it. There will always be a fine line that will separate state from national sovereignty, but to draw this line more clearly could be crucial in solving future intrastate armed conflicts under a collective security system.27 It is the changing realities of UN peace missions now intervening in intrastate conflicts that makes a new approach to sovereignty necessary. In many of its peace missions the United Nations makes this distinction de facto – but not yet de jure. Let us look at examples for this. First, state sovereignty: When, for example, in 2000/2001 about 17,000 UN peacekeepers arrived in the small country of Sierra Leone and, for five years, took over internal security and border controls, collected weapons, and comanaged a special court to try the worst war criminals, the UN mission (UNAMSIL) carried out sovereign state functions. This constituted a temporary transfer of important parts of Sierra Leone’s state sovereignty, notably the monopoly to use force was transferred from the government to the United Nations, as authorized by the Security Council. The fact that the United Nations acted at the invitation of a national government doesn’t change this fundamentally. We can see similar takeovers of sovereign state functions in many of today’s UN peace missions. In East Timor and Kosovo, the United Nations has even become a sort of “trustee government.”28 Second, national sovereignty: Military interventions that are not limited to temporarily taking over state sovereignty with the aim of improving local governance would infringe into national sovereignty. Such infringement should never be authorized by the Security Council, as this would amount to conquering and taking procession of a country. When, in 1999, NATO 27 There might be an interesting parallel to the Just War theories of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Both emphasized that a war is just only if it has as its aim to build peace. In other worlds, wars to enrich or conquer can never be just. To translate this into our arguments about sovereignty, one could argue that military interventions would only be just if the aim is to reestablish full national sovereignty. 28 Wolfgang Seibel from Constance University argues that some UN peace missions take on the character of modern trusteeships or protectorates. See Seibel, “Peace Operations and Modern Protectorates.”

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

173

went to war with Serbia to force the secession of Kosovo, it trampled on its national sovereignty and not its state sovereignty. It was, per the above definition, not be a peace mission. (In the case of the Crimea, the process was slightly different; there was a referendum organized, irrespective of whether it was considered legal or illegal.) When the United States and its allies militarily intervened without a Security Council mandate or an invitation from the Syrian government in Syria to fight against IS, they de facto denied Syria its national sovereignty. However, a proposal to separate sovereignty into national and state sovereignty will not be accepted easily. The fear would be that this opens the door to all sorts of regime change agendas and foreign interventions by global and regional powers; weaker member states would lose out. Revising the traditional principle of sovereignty could end in total chaos and even greater controversies. But this may not be the case. As alarming as a proposal to distinguish between two different aspects of sovereignty in the UN Charter may be for many, it would simply codify what is – to certain degrees – already practiced. Recognizing this distinction and making it part of international law would help protect weaker states from unilateral regime change efforts and military interventions. It would set the bar for any intervention that would have to be authorized by the UN Security Council and endorsed by a more representative UN Peacekeeping Commission29 much higher. It would also imply strict limits to foreign interventions. In fact, aligning the definition of sovereignty with the realities of intrastate armed conflicts and introducing this into international law would help protect not only the national sovereignty but also state sovereignty of countries. – International norms for intrastate relations With the shift of international attention moving from relations among nation-states to focusing more on relations within nation-states, member states of the United Nations must develop a set of commonly acceptable norms and standards for nation-states. In other words, the United Nations would have to develop some kind of international normative framework that – like the existing international law for international relations – would apply uniquely to intrastate relations. This would have to cover norms regulating relations between state authorities and citizens, but also relations among different ethnic, religious, and politically motivated communities within the same nation-state. 29 See also next Chapter 5.3.

174 

On Building Peace

The problem for developing such a set of intrastate norms and standards would be that they must be applicable to nation-states with different political and social systems and values. If one accepts that Western norms of liberal democracy will not become the unifying global political system we had once hoped for, it is important it find alternative normative solutions. In this way, many of the liberal norms will be preserved.30 Many such intrastate norms that apply to intrastate relations already exist and would only have to be compacted into a concise set of nation-states’ standards and norms. The most important normative sets dealing with intrastate relations are the human rights conventions. They define many aspects of mostly the relationship between a national government and its citizens and, to a lesser degree, the relationship between various communities. There are many other international conventions and declarations that include norms and standards for intrastate relations nation-states could draw from, such as “education for all” or “health for all.” A new addition to norms applying to intrastate relations is the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) that was introduced to the United Nations’ sixtieth anniversary in 2005. Unfortunately, its irresponsible misuse by NATO during the alliance’s military interventions in the Libyan internal conflict in 2011, which aimed to orchestrate a regime change, has de facto killed this important principle – at least for the time being. However, R2P is far too important in a world that faces considerable pressures from population increases to let it fade away. The failure of R2P to become part of international law only proves the need to conscientiously develop a body of international norms and laws for intrastate conflicts, and to design an implementing mechanism for them that is rooted in collective security. – International norms for self-determination Not all international conventions and norms will be so easily translated into common standards for nation-states. One of the most controversial norms is the right to self-determination. Although enshrined as a core principle in the UN Charter,31 it was never clearly defined.32 First entering international 30 See also Chapter 6.2. 31 Chapter I, Article 1/2, of the UN Charter states: “To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace.” 32 The principle of self-determination of peoples (first called the self-determination of races) was part of President Wilson’s 14 Points, which he presented to the US Congress in 1918 to, in his words, “vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the world.” Self-determination as a

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

175

law in the various post-WWI peace treaties, it was then used to justify the dismantling of the losing powers, the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires. This principle was not applied, of course, to the vast colonial possessions of the victorious powers: the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, and the United States. Self-determination was a typical element of the winner’s peace established after WWI. While it was controversial at that time, the principle of self-determination has made a comeback today over disputes over the separations of Kosovo and the Crimean peninsula from Serbia and the Ukraine, respectively. In 1999, NATO went on a nine-week-long air campaign against the Serbian Republic to force it to accept the self-determination of Kosovar Albanians.33 In 2014, Russia supported a referendum in the Crimea over its independence from the Ukraine. Both remain controversial to this day. There are many other secessionist movements for which self-determination remains an objective and which demand that referenda be held. Central governments generally oppose such referenda, arguing that this would destroy national unity and may trigger other parts of the country to want to become independent, too. Such controversies tend to lead to armed struggle and violence. However, this must not be the case. In 2006, Montenegro – very different from what happened in Kosovo – separated peacefully from Serbia following a narrow referendum. The 2014 Scottish referendum also shows that establishing rules and conditions for a possible secession through a referendum could prevent violent independence movements. A softer, more reasonable, and consultative approach may even make full independence look less attractive. By contrast, using force to suppress independence movements appears to only strengthen local support for full independence. But the principle of self-determination has a darker side, too: ethnic cleansing. The fear that local minorities may one day claim self-determination and hence threaten the national unity of a country has led to suppressive actions against such communities. This has left a trail of expulsions and ethnic cleansing in many parts of the world, including in Europe from the principle later became part of the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations and is today enshrined in the UN Charter. However, there is no clear idea what it actually means. 33 It was Serbian rejection of a NATO-drafted peace agreement for Kosovo in Rambouillet in June 1999 that triggered the war against Serbia (then still officially called the Yugoslav Republic). The controversial point was NATO’s insistence that the Serbian army leave Kosovo, hand over sovereignty to NATO forces, and allow a referendum for its independence five years later. At the time, NATO took a clear position for self-determination, but mobilizes now to reject a similar claim for the Crimea.

176 

On Building Peace

expulsion of the Germans in the Sudetenland to the expulsions of religious communities during the separation of India and Pakistan and to the flight of Kosovo and the Krajina Serbs. The principle of self-determination is now “out of the bottle” and cannot be put back in. Fixing national borders and national unity forever will never work. It may, therefore, be better to establish an internationally accepted framework for various forms of self-determination: from federations to autonomous regions to outright independence. It could prevent many armed conflicts. In establishing the norm for self-determination, the aim must be to prevent the expulsion of minorities and outright ethnic cleansing. – International norms for belligerent nonstate actors In finding solutions to intrastate armed conflicts, we tend to exclude one side of intrastate armed conflicts: belligerent nonstate actors. They are usually considered too radical, too fundamentalist, or too criminal. They are considered to have unacceptable demands and use unspeakable terrorist attacks to pursue these demands. They may also be too fragmented without any clear leadership to negotiate with. But they are there and increasingly powerful. Promises that superior military forces would finish them have largely failed. And even if they appear to have been comprehensively beaten, they may resurrect after a time. We have had this experience with the Taliban and may have the same experience with Islamic State. There is another aspect to this. Governments are frequently tempted to call any opposition terrorists and to use military force against them when there may still have been opportunities to negotiate. This is mostly done out of weakness. When, for example, President Poroshenko took office in June 2014, he had the chance to talk to a still much disorganized opposition. Instead he chose, with the encouragement of the West, to call them terrorists and send in the remaining units of the Ukrainian army as well as militia forces with questionable backgrounds, such as the Azov Battalion.34 This closed the window for any intra-Ukrainian solution to this day. Now, each side is holed in with their respective foreign backers. This is a typical case of an intrastate conflict having gone wrong. There must be a way of negotiating with belligerent nonstate actors. They often have considerable support in the local population and cannot 34 The Azov Battalion is a right-wing Ukrainian militia founded in 2014 in the east of the country by politicians with profascist ideas to combat what they called Russian aggression. They operated especially in Mariupol. Today, the Azov Battalion is integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard.

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

177

be ignored. Most importantly, a sustainable peace may not be possible to achieve without them. For this purpose, some internationally accepted norms should be developed for how and when to negotiate with belligerent nonstate actors. This could be important for three reasons: First, it would provide mediators a framework to speak – and possibly even negotiate – with nonstate actors without taking the risk of being accused by the government, or other parties, of lending political acceptability to armed opposition groups they regard as outlaws. Second, it would give belligerent nonstate actors a way out and a set norms they would have to abide by if they wanted to negotiate. These norms would hence be a sort of precondition for negotiations, but have the advantage that these preconditions are not determined by the national government they fight, but an international community. Third, it would send a message to foreign backers of belligerent nonstate actors outlining what kind of support is accepted and what not. It would hopefully entice such foreign backers to support peace talks.

– International norms for civilian populations in intrastate armed conflicts Intrastate armed conflicts pose great risk to local populations. They no longer have clear front lines and fighting can break out anywhere. Belligerent nonstate actors cannot confront regular troops in open field battles. They will therefore mostly draw the fighting into urban areas35 with a heavy population concentration. Fighting nonstate actors must also target strategic urban areas36; these conflicts will rarely be countrywide. In such areas, the civilian populations are heavily targeted; as human shields, they involuntarily become strategic military “assets.”37 But there is also a more positive aspect to this all. Many civilians can escape the fighting in advance. In fact, the main reason why we register fewer battle-related deaths today than 50 years ago, is because civilians now 35 This is not always the case. For example, the Afghan Taliban is more likely to hide in rural areas where its main support base is. The reason is that they essentially are not an urban but a rural movement. To this end, they find shelter among local populations. 36 Although the Western media has singled out Russia by accusing it of bombing Aleppo, the US-led alliance does the same, bombing the cities in which Islamic State is holed up. 37 The value of human shields as military assets for nonstate actors in fighting regular forces is greatly enhanced by the new global channels of news coverage. Pictures of innocent civilians and especially small children being hit form part of a global propaganda war.

178 

On Building Peace

have more options to flee the fighting with their families, knowing that they may count on basic international assistance. Although we bemoan the latest increase in internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees to over 60 million – the highest number since WWII – we can interpret this as a great success of the United Nations’ humanitarian agencies, the Red Cross and Red Crescent organizations, and the many associated humanitarian NGOs. The many have lost all their homes and physical processions, but not their lives and the lives of their children. Today, people in intrastate armed conflicts have options as those fleeing armed conflicts have a voice in and support of these agencies and mostly get the assistance needed to survive.38 Many norms addressing the plight of vulnerable people already exist in the form of humanitarian law. However, a more explicit UN mandate must include norms to assist vulnerable civilians within the conflict-ridden country. This could include two important aspects that could later also help rebuild the peace: the preestablishment of, first, internationally protected safe zones for IDPs and, second, internationally protected national identities. The first would provide protection and the second protect the right of return. Both would have to be implemented in advance as preventive measures. First, internationally protected national safe zones: governments of countries with intrastate armed conflicts should be obliged to designate various safe zones within their countries. These zones would be guarded by UN Blue Helmet units and provided with basic shelter and assistance through the international humanitarian community.39 No weapons or political activities by any party should be allowed. Given the trillions of dollars spent on foreign armies intervening in intrastate conflicts, the costs for protecting and supplying civilians in such safe zones would be minimal. Second, internationally protected national identity registers to facilitate a later return: governments of countries with intrastate armed conflicts should be obliged to upload core information about citizenship, places of 38 The UN humanitarian coordinator and UN agencies such as UNHCR, WFP, and UNICEF, together with an array of international and national NGOs, have built a web portal to assist those fleeing conflicts. The peril to the West of not funding such forms of international assistance for those in need can be seen in the millions of refugees who walk toward Europe. 39 The recent decision of the European Union to force refugees/migrants into camps inside Libya is criminal. Libya is an extremely unsafe, dangerous, and racist place. Many will have to live under inhuman conditions, be badly exploited, and even killed. The human rights abuses against Africans who worked in Libya following the fall of the Qaddafi regime in 2011 should have been a warning. They would be better off in safe havens within their own countries and cultures.

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

179

origin, and house and land ownership, etc. into secure UN-monitored and maintained IT facilities housed in safe countries far from the conflict zones. Modern ICT would make this a relatively easy task. In this way, such crucial information would never be lost. This would later help people who have fled into UN-protected safe zones or who otherwise became IDPs or refugees40 abroad return once the respective intrastate conflict ends. This is necessary as, in civil wars, the local register offices are usually the first to be destroyed. This is done precisely to prevent those who fled from returning. Intrastate armed conflicts are also conflicts over the distribution of national wealth. In civil wars, the first institutions destroyed are often the local registers of citizenship and the local register of land and house ownership. To create internationally protected national registers could help reign in such conflict motives. – Peacebuilding as a core UN activity41 Peacebuilding and not peacekeeping must become the core of all UN activities in countries with intrastate armed conflicts. The United Nations must accept that in intrastate conflicts there is rarely, if ever, a peace to keep. Peace must first be built before we can proceed in trying to keep it. Peace in countries with internal conflicts demands a comprehensive and integrated approach, one that involves the entire UN system from its political facilitation to security-related activities, from its humanitarian to its development assistance, and from its human rights to its reconciliation mandates. Peacekeeping must become an integral part of peacebuilding and not vice versa. This would have to involve a change in the governance of UN peace missions, but also an internal organizational reform of the United Nations with clearer structures designed to mount complex UN peace missions. Better governance and member state oversight could be provided by the Peacebuilding Commission. Better implementation structures would require a change in how UN leadership is presently organized. Considering the complexity and importance of UN peace operations, it may be advisable to consider nominating a Deputy Secretary-General for Operational Peace Activities (D-SG Operations). He/she would be senior enough to pull political and security, humanitarian and development, and 40 This would also help identify those who fled to other countries and give them identity cards, etc. 41 This element draws much from the author’s 2014 publication with the International Peace Institute: Von der Schulenburg, “Rethinking Peacebuilding.”

180 

On Building Peace

human rights and justice components together. The present Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO) could be attached to this D-SG Operations as a strategic planning office. The nominations of a D-SG Operations would also help rein in the terrible fragmentation of UN field activities and group them under the umbrella of a single UN peace mission singly led by a Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG). – National ownership Finally, the most difficult, but also the most significant, question is that of national ownership. This is of great importance for UN peace missions that, as explained earlier, infringe on national sovereignty. National ownership would hence be a kind of counterweight that should become increasingly important as UN peace missions progress and for any transition back to full sovereignty to be implemented. The problem is that nobody knows what national ownership is or what it should be. It often becomes highly politicized. Countries that militarily intervene in other countries tend to claim that they have the local population behind them, that they are there to liberate them, to bring them peace and prosperity. We just witnessed this with reports of citizens of Mosul welcoming their liberators from IS rule. Unfortunately, this is often not true and more directed to justify the war to the population in the United States and Europe. National ownership is often mistaken with holding free and fair elections; the democratically elected national government would then express national ownership. But we now know that elections – especially early elections – tend to heighten local tensions. Would, for example, the majority Sunni Arab population of Mosul see the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad as their representatives? Probably not. As the term indicates, national ownership is different to getting an approval by government authorities. Hence, any definition of national ownership must take a wider view of national interests. In an environment of conflicting community interests this will not be easy. Indeed, prompting national ownership as a policy in UN peace missions may cause more problems than it solves. In intrastate conflicts, not only do local government forces fight local belligerent nonstate actors, but local communities are hostile and mistrustful of each other. In fact, the very reason for UN peace missions is that any consensus over what constitutes national ownership has collapsed and that various local communities were pursuing opposing aims. How, under such circumstances, could one identify national ownership?

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

181

There is no golden rule on how to define and promote national ownership. However, for any UN special representatives assigned to help solve intrastate conflicts in countries with deeply divided national loyalties, this will be the key issue for which he/she must find answers. This is at the core of what peacebuilding is about and not the more technical aspects of institution and capacity building. How good the answers he/she will find are may ultimately determine the success or failure of a UN peace mission.

5.3

Broadening Collective UN Decision-Making Processes

A third step to return to a system of collective security would be to require (i) greater inclusiveness in member states’ decision-making, and (ii) greater clarity in deciding the level of UN peacebuilding interventions. (i) Greater inclusiveness in member states’ decision-making The UN Charter designates the UN Security Council as the most important decision-making body in the United Nations. While decisions of the General Assembly are nonbinding, decisions by the Security Council are binding.42 The Security Council has the primary responsibility of maintaining peace and security and has an array of measures at its disposal to ensure this, from imposing sanctions to the use of military force. It is the only UN body that can establish UN peace missions and decide on its mandate. The Security Council is an institution of five permanent members with special veto rights43 which establishment dates to WWII when the main allies against Nazi Germany saw themselves as the main guardians for a future post-WWII peace order. Today, its membership44 no longer reflects geopolitical realities. With a decline in the Western-dominated, post-Cold War peace order, the present composition of the Security Council will further come under pressure. Presently one-third of its members (and three 42 Although Security Council decisions are binding, the political will of member states to implement them is often missing. The United Nations itself has no means of enforcing these decisions. 43 The veto right means that the Security Council could never make any decision that would be against the political interests of one or more of the five permanent members, the so-called P5. 44 Since 1965, the Security Council has, in addition to its five permanent members, ten rotating members that are elected by regional groups for two-year terms. Africa has three rotating members, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, and Western Europe each have two rotating members, and Eastern Europe has one rotating member.

182 

On Building Peace

out of the five permanent members) are Western countries, 45 although they represent less than one-seventh of the world population. Efforts to reform the Security Council have regularly failed,46 and there are no realistic expectations for any reforms soon. The UN Security Council will, therefore, remain the United Nations’ central decision-making body with its present unrepresentative membership and veto powers. To suggest any other UN reform would be unrealistic. This may, however, present a problem if the United Nations’ mandate is expanded to also include intrastate conflicts and, with it, authorize the Security Council to make decisions over national and state sovereignties. Decisions on UN interventions in the internal conflicts of member states are politically far more sensitive than those regarding interstate wars. Intrastate conflicts are politically and operationally more complex. They involve many more local conflict parties and, unfortunately, many more foreign support countries. UN peace missions are much larger and involve resources from a greater number of member states, both financial as well as peacekeepers. This would make a wider consensus among member states necessary. One possible approach to this issue would be to turn the UN Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) into a governing council for all UN peace operations in intrastate conflicts. This would require a fundamental revision of its mandate and terms of references. It would need a departure from the largely irrelevant and forgotten PBC it is today; a revival. When the PBC was created during the sixtieth anniversary of the United Nations in 2005, it was praised as a symbol for the United Nations’ new beginning. It now leads a shadowy existence. Limited to support countries that come out of internal conflicts, it currently reviews the progress of six countries47 – none of them high on the UN agenda – without being able to provide any tangible assistance.

45 This share could even rise if the one representative of the Eastern European group is also an European Union and/or NATO member. Presently, the seat is held by the Ukraine, which has a strong pro-Western government. 46 The seventieth anniversary of the United Nations has just passed and member states could not agree on any reform of the UN Security Council. The main reason for this failure to achieve any substantive reforms may be that the issue of Security Council reforms is approached head-on. The G-4 countries – Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan – demanded to be given permanent seats while none of the P-5 want to share their exclusive privileges. Such demands of the G-4 are also vehemently opposed by other regional powers who fear that this would leave them out. 47 The six countries are Burundi, the Central African Republic, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Since 2011, no new country has requested to be on the PBC. The country-specific configurations have become the playground for underemployed permanent representatives in New York with little impact on the peace process in the countries they are supposed to support.

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

183

However, the PBC has two important advantages. The first is that it already exists; it does not have to go through the long process of being invented. Its second advantage is its more representative membership than that of the Security Council. The PBC has 31 members – none of them have any veto power – and includes five groups of countries. They are not elected based on their regional affiliations, but on their importance to UN peace missions: seven members selected by the Security Council, seven members selected by the General Assembly, seven members selected by ECOSOC, five members from top troop-contributing countries, and five members from top financial contributors. Each member can be represented only under one of these five groupings. All of this would make the PBC an ideal intergovernmental body to support UN peace missions. This would require redefining its mandate in a way not to compete but complement the work of the Security Council. The Security Council would remain the UN body responsible for maintaining peace and security and deciding UN peace missions; the PBC could become the UN body that oversees and helps direct UN peace missions based on Security Council mandates. The PBC would only become active when the Security Council has placed a member state with intrastate conflicts on a peacebuilding watch list or decided to dispatch a UN peacebuilding mission. More precisely, the PBC should be made responsible for the following: – Reviewing all countries with intrastate armed conflicts designated by the Security Council as such and advising the Security Council on options for UN interventions. This would help to treat all countries with intrastate armed conflicts equally and to better prepare for eventual UN peacebuilding interventions elsewhere. Lessons would be learned and archived. – Formulating operational policies and operational options for peace missions sent into countries with intrastate armed conflicts and advising the Security Council accordingly. As such, the PBC should serve as a forum for member states to debate sensitive issues related to UN peacebuilding interventions, such as national sovereignty, territorial integrity, selfdetermination, governance models, and the impact of globalization. The PBC should also be empowered to discuss more policy-relevant issues, such as the dual character of nation-states, national ownership, exit strategies, transition of UN missions, and interagency cooperation.

The UN term of “country-specific configuration” obscures the simple fact that these countries meet a group of member states twice a year – for nothing really.

184 

On Building Peace

As an advisory body, the PBC could deal with these controversial issues in a more constructive atmosphere than the Security Council. – Ensuring a coherent and integrated UN approach to peacebuilding throughout the UN system and regularly debating failures and best practices. This would include urging members to align their voluntary contributions to an overall UN strategy on peacebuilding. The PBC should also set standards for the smooth transition of peacebuilding missions from one phase to the next. In this context, the PBC should seek the support of other international and national players. – Acting as UN member states’ central governing council for all UN integrated peacebuilding missions and, as such, reviewing and approving their peacebuilding strategies and resource mobilization plans. It should receive regular (annual) reports on the progress made in their peacebuilding operations. All UN departments, agencies, funds, and programs working in countries with peacebuilding missions would have to jointly report to the PBC. Greater clarity in deciding the level of UN peacebuilding interventions UN member states should define various levels of peacebuilding interventions, ranging from technical and humanitarian assistance to diplomatic mediation efforts of conflict prevention, from civilian missions to military/ peacekeeping interventions. Each level would increase the extent at which a UN peace mission interferes in the internal affairs of a failing nation-state, from simple advice to taking over certain sovereign state functions. In determining such levels, one could follow a similar approach as that suggested by the Secretary-General to implement the principle of the “Responsibility to Protect.”48 For peacebuilding, the prime responsibility for maintaining peace, security, justice (including human rights), and promoting prosperity would remain within the respective governments of each UN member state. Peacebuilding interventions would hence have to be the exception and not the rule. However, once a UN member state experiences serious and continuous challenges to its internal peace and security, it could become subject to various levels of intervention. In these cases, the PBC, the Security Council, and the Secretary-General would each have to play a mutually supportive role. The following seven levels of peacebuilding interventions could be considered; each level would build on the previous level and include aspects of (ii)

48 UN Secretary-General, “Implementing the Responsibility to Protect.”

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

185

it/them. Depending on how a situation develops, the Security Council could decide to skip levels and, if required, could launch a UN peace mission with a mandate at a higher level. It could also create a UN peace mission with a mixed mandate comprising more than one level of intervention: 1 Observations: At the first level of peacebuilding, the PBC would regularly review all countries with intrastate violence and armed conflicts and would recommend to the Security Council which of them to put on the regular observation list and which of them not. If the Security Council agrees, the UN Secretary-General would nominate a Special Envoy with the responsibility to observe and assess developments in that country. He/she would then report to the PBC and the Security Council every six months until such time that the Security Council, at the recommendation of the PBC, decides either to drop the observations or to engage into a higher level of peacebuilding. 2 Technical and humanitarian assistance: At the second level of peacebuilding, the United Nations could, at the recommendation of the PBC, be mandated by the Security Council to provide technical and humanitarian assistance to a government under the guidance of the Special Envoy. Such technical assistance could be in the form of advising government mediation teams, helping conduct elections and constitution writing, strengthening human rights commissions, improving access to justice, or helping to improve law enforcement agencies. Humanitarian assistance would look after the most vulnerable and could hence help stabilize affected populations and facilitate the return of the internally displaced. 3 Mediation teams: Should technical assistance prove to be not sufficient and intrastate tensions further rise, the PBC could suggest, and the Security Council approve, a third level of peacebuilding and dispatch a UN mediation support team. Under the leadership of the Special Envoy, but independently from the government, the mediation team would conduct mediation efforts involving the government, any internal opposition, and, where possible, also representatives of belligerent nonstate actors. At the same time, technical and humanitarian assistance would continue. 4 Civilian support interventions: At the fourth level, the Security Council, at the recommendation of the PBC, would mandate the SecretaryGeneral to open a multidisciplinary civilian UN peace mission under a Special Representative (SRSG) inside the country. In addition to the UN mediation team, this mission would, depending on the situation and requirements on the ground, consist of political officers, human

186 

On Building Peace

rights officers, police support officers, legal officers, humanitarian officers, and development officers. In some cases, these officers would simply work with government officials. These UN peace missions must be given contact access to all conflict parties in all parts of the country. 5 Civilian executive interventions: At a fifth level, the Security Council, at the recommendation of the PBC, could authorize civilian interventions to take over executive functions by placing international staff temporarily in charge of certain ministries or state organizations. This could also apply in the case of humanitarian interventions by placing camps of IDPs under the control of international administrators. 6 Peacekeeping interventions: At the sixth stage, the Security Council, at the recommendation of the PBC, would, in addition to the civilian team, dispatch UN peacekeepers to monitor and facilitate the implementation of a peace agreement, to protect vulnerable civilians and support the activities of UN envoys. 7 Peace enforcement interventions: At the final stage, the Security Council, at the recommendation of the PBC, could decide to mandate a robust UN military force that engages with belligerent parties undermining peace efforts or threatening civilian populations. Under this stage, the UN peace enforcement force could be given the overall security responsibility for the country or parts of the country. This could include patrolling the borders as well as forcing illegal combatants to demobilize and give up their weapons. This final stage must only be applied in exceptional cases and be time limited. Level 5 and 7 would imply an interference in the state sovereignty of a country and must hence be handled with great care. For the last four levels of intervention, the United Nations must develop appropriate exit strategies and regularly review them. Box 5.1 Sierra Leone: When the British Saved the United Nations When in October 1999 the first UN peacekeepers began to arrive in Sierra Leone they were asked to facilitate keeping the Lomé Peace Agreement, which had earlier been agreed to. They would quickly learn the hard way that the local scenario was very different and that there was no peace to keep. Quite to the contrary, they found themselves embroiled in the middle an ongoing civil war for which they were neither prepared nor equipped. The situation for those UN peacekeepers would very quickly deteriorate.

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

187

In March/April 2000, over 500 UN peacekeepers were taken hostage at various places by the main rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Many were stripped naked and humiliated; some were killed. In the worst case, 200 Zambian troops were ambushed and their captain beheaded in front of them. Large amounts of military equipment fell into the hands of rebel forces and it were now these rebels who ran around in blue berets and helmets of UN peacekeepers. To make things worse, a serious and very public rift broke out among the Indian Force Commander, his Nigerian deputy, and the UN Special Representative. Only six to seven months after their arrival, the UN peacekeeping mission was about to collapse. To a large degree, the problems of UN peacekeeping in Sierra Leone were the consequence of the United Nations’ insistence to uphold the three traditional peacekeeping principles of its operations: mutual consent, impartiality, and minimum use of force. But none of these three principles would work in Sierra Leone, leaving UN peacekeepers confused. Peacekeepers were not welcomed by all conflict parties. They were not seen as impartial and the RUF quickly accused the United Nations of taking sides against them. Not only that, instead of limiting the use of force to self-defense, it became clear that UN peacekeepers would have to fight if they wanted to achieve anything. Although the United Nations had found itself in similar situations in recent interventions, such as in Angola, Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda, it wanted to hold on to the illusion that they were peacekeepers. As in the other cases, the UN peace mission was about to end in a fiasco. Around 2000, the United Nations’ Sierra Leone mission was its largest ongoing UN peacekeeping operation. Much depended on this mission to recuperate the credibility of UN peacekeeping after a string of failures. Were it to fail, this could lead the United Nations’ entire peacekeeping approach to a collapse. At that time, James Taub, an influential US journalist, predicted that Sierra Leone would be the death knell for UN peacekeeping. Fortunately, Taub’s prediction would prove wrong; Sierra Leone would ultimately become one of the few success stories for the United Nations. However, it was not the United Nations itself but a quick British military intervention that saved the UN peacekeeping mission from collapse and gave it the time and space to recuperate. Before, Nigeria and Guinea had probably done more in holding off the threat of the rebel attacks on Sierra Leonean civilians compared to the UN peacekeeping force and they had paid a much higher price in lives lost. But it was the British who engaged a decisive force at the most crucial time: when developments appeared hopeless and when all others had begun to walk away.

188 

On Building Peace

Although they would engage less than 2,000 troops, they did something that a much larger, but multinational, force of UN peacekeepers could never do: they fought under the professional leadership of officers such as that of General David Richards.49 They stopped the renewed RUF advance on Freetown, kept the capital’s airport open, helped in the arrest of much-feared RUF leaders, and knocked out one of the worst militia groups, the West Side Boys, in a commando raid. The RUF began to lose its nimbus of being invulnerable. This decisively reversed the direction of the civil war. This provided the time for the United Nations to fly in reinforcements and make a few crucial changes in its peacekeeping mission. By January 2001, the British troops left and UN peacekeepers took over. To back them up, the British maintained several battleships in the area in what they called an “over-the-horizon” presence that would allow them to intervene again if needed. With this, UN peacekeeping was on track again. British help was not limited to its military intervention, but included an important political support also. With the British having a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, the UN mission had a strong political supporter to push for an increase in UN peacekeepers and internal reforms within the UN peace mission. Due to this relationship, Security Council resolutions were now based on the realities in Sierra Leone and not on priorities in New York. Together with the United Nations, the British spearheaded the security sector reform of systematically rebuilding a national police force and a new national army. They kept a large development program and initiated important new initiatives in collaboration with the United Nations, such as the nationwide mother-and-child healthcare program to turn around one of Sierra Leone’s worse social tragedies: one of the highest mother and child mortality rates during and after birth in the world. British political support in the Security Council was crucial for the UN mission in Sierra Leone. This ensured long-term support for UN peacebuilding activities – even at a time when international news channels had begun to forget about this small West African country. This worked also the other way. The British needed the UN mission to conduct a successful military mission. They could not have militarily intervened without the backing of thousands of UN peacekeepers holding territory and they could not have withdrawn so quickly without UN peacekeepers ready to take over. They also needed the legitimacy a UN operation could provide to their intervention. And while UN peacekeepers could never have projected 49 As is so often in cases that require quick decisions, it was the individual leadership of General David Richards that saved the situation. General Richards was commander of a relatively small British force sent into Sierra Leone in 2000.

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

189

such a level of military determination, the British troops also could not remain for years. They could not have taken the lead in demobilizing ex-soldiers and ex-combatants without running the risk of being accused of neocolonialism. The ultimate success in Sierra Leone lay in the interplay between the British and the United Nations: in the United Kingdom’s wisdom, it did not give in to the temptation to replace the failing UN mission. Instead, it took over only where the United Nations could not deliver. The United Nations was left standing in the premiere position, which is the opposite of what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, where it was subsumed by the US military. Could a wisely conducted combination between a large UN peace mission and the decisive support by a major power be a model for successful peacebuilding missions? Other big powers could do the same, such as the United States, France, China, Russia, but also India, Brazil, Nigeria, or South Africa. There are surely positive lessons to be learned from Sierra Leone.

Box 5.2 Iraq’s Mistrusted Nation Builders There may be a reason for the failure of nation building in Iraq that we like to overlook: the bad experiences Iraqi communities had, and a lack of trust in Western “nation builders”! There is often a great gap between the image that we have of ourselves and the image that others have of us. When reporting on Iraq, Western news channels like to air the images of a huge statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled at the central Firdos Square in Baghdad with some sad-looking Iraqis banging their sandals on the fallen statue. But what we see as a symbol of having come as liberators may have been a staged event by the US army. It was an American tank team that pulled the statue from its foundations, one that had a steel rope long enough to fix it over the head of Saddam, and that was accompanied by a film crew to take the pictures that went immediately around the world. Indeed, it must have come as a shock for American and British forces that, except in Kurdish areas, they were not welcomed as liberators.50 How could this happen? The US and British troops had just removed one of the bloodiest dictatorships in the world, a dictatorship that had reigned with violence that affected most Iraqi families, that was responsible for widespread torture, mass executions, and the killing of its own citizens with mustard gas. US and British

50 Oddly, one of the few places where the Americans had been welcomed in April 2003 was in Fallujah. However, after a string of misunderstandings, the Americans ended up bombing this city into total ruins in 2004, in an operation they called “Phantom Fury,” only about fifteen months after their arrival as liberators.

190 

On Building Peace

troops brought about the fall of a dictatorship that took the country into two major wars and lost both, and that was responsible for subjecting people to thirteen years of sanctions that would bring starvation, malnutrition, and medical neglect. The large majority of Iraqis must have detested the Baath regime. So why were the coalition forces not able to capitalize on the rejection and hate of the Baath regime? The answer is probably the deep mistrust in the West, which had now come again with the claim to liberate and “civilize” them, by the Iraqis. While Western memories of historical events tend to be short-lived and clouded by a breaking news culture of modern media, Iraqis, like people in many other non-Western countries, have much longer memories. Because of this, Iraqis saw British and American forces51 not as liberators but as occupiers that cannot be trusted. How could they have trusted the British as the benevolent agent to bring them freedom? The British had broken their promise of 1916 (the Baghdad Declaration) to give Mesopotamia its independence after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in WWI. Instead, they instituted a British mandate and later installed a foreign pro-British king from the Sunni Hashemite dynasty52 in a country with a Shiite majority. They broke their promise to the Kurds to give them a separate state and instead drew Iraq’s border. It was the British air force that bombed Arab and Kurdish villages and towns to quell an uprising against their plans for Iraq in the early 1920s. For the first time in history, it was the British Air Force under the then-squadron leader Arthur Harris53 that used poisonous mustard gas against rebellious civilian Iraqi populations. (The gassing of Kurdish civilians from the air in Halabja had hence its precedents.) And what about the Americans? They too arrived in Iraq burdened by a history of betrayal. Many Iraqi’s would remember Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with President Saddam Hussein in 1983 and America’s support of Iraq’s war against Iran. Then, human rights abuses apparently did not enter the political calculation. The American government even intervened to prevent Iraq from being accused in the United Nations when it extensively used chemical weapons against Iranian forces in 1987 and 1988. In the First Gulf War, the US army and air

51 The initial US-led coalition included, in addition to British also Polish and Australian troops, but most Iraqis may not have been aware of this. 52 Despite widespread opposition, especially among Shiite Arabs and Kurds who suddenly found themselves in a new state to which they had no allegiance, King Faisal was confirmed in a British-organized national referendum in 1921 in which it was claimed over 96% voted for him as their new king. Similar referenda would also later be used to “legitimize” American designs for the future of Iraq. 53 Arthur Harris, as air field marshal, would later become notorious for his carpet bombing of civilian targets in German cities during WWII. His statue now stands in London.

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

191

force deployed its own version of a “chemical” bomb when it used ammunition of depleted uranium, a substance that causes a long-term health risks for the civilian population that lasts to this day. Following the defeat of Iraqi forces in Kuwait, President Bush Sr. called on all Iraqis in 1991 to finish the job and rise in rebellion against their dictator, Saddam Hussein. However, when the Shiite population followed his call, Bush, fearful of Iranian influence over the rebels, chose to betray them. The United States allowed Saddam Hussain to reassemble his Republican Guard and move them with tanks against the Shiite rebellion. Saddam was even allowed to fly his attack helicopters against Iraqi Shiites – and this despite an earlier instituted no-fly policy for Iraqi forces. American and allied forces looked on when Republicans guards massacred badly armed Shiite rebels.54 Until 2007, the Sunni Arab population was the main target of American military actions that led to massive bombing of areas in Sunni provinces, including the complete destruction of towns such as Fallujah. In 2007, in a policy switch, the United States began to recruit, arm, and pay large numbers of Sunni tribal forces known as the Sons of Iraq55 to help them fight Islamic extremist forces. This was done without the agreement of the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, which saw American support for such forces as potentially hostile to them. When the United States began withdrawing its forces in 2011, they handed over the list of these Sunni tribal fighters to the Iraqi government. This resulted in the quick disbanding of those forces and, consequently, a deep mistrust among Arab Sunnis of having been betrayed by the Americans. How would we in Europe react if an Arab army had repeatedly occupied our countries over the last hundred years, imposed a foreign king, drawn our borders according to their interests, bombed and even gassed those who opposed them, imposed terrible sanctions, and now came back to install a Sharia-type of government claiming that this was good for us as it is a superior form of government? How, under such circumstances, could Iraqis be expected to believe the rhetoric of their “liberators” about bringing peace, democracy, justice, and prosperity to their country? How could one expect Iraqis to accept the “present” of liberal democracy from the West that had done so much harm to them? How could one possibly expect to carry out “nation building” in an environment in 54 Iraqi Shiites often tell you the horror story that their 1991 rebellion against Saddam Hussein ended in a last stand at the cemetery of Nazirieh where Iraqi government troops surrounded and systematically killed them. At the same time, Western troops were looking on from only a few hundred meters away. True or not, such stories taint Iraqi Shiite relations with the West to this day. 55 There are many names for these US-created paramilitary forces, such as Iraqi Awakening, Anbar Salvation, Sons of Iraq, etc.

192 

On Building Peace

which everybody mistrusted each other and in which the gun reigned supreme? It is this lack of credibility and trust that will also impede success in the West’s fight against the Caliphate.

Box 5.3 Libya and the Failure to Protect When, in February 2011, a popular revolt against Libya’s long-time dictator Muam­ mar Qaddafi broke out and the government used its armed and security forces to quell it, the UN Security Council authorized a limited military intervention with the aim of protecting civilians from the effects of the armed conflict. This was the first time that the Security Council invoked the principle of ­Responsibility to ­Protect (R2P) to authorize an external military intervention in the internal affairs of a member state. Sadly, it had the opposite effect: it ultimately left ordinary ­Libyans facing years of violence, anarchy, a lack of social services, and an ­economic decline. The main reason for this failure may have been that NATO’s subsequent intervention mixed up the collective objective of protecting civilians with its own objective of changing the regime and wanting to install a pro-­ Western liberal democracy. Although NATO’s air campaign between March and October 2011 was militarily successful, it ended politically in a terrible failure. It had made an already bad situation worse. The NATO operation opened the door to a prolonged intrastate armed conflict, to a collapse of institutions, and to the disintegration of Libya as a nation-state. Instead of protecting civilians, it led to a situation in which people continue to be killed or die from a lack of medical attention. With its intervention, NATO had hoped to help allegedly local democratic forces turn Libya into a liberal democracy. For the West, protecting civilians meant regime change. This was the time of the Arab Spring and hopes were high that this was the right thing to do. Initially, Western observers hailed NATO’s intervention as a NATO victory and the “right way to run an intervention.” After the quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq, many political analysts claimed to have finally found a way to intervene. The time of “intervention light” was born: The West would now only intervene with its air power but have no boots on the ground. “Light” meant that no Western soldier would be exposed to the dangers of direct combat. The problem is that this intervention was based on false claims that Qaddafi’s troops were deliberately targeting civilians. Their military advance on Benghazi, a town held by anti-Qaddafi rebel forces, was declared a human inferno in the making. We now know this was false information. As Alan Kuperman’s research

Building Peace on Collec tive Securit y

193

of hospital records has shown,56 there is no evidence of civilians being deliberately targeted and killed by Qaddafi’s forces. Much of Benghazi, the town President Obama was to protect from Qaddafi’s forces, is today under the control by extreme Islamist groups. Only a year after the NATO operation, the US ambassador and some of his colleagues were killed by one of those radicalized groups in the very same town the United States had declared a safe area. Libya has descended into anarchy with repeated waves of armed violence. Libyans are the losers in what was to become a NATO-supported regime change. It did not bring a democratic transition. Ironically, under dictatorship Libyans once enjoyed the highest human development standards in all of Africa.57 Today, the country is a social disaster with no security, no electricity, no safe drinking water, no reliable health services, and a shattered education system; some claim that over 400,000 Libyans are now displaced because of the fighting. If there are any winners of NATO’s intervention, they are the Islamic extremist forces including those of Islamic State (IS). Much of Benghazi, the Libyan city that NATO had come to protect from an expected onslaught by Qaddafi’s forces, is now in the hands of IS. NATO not only bombed Libya into a collapsed nation-state, it also contributed to destabilizing an entire region through the spreading of weapons into Africa. And it has brought IS to Europe’s borders. The botched NATO military intervention in Libya and the mistrust this has brought to many Middle Eastern countries will make international solutions to the triple problem of collapsing nation-states, rising influence of nonstate actors, and spreading intrastate armed conflicts far more difficult to achieve: – It discredited humanitarian principles: By mixing up R2P with regime change, the West discredited the very principle it had fought so hard to get accepted among members of the United Nations. This is not to be taken lightly. As part of the 2005 UN Summit outcome, the adopting of the R2P principle was the promise for greater international cooperation in dealing with intrastate armed conflict. This hope has been dashed and the Security Council never again agreed on an R2P mission. – It raises questions about the credibility of Western news reports: NATO’s intervention was preceded by media reports about the singular evilness of 56 Alan J. Kuperman argues that there is no evidence that would confirm that Libyan leader Qaddafi’s forces had deliberately targeted civilians, an allegation that had justified NATO’s intervention (“Obama’s Libya Debacle”). In their reply to Kuperman’s article, two former Obama officials who were once involved in preparing for NATO’s intervention defended the decision on the ground of a lack of reliable information at the time. See Chollet and Fishman, “Who Lost Libya?” 57 See UN Development Programme, Human Development Report 2010: The Real Wealth of Nations.

194 

On Building Peace

Qaddafi and his security apparatus in being responsible for huge losses of human life and atrocities committed against the civilian population. We were also reputedly told that this was a fight between dictatorship and the people of Libya who were all – or at least most – rising up in the hopes of achieving the freedom for establishing democracy. Behind such “breaking news” reports, the historical, political, and social complexities of Libya simply got lost. – It increased mistrust in Western intentions: NATO, in pursuit of its own objective of regime change, did not even shy away from delivering Qaddafi to a bunch of lawless militia forces who lynched him. The shocking pictures went around the world. They may not have rattled Western viewers, but they surely left their impression on the minds of people and politicians in the non-Western world, particularly in the Muslim world. Many would remember how Qaddafi was courted and embraced by virtually all Western presidents or heads of government not long before he was handed over to meet his barbaric death. – It raises questions about NATO’s future role: NATO’s options for finding a new post-Cold War mission was once summarized by Senator Richard Lugar’s comment that “if NATO does not go out of area, it will go out of business.” In other words, NATO would have to adapt from a military organization defending Europe against a Soviet threat to a global defender of a post-Cold War peace order. This it has tried to do in the Balkans, in Afghanistan, and now also in Libya. But after questionable results in bringing order to the Balkan wars and its failure in Afghanistan, NATO created another mess in Libya. This did not bring greater security to Europe. – It reveals the lack of solutions: NATO’s intervention revealed that the West – despite all its military power, massive financial resources, and an allegedly better political system – has no solutions for stabilizing failing countries such as Libya. Indeed, the Libyan intervention was proof that the West has run out of liberal peacebuilding solutions – if it ever had any. – It undermined collective security: NATO stands accused of having overstepped the UN Security Council resolution. The intended enforcement of a no-fly zone to deprive Qaddafi of using his air force against demonstrators soon became an all-out air war against Qaddafi’s forces. When it became clear during the Tunis negotiations that Qaddafi had every intention of staying on, the prospect of an enraged Qaddafi at Europe’s borders became simply too frightening. He had to go. But, by first going to the UN Security Council but then largely ignoring it for national interests, the West has de facto undermined the collective security system.

6

Striking a New Grand Bargain for Global Peace and Security

In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, “America’s Awesome Military: And ow How to Make It Even Better,”1 by two grandees of American security policy, Michael O’Hanlon and David Petraeus,2 readers were assured that they are safe as, in the author’s words, “the United States has the best military in the world, by far.” We are further assured that all US military branches and weapon systems are technologically far superior to those of any competitor country and that this Western military superiority will continue in the foreseeable future. The United States, together with its Western allies, controls about two-thirds of all defense spending worldwide. Who can speak of a decline in global Western dominance? However, boasting about military superiority might miss the point. The United States, with or without all of its huge military hardware and software, is losing its status as the world’s only superpower and, although still very influential, it can no longer dominate world affairs as it once did. Geopolitics have changed. We are now entering a multipolar world with many global and regional players and different political systems. And we have entered a world in which intrastate armed conflicts have replaced interstate wars. This has created a completely different form of warfare. Military superiority has not helped the United States or its Western allies in dealing decisively with these kinds of intrastate armed conflicts and win their engagements against belligerent nonstate actors. Faced with the problems of intrastate armed conflicts, any overwhelming military superiority appears to simply melt away. After a post-Cold War period during which the West mostly failed when relying unilaterally on its exceptional military might to force its peace solutions, political solutions based on collective security should now be given a new chance in preserving global peace and security. In order to do so, the collective security system of the United Nations would have to be reformed to enable it to respond to the new security challenges 1 O’Hanlon and Petraeus, “America’s Awesome Military.” 2 David Petraeus was former CIA director, former commander of Coalition Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and former commander of the US Central Command; Michael O’Hanlon is senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution and author of several books on security and defense policy. Both are heavyweights in US national security.

196 

On Building Peace

emanating from failing nation-states and the rising influence of armed nonstate actors. The core recommendation in this book is, therefore, for UN member states to conclude a new grand bargain setting the parameters for dealing collectively with collapsing nation-states, belligerent nonstate actors, and intrastate conflicts. Such a grand bargain would have (i) to make the nation-state itself and relations within nation-states subject to international laws and norms and (ii) to empower the United Nations by adding to its traditional mandate of dealing with interstate conflicts a second mandate of dealing with intrastate conflicts. This would reflect a vision of an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, but one that continues to rely on individual nation-states as the essential building blocks for ensuring global, as well as local, peace, security, justice, and prosperity. In Chapters 4 and 5 we outlined several reform proposals on how to rescue nation-states and how to boost collective security through the United Nations. In this chapter, we will look at the question of how realistic it is that such a grand bargain could be struck. Of course, the answers given here can at best be only tentative. The proposed grand bargain, though based on a simple idea, would amount to a revolution in international relations. It would place collective security on a completely new footing. It would de facto revise the once inviolable 400-year-old Westphalia principle of national sovereignty3 – at least as we know it today – and make interstate relations subject to internationally accepted sets of norms and principles. Such a proposal may result in an outcry among UN member states; protecting national sovereignty and preventing any interference in the internal affairs of their respective countries is one of the primary tasks of any diplomacy. 4 However, at a closer look, one may realize that a new grand bargain to create an internationally accepted normative framework for preventing and responding to intrastate conflicts under a collective security system would 3 In this context, it is important to remember that the Westphalian system of independent states was initially only applied to the territories under the Holy Roman Empire of German Nations and was the outcome of a 30-year-long war in the seventeenth century that may have killed between 35% and 40% of the entire German population. Today, we would probably characterize the Thirty Years’ War as an internationalized intrastate armed conflict. The Westphalia peace treaties of 1648 were largely dictated by the winners: France and Sweden who feared the emergence of a powerful central nation-state in the heart of Europe and the mostly Protestant German states which objected to centralizing powers around the German king/emperor. 4 See also Annex III.

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

197

rather protect than undermine the principle of national sovereignty. Here are four considerations that may support this argument: – Erosion of national sovereignty: National sovereignty is continuously being eroded through open or clandestine interventions by more powerful countries in the internal affairs of other, usually weaker UN member states – and over the last 25 years, these were mostly Western countries. During the Cold War, smaller nation-states could seek some “protection” by aligning with one or the other side in the East-West conflict. This option no longer exists. Today, national sovereignties are quite regularly breached through unilaterally supported clandestine regime change activities and unilateral military interventions in breach of the UN Charter.5 – Protection of national sovereignty: “Equal sovereignty,” as demanded in the UN Charter, may probably never exist. However, a new grand bargain could help protect sovereignty, especially that of smaller member states that do not have the military strength to defend themselves. A grand bargain would reduce the possibility of unilateral interventions in their internal affairs, something that has become a sad practice today. By defining the conditions for external interventions into intrastate conflicts in international law, and by giving the UN Security Council the exclusive right to approve any such interventions, the bar regarding such interventions would be set very high.6 – Threats to national sovereignty: Collapsing nation-states, powerful belligerent nonstate actors, and intrastate armed conflicts destabilize entire regions. Directly and indirectly they threaten the security and hence infringe on the sovereignty of many UN member states. These member states must do something about it for their own protection. Rather than attracting a foreign power such as the United States, NATO, or, more recently, Russia to help them against internal enemies, they would probably be better off if the decision for any intervention and its implementation are part of a collective security system. 5 It is rarely noted that it was President Obama more than his predecessor, President Bush, who ignored the UN Security Council and the UN Charter when ordering US military strikes in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and approving drone attacks against alleged terrorist targets in many more countries. 6 A good example for the advantage of collective security is the refusal by the UN Security Council to authorize the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. In retrospect, the US government would have done better to listen to the Security Council as this would have spared it and the region much of the mess we are now in, costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Collective wisdom is slower but wiser. Western complaints that the Security Council does not work seams is, in this situation at least, unfair.

198 

On Building Peace

– Risks to national sovereignty: With a breakdown of the post-Cold War peace order and with no other global order in sight to replace it, sovereignty could be jeopardized by a resulting anarchy in international relations. A situation could arise in which global and regional powers seek to take advantage of the chaos around them to take territory or expand their influence by interfering in the internal matters of neighboring countries. “Invitations” to do so could come from hard-pressed governments or belligerent nonstate actors. A new grand bargain that sets international standards could help avoid such a development. But, how likely would it be that a still-powerful West and, above all, the United States will accept to cede its perceived right to intervene in other countries to collective decision-making?7 The West would have to step down from its pedestal of moral and political superiority and accept that it can no longer unilaterally decide global affairs. And how probable would it be for non-Western countries to accept a weakening of the principle of national sovereignty that they had so vigorously defended in the past? While the West may fear that such proposals would give nondemocratic regimes undue influence over international decision-making, non-Western countries may fear that softening the principle of national sovereignty could trigger a number of interventions, and be yet another attempt to cement Western hegemony. In reality, the interests of UN member states vary far more than the simple distinction between Western and non-Western countries would suggest. The West is going through an unprecedented identity crisis and is losing its grip on many of its international problems. The current “era of military intervention” might just be over. A new American president, Donald Trump, has promised to end his nation’s costly wars abroad and instead to invest at home. Europe is far too weak and disunited to fill the vacuum left by a United States that might withdraw from international trouble spots, but the problems will not go away and in a globalized world the fallout from these conflicts will be felt throughout the world.8 7 This would imply that the United States would have to give up any policy of preemptive military strikes and realign with the UN Charter and its core principle not to use or threaten military force in pursuit of national political aims. 8 What, for example, will happen in the not too unlikely event should the Trump administration decide to unilaterally withdraw from Afghanistan and trigger a Taliban takeover? The fallout of such a decision would directly affect security in Europe, Russia, China, Central Asia, Pakistan, and India, but much less the United States. This would also make NATO to disengage. What security mechanism would then take over?

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

199

Europe is increasingly threatened by an unabating stream of refugees and migrants for which it has only unsatisfactory ad hoc answers. For a United States that wants to disentangle itself from getting overly involved in collapsing nation-states9 and for a Europe too divided to be able to fill the void, a greater role for the UN – and that means a greater collective role for all of its members – in solving or containing intrastate armed conflicts might have great advantages. A collective role would also help prevent future intrastate armed conflicts from developing into serious confrontations between the more powerful global powers (as we have seen in Syria). The West may welcome such a grand bargain, but it is doubtful whether the United Nations has the capacity to play a bigger role in the world. Even its capacity for peacekeeping is under constant criticism. China has recently shown much greater interest in the United Nations. It is now the third-largest troop contributor to UN peacekeeping and has increased its financial stake in the organization. During its presidency of the UN Security Council in February 2015, China submitted a concept note in the Security Council10 raising the problem of compliance, or better, noncompliance, with the UN Charter – touching on many of the issues raised in this book. China follows a policy of noninterference in the internal affairs of other states, but its desire is for an internationally peaceful environment (it needs this to advance its export-oriented economy). China could, despite being the principle defender of national sovereignty, find such a new grand bargain advantageous. Russia might see an advantage to embrace such a proposal. It is embroiled in a drawn-out conflict with the West over two very different intrastate armed conflicts: in the Ukraine and in Syria. Russia may hence want to find a way out of what must be a very costly and risky engagement. A new grand bargain could create an environment in which all sides could find a solution to the two conflicts without losing face. India, though not (yet) a permanent member of the UN Security Council, is increasingly establishing itself as an upcoming regional and global power. 9 The first weeks of President Trump’s administration were quite chaotic. In the context of the arguments in this book it is interesting to note that one of his first decisions was, rightly or wrongly, related to the issue of failing states and the rise of belligerent nonstate actors. His decree to ban all citizens of seven Muslim countries from entering the United States has prompted a national and international firestorm. It backfired! Could this make the US administration more open to finding a more collective, rules-based approach to such problems in the future? 10 See the Chinese Concept Note to the Security Council: UN Security Council, “Concept Note: Maintenance of International Peace and Security.”

200 

On Building Peace

But India is a large, multiethnic, and multireligious nation-state facing several secession movements itself. They may fear that, one day, this could be exploited by foreign powers in an effort to destabilize or even to break up their country. Furthermore, India must feel threatened by the increase in intrastate armed conflicts and the rise of powerful nonstate actors around it. A new grand bargain framing how to deal with intrastate armed conflicts could hence be in the interest of India. Regional powers such as Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, and Mexico could see an advantage in strengthening collective security to solve intrastate armed conflicts around them. A new grand bargain would protect them from unwanted external and unilateral interventions in dealing with their own internal problems. In any case, it would mostly be the smaller UN member states that would benefit from a collective security framework when dealing with intrastate armed conflicts. What about the United Nations itself? Under its departed SecretaryGeneral, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations has gone through a decade of aligning the organization to the then only remaining superpower, the United States. When Ban Ki-moon took office on 1 January 2007, this may have been justified to ensure the survival of the organization.11 But today, ten years later, the geopolitical balance has changed quite dramatically. The United Nations must reposition itself. On 1 January 2017, the new Secretary-General, António Guterres, took office. To regain the credibility of the United Nations, he must make the organization more independent from any major power(s) and place it back at the center of the global search for peace and security. The present shift toward a more multipolar world – and, indeed, the shift toward intrastate armed conflicts – would give him opportunities to reposition the organization. To pursue a new grand bargain for the United Nations could be a crucial ingredient to lift it out of its present marginalization.

11 One of Ban Ki-moon’s first visits as a secretary-general to a UN mission was with the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) in March 2007, only two months after he took office. This was meant symbolically. After his predecessor, Secretary-General Kofi Annan, had opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as illegal – as it indeed was – and ran into problems with the Bush administration, he wanted to show his support of the United States, indicating a fundamental change in UN policies. To ensure the survival of the United Nations, Ban had tried to align it politically to the only remaining superpower, the United States. Though understandable at the time, retrospectively this has done the United Nations no good. The United Nations lost credibility among its members and has become increasingly marginalized as a global political force. What’s more, this did not even win the United Nations the respect of the US government.

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

201

The lack of trust is probably the greatest hindrance in the quest for a new grand bargain that would, after all, touch on national sovereignty. An earlier attempt to tackle the issue of national sovereignty through the principle of the Responsibility to Protect was wrecked because of NATO’s intervention in Libya. Many non-Western politicians will recall the maltreated body of the former Libyan ruler, Qaddafi, laying on the desert floor. It was NATO fighter planes that had pinned down the fleeing Qaddafi and delivered him to local militia forces, which brutally lynched him. Only shortly before, Western leaders were lining up to embrace the very same Qaddafi, hoping to conclude economic deals with him. Is the world a different place now? Reading or watching Western media with its constant stream of aggressive, warlike allegations against Russia, China, and other countries that do not comply with Western views of the world is hardly reassuring. When would it be the right time to strike a new grand bargain? Why not now? There may be three reasons that could motivate UN member states – and here in particular the West – that it is time to conclude a new grand bargain that would place intrastate conflicts under a collective security system: (1) the fear of slipping into a global chaos, (2) the prospect of preserving democratic values, and (3) the need to prevent falling back into a Cold War again.

6.1

Fears of a Global Power Vacuum

When a departing President Obama set down with the leaders of f ive European countries over dinner in Berlin on 16 November 2016, they were an unhappy crowd.12 Western hopes for a world shaped in the model of liberal democracy had gone and geopolitical developments around them appeared to fall apart. The irony was that their dinner was almost to the day the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, the historic event that had help create the hope a unified and peaceful world. The Berlin Wall once stood only about 50 meters from their dinner table at the posh Hotel Adlon and where they were sitting had been a no-man’s-land where East German border guards would shoot anyone who wanted to cross this East-West divide.

12 While discussing the many unpleasant global affairs, all the assembled heads of governments at Hotel Adlon faced considerable internal challenges that could sweep most of them from power before the end of the following year.

202 

On Building Peace

Now, only 27 years later, this was not only a farewell dinner for President Obama, it may also have been a farewell dinner to the Western-dominated, post-Cold War peace order. With the end of the post-Cold War peace order, the world is now entering a period of great uncertainty in which no country or association of countries can determine the framework for international relations. None can exercise the leadership necessary to bring about solutions that would be accepted by others. At the same time, all countries should have an interest in preventing Syria-type of conflicts from spreading. There is a long list of countries where this could happen or is already happening: Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Mali, Libya, Somalia, and Congo are examples. If no action is taken, this list could continue to grow. A changed world would now be shaped by someone who was not present at the dinner table in Berlin, America’s new president, Donald Trump. Opinions about him divide not only America but also Europe. But whatever we think about him, he may be the first American post-post-Cold War president!13 He may undo many of the policies that had their origin in the enthusiasm of the post-Cold War era and, in doing so, redefine the role for the United States in the world. Under the slogan “America First,” he appears to want follow a policy of withdrawing the United States from many military conflicts around the world and pursue more inward-looking, some would say isolationist, policies.14 This would be a major shift from the more interventionist US policies since the end of the Cold War that would have a huge impact on the world and on maintaining global peace and security. As welcome as a less interventionist America may be, a withdrawal of American forces and commitment would leave a huge security vacuum that must quickly be filled by something else. Also, President Trump will discover that there are no easy “switch-off” buttons. 13 Clinton (1993-2001), Bush (2001-2009), and Obama (2009-2017) are the three post-Cold War presidents. Despite all the differences among them, they acted in the belief that the United States’ superpower status and its role as a force of good set it above international law. What had begun with the illegal war over Kosovo in 1999 continued with the illegal war in Iraq in 2003 and ended with the illegal war against IS over Iraq and Syria in 2014. 14 In his speech at his inauguration on 21 January 2017, President Trump declared, regarding US foreign policy, that “we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example.” Even if European commentators feel that this is a betrayal of Western-held positions, this very policy would probably be received with much relief among the most countries in the rest of the world.

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

203

As President Trump15 takes office, he inherits many wars and armed conflicts in which the United States is involved in with troops, arms, and financial support. This forces him to make some difficult decisions. He may have to decide whether he withdraws the last US troops from Afghanistan anytime soon and risk triggering a violent takeover of Kabul by Taliban forces. He may now bridge differences with Russia and focus on pushing IS out of the cities, while leaving the Syrian government in place. However, he may also discover that beating IS in the cities might not have neutralized them as a threat. In a not too distant future, Trump must also decide when and how to pull out US forces from Iraq and Syria and risk that both countries tumble even further into anarchy and carnage. Trump must decide if the United States wants to end its support for Saudi Arabia in its conflict with Yemen, but then face the possibility that Yemen could breaks up into parts controlled by Houthi rebels and/or al-Qaida operatives. Yemen would than joint a list of countries that are hostile to Western interests. He may want to leave Libya and the problems in the rest of Africa for the Europeans to worry about. Yet, they are even less able to find solutions that would solve the anarchy in Libya or stop the rise of radical Islamist groups in many parts of Africa. The problem is that the United States has been drawn into one intrastate armed conflict after another and has few options of disentangling itself from these conflicts without major repercussions. Even if President Trump does not make any of these decisions, the momentum is now against these kinds of military interventions. Whether US forces remain in or leave these conflict zones does not change the fact that their involvement has drastically altered the state of geopolitics, both regionally and globally, for the worse. The European Union, as the second pillar of the Western world, is itself weakening and increasingly inward-looking. Once considered a magnet for outside countries who wanted to join it, one of its most powerful members, the United Kingdom, is, based on a popular vote, now leaving the Union. Tensions among the remaining 27 members remain strong on almost all question on the current state of affairs: the euro, the austerity policies, the refugee crisis, the protection of borders, its enlargement policies, tendencies to concentrate greater powers in the EU Commission or the creation of 15 Hillary Clinton, had she become president of the United States, would have faced the same dilemma and the same difficult decisions; the geopolitical changes and problems the West is now facing are far greater than any individual president could single-handedly influence. The real issue will be if the new American president will accept the changing realities around him and make the right decisions on how to respond to them. If not, we could go through years of heightened tensions.

204 

On Building Peace

an EU army. There are also deepening disagreements over the European Union’s relations with Turkey, its sanctions against Russia, and its support for an increasingly collapsing Ukraine. Worse, its relations with the United States, until recently the bedrock of EU security, have come under serious strains.16 Eurosceptic parties made and are making significant gains in national elections in virtually all 27 countries and the more traditional political parties that stand for European integration are losing popular support. Once seen as the model for integration, regional peace, and prosperity, Europe no longer knows what it is or should be. Once considered an export model to the rest for the world, Europe has switched from its enlargement policies to a defensive mode. Today, it is more concerned about protecting its outer borders against the influx of refugees and migrants and preventing terrorism inside their countries. In all of this, the European Union has no clue about what to do with a collapsing Libya or about what its role in Syria and Iraq could be. It has little, if any, influence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has no comprehensible plans for the Sahel, a zone that has the potential of becoming a huge threat to European security. Instead, Europe is overwhelmed by the continued arrival of migrants – now increasingly from Africa. Germany, unexpectedly being catapulted into a European leadership position, tends to step on everybody else’s toes, irritating many of its European partners. Haunted by the sudden successes of a newly founded Eurosceptic and anti-immigration party in its own country, even Germany, once an area of stability, is now coming under pressure from within. NATO, once considered the military spearhead for defending freedom in a world that was expected to turn countries into liberal democracies,17 has now withdrawn to its original area of operation. Instead of engaging abroad, it is now pushed back into guarding Europe’s borders against an influx of illegal immigrants in the South and against an alleged threat from Russia in the East. NATO is about to face a further unprecedented challenge. President Trump may diminish US leadership in NATO, if not pull the United States out altogether.

16 In a recent letter, President Tusk of the European Union listed the United States together with Russia and Islamic State as the main threats to EU integration. How bad could this become? 17 When, in 1990, NATO lost its original raison d’être following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, it was hoped it could become a military force to underpin a Western-dominated post-Cold War peace order. Under the call of “Out of area or out of business,” the United States insisted that NATO should now focus on ensuring peace throughout the world. This would turn NATO from a defense organization to something akin to a global policeman in a world of liberal democracies.

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

205

While the West is wavering, Russia is increasingly asserting itself as are other regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, but also other Gulf States. They all follow the Western example and engage militarily in the internal conflicts of other countries to further their respective national interests in breach of the UN Charter.18 In a world without any clear order, we could see a speeding-up of similar regional conflicts and wars. With a new president taking office, discussions about the role of the United States in the world will gain renewed intensity. Among political analysts – almost all of them American – the assessments are very mixed. There are those who simply deny that the West, and especially the United States, is losing influence in the world and that their economic, military, and – to quote Joseph Nye – “soft power” are in decline.19 They appear to concentrate their arguments mostly on comparing the economic performance of the United States with that of China20 and often emphasize the continued attractiveness of American universities. In this, they overlook that the decline in Western (and US) influence is a global trend that cannot be limited by simply looking at GDP figures and the rankings of US universities. The decline of the West is not limited to a rise of China’s economy – there are many more factors. In any case, the sheer flood of books and articles discussing this question and the pros and cons of the future superpower status of the United States is enough to indicate that we are in the middle of a major shift in geopolitical power relations. There are increasing numbers of political analysts, again mostly American, who warn that a decline in the power of the United States (Europe or Japan appear not to count) on the international stage could lead us into a period of great global instability and disorder – many even speak of an imminent “global chaos.” The January/February 2017 Foreign Affairs under the title “Out of Order? The Future of the International System” devotes the entire issue to this problem.

18 Russia and Iran, however, argue that they acted within international law because they had been invited by the Syrian government. Although this is a standard justification also used for many Western military interventions, this book questions the legality of this argument. See also Chapter 5.1. 19 Several political analysts would like to reassure us that the United States will remain the only superpower in the world. See, for example, Nye, Is the American Century Over?; Cox, Why the West Rules for Now; Johnson (former chief economist at the IMF), “Die USA sind und bleiben die Größten.” 20 It is interesting how many different GDP f igures are presented to underpin respective arguments.

206 

On Building Peace

The suggestions made to avoid slipping into a global chaos differ widely. Some argue that the United States must reestablish itself as the dominant superpower (Kagan21) by strengthening US-dominated trading blocs and further reinforcing the superiority of US armed forces.22 There are others who propose that the West should ally with Russia to build a kind of “white man’s” Northern power bloc (Brzezinski23) or that the United States should form alliances with regional powers to create a global balance of power blocs (Kissinger24). There are those who call on the United States to make a political arrangement25 with China to share the responsibility of maintaining global peace and security (Soros26). Ian Benner,27 for example, suggests three options for the United States: an “independent America” that stops trying to solve other people’s problems, a “money-balled America” that only defends its own, mostly economic interests, and an “indispensable America” that maintains it dominant global posture and continues trying to spread its values to other countries. There are also suggestions that global security would require a new arrangement among existing and emerging superpowers that should include the United States, Europe, Russia, China, India, and Brazil.28 Richard Gowen argues that the 5+1 group (the five permanent Security Council members and Germany) which negotiated the Iran deal in 2015 should also deal 21 Kagan, The World America Made. 22 This issue was hotly debated during the 2016 presidential elections. For example, former Republican candidate Marco Rubio makes a very similar proposal of maintaining the United States as the only superpower. In an article in Foreign Affairs, he argues that “the world is at its safest when America is at its strongest” (Rubio, “Restoring America’s Strength”). The only problem is that the United States can no longer decide this alone and may not find enthusiastic support for such a position among other global and regional powers. 23 Brzezinski, Strategic Vision. He made this proposal a few months before the outbreak of the Ukrainian crisis – proof of how unpredictable political developments can be, even for some of the most inside expert observers. 24 Kissinger, World Order. 25 Soros speaks of a “partnership”; a call for partnership is also the basis of the TTP and TTIP, and it seemed the magic term for a more circumspect American foreign policy under the Obama administration. 26 Soros, “A Partnership with China to Avoid World War.” 27 Brenner, Superpower; he also coined the term “G-Zero” to describe a world in which the United States has lost its superpower status. 28 The emergence of such a new superpower arrangement would not necessarily contradict calls for reinforcing the collective security system; it could even strengthen it. Even today, the Security Council distinguishes between five major (permanent) powers and the rest of the world. The big question here is whether Europe would ever be able to speak with one voice, especially considering such a sextet would relegate the United Kingdom and France from their present P-5 status.

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

207

with other global security issues. Alternative political mechanisms, such as the G-729 or G-20, are suggested to provide greater global leadership. Global trading blocs under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreements would deliberately exclude China and Russia and hence help cement the West’s economic and political global dominance in the foreseeable future.30 We know now that most of these proposals are already obsolete and have no chance to be ever implemented. In this context, it is surprising that none of the political analysts appear to see a greater role for the United Nations in the solution to the problem.31 The Foreign Affairs “Out of Order?” issue does not even mention the United Nations. And where the United Nations is mentioned by political analysts, the comments are explicitly negative about any possible role of the United Nations. Brzezinski, for example, predicts in his 2012 book Strategic Vision: [B]efore long, the heretofore untouchable and almost-seventy-year-old UN Security Council system of only f ive permanent members with exclusive veto rights may become widely viewed illegitimate.

Henry Kissinger in his 2014 book World Order only briefly touches on the United Nations: “the Security Council is of compelling formal authority but deadlocked on the most important issues” and dismisses the United Nations as a vehicle for collective security. Instead, he argues for the G-7, G-20, or even regional organizations to take its place. Soros, in his 2015 article “A Partnership with China” is even more categorical in his rejection of the United Nations when stating “The UN has failed to address any of the major conflicts since the end of Cold War.” What makes the comments of Brzezinski, Kissinger, and Soros particularly disturbing is that all three of them have 29 Unless one continues to believe that global peace can be maintained by the West alone, kicking Russia out of the former G-8 in 2014 has effectively reduced the probability of this group to ever play any collective security role. The 2014 G-20 meeting in Brisbane revealed that this group is not united in supporting a Western position of world peace. 30 In a response to increasing skepticism about the TTIP agreement, European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem wrote in an Austrian daily newspaper, Der Standard, 18 April 2015, that “emerging economies such as China or Brazil reduce European economic influence in the world. With TTIP we can protect our European standards and values” (translation by author). This would make TTIP less a trade agreement and more an effort to preserve Western global dominance. 31 I do not know of any comprehensive academic or political discussion that suggests to revive, or even expand, the role of the United Nations outside of the usual talk within inner circles of United Nations.

208 

On Building Peace

personally gone through the horrors of WWII and the unspeakable atrocities committed by Nazi Germany – events that had helped create the United Nations. They know from tragic personal experience why the creation of the United Nations and with it the idea of placing international relations on collectively agreed principles was such a relief after two world wars and the carnage done by Nazi Germany. How can they now turn against it? All three still see international relations dominated by conflicts and alliances among nation-states. None of them recognized the shift to a world that is increasingly dominated by threats stemming from failing nation-states, powerful nonstate actors, and intrastate armed conflicts. This may partly explain their assessments. They ignore the new challenges for maintaining future peace and security and fail to see the need for a solution that can only be achieved through collective measures. This book hence argues differently: the fading of a Western-dominated peace order and the rise in intrastate armed conflicts make it not only necessary to revive the United Nations, but also to expand its role as the core of a collective security system. In fact, it argues that the changing geopolitical realities must call for the United Nations to fill the vacuum left in a world no longer dominated by a single superpower and based on a single acceptable political system. With the emergence of a multipolar world without any universally recognized leadership, peace and security must revert to a collective security system based on international laws and principles. This was the original idea behind the creation of the United Nations – an idea that has because of the Cold War and the post-Cold War never fully come into fruition. However, today this idea is more valid then at any previous time; indeed, today is a unique moment in which it could become reality. The basic argument in this book is that there not only is a power vacuum of political leadership among nation-states, but increasingly also a power vacuum of political coherence within individual nation-states. The new global vacuum is hence both international as well as national! We must find solutions for both the international and national vacuums – and not only for international conflicts as the previously mentioned political analysts appear to suggest. That is why in this book we call for a double strategy for maintaining global peace and security (i) by returning to strong nation-states and (ii) by strengthening the United Nations’ collective security system. Former House of Representatives Speaker Tip O’Neil once rightly stated that “all politics are local”32 and that politicians must appeal to the simple, 32 Tip O’Neil, former speaker of the US House of Representatives, is credited for having used this phrase during his reelection campaign in 1982.

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

209

mundane, and everyday concerns of those who elect them into office. This would also apply to global politics and the almost mystical adoration of globalization. However, those who worship globalization appear to overlook that all globalization has its local side, a side that increasingly rebels politically against being the forgotten side. In fact, many of today’s problems are the result of the reality that while wealth is globalized, poverty remains local.33 This applies to practically all other global problems. While capital is global, all work is local, while climate change is global, its effects are local. Today, economic crises, environmental degradation, water shortages, and transnational crime are global phenomena; their greatest impact will, however, be felt locally. And solutions are in large part so difficult to find because the political, economic, and academic elites are increasingly international while the people they claim to govern remain local.34 Unfortunately, ideologies are global, while value systems remain largely local. This creates credibility gaps between elites and local communities that are increasingly filled by populist political parties in the West and by belligerent nonstate actors35 in dysfunctional countries. The greatest comparative advantage of the United Nations is that it is not a global government but a member states’ organization. The United Nations depends on strong sovereign nation-states and is, unlike the European Union, not trying to replace them. The United Nations has hence the unique potential to bridge many national interests by emphasizing international concerns. It gives individual nation-states the forum needed to enable nation-states to work together on global issues. The global community cannot function without being able to rely on strong individual nation-states. All international agreements will need the support from member states and their willingness to implement what was commonly 33 The British government, in an effort to face off the possibility of Scottish independence, had implemented what its former chancellor, Osborne, called “the biggest transfer of power to local government in living memory.” See “All Politics Is Local.” 34 This applies to non-Western as well as Western countries. Brexit, the election of Donald Trump in the United States, and rise of more nationalistic parties in many European countries are all signs of a rejection of elites that are becoming increasingly global in their outlook. 35 This is a problem. Western approaches often rely on expatriate nationals being placed to run local governments who are thinking along Western lines. However, these expatriates mostly lack support and credibility among the local communities and survive only with Western protection. They have not lived in these countries often for decades and tend to keep their families, their properties, and their bank accounts in the West. Ahmed Chalabi in Iraq is one such example and also, unfortunately, is Ashraf Ghani in Afghanistan. There are hundreds of similar expatriate nationals who are mobilized in the false hope of bringing local ownership to foreign interventions.

210 

On Building Peace

decided. The combination of nation-state and collective security requires an “international-national” peace order that links national concerns with international requirements. For this reason, we will need the new grand bargain for expanding collective security to cover intrastate relations in addition to interstate relations.36 Despite all its shortcomings, the United Nations and rules-based collective security system is still the best option to prevent global chaos in a post-post-Cold War world.

6.2

Prospect of Preserving Democratic Values

A new grand bargain for dealing collectively with intrastate conflicts, weak nation-states, and belligerent none-state actors would face an almost unsurmountable problem: what would an ideal nation-state look like in which its communities and citizens can live in peace with each other and that would be in peace with its neighbors? The answer to this question would also show us how to pursue peace in conflict-ridden countries. At the end of the Cold War, we all felt that we had found the answer: liberal democracy. Liberal democracy would bring this peace to a country and its communities, while creating an incentive to remain in peace with its democratic neighbors.37 Most people dealing with peacebuilding still believe in this – if not out of conviction, but because they see no alternative.38 However, in this book we argued that the developments over the last 27 years have now shown that this is not the case and that liberal democracy will not take root throughout the world. Instead, we must accept that historical, cultural, religious, and traditional experiences and values are far stronger in determining political systems in different parts of the world. In accepting this, the West must come around to a greater understanding of, and show greater tolerance for, different political solutions in organizing 36 The proposal for a grand bargain would be very different to more general proposals for various kinds of global governance. Such arguments are very often based on the idea that international organizations and an international civil society would increasingly govern world affairs and replace nation-states. Although never explicitly argued, this tastes of governance by globalized and removed elites of bureaucrats who claim to know better. For someone like me, who worked as an international bureaucrat, this would be a truly horrible prospect. 37 See also Chapter 1.3. 38 Roland Paris makes this argument in “Saving Liberal Peacebuilding.”

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

211

nation-states. We must abandon the attitude of considering liberal democracy as the far superior solution. Unfortunately, looking at Western media today, we tend to judge all other countries from our point of view. With the fading of Western dominance, our superior manners – and I am inclined to call this arrogance – toward others will ultimately hurt us in the West more than those we criticize. Geopolitics has changed and though our opinions may still be important, they are no longer decisive. During its history, the world has developed many great civilizations that differ greatly from that in the West today – but that makes them in no way inferior. We must hence accept that not everyone will see the world as the West does. China, Russia, India, Iran, Egypt, the Arab world, but also African, Latin American, or Asian countries will have their own solutions for their social organizations, and these are rooted in their values, history, and collective experiences. Some of these cultures are much older than the West’s. Even as they are now catapulted into our modern societies, many countries build governance structures that can be traced back into their history and previous governance structures. This can clearly be seen in China, Russia, Iran, and Egypt, but is also present in many other countries. Each country must find its own development. We must not try to change this; and even if we wanted, we have to accept that we cannot. Despite all these differences, there are also common threats among nation-states: some normative commonalities that we can all share and on which UN peace missions to rescue collapsing nation-states could be built. Instead of hoping to ever develop a universally accepted political system, UN member states should rather focus on developing a consensus on a basic set of nation-state norms. Such a set of norms would have to define (i) the relations between the state and its citizens and (ii) the relations among the various communities. These norms would lay down some basic standards for nation-states and their governments, irrespective of the political system. They must therefore be flexible enough to be adopted by all the different political systems. Any nation-state that fails to comply with one or more of these norms would be called a failed nation-state. There are already many definitions on what constitutes a “failed state.” The most widely accepted is probably the definition developed by the Fund for Peace (FFP): A failed state is characterized by a loss of control of its territory, or of the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force therein; the erosion of

212 

On Building Peace

legitimate authority to make collective decisions and the inability to provide public services.39

To establish its Fragile State Index, the FFP uses twelve primary social, economic, and political indicators and many subindicators. Although such a Fragile States Index would come close to a set of nation-state norms as we suggest them, it has a major difference: the twelve indicators measure what is; the set of norms should however establish what should be standards for nation-states. Nation-state norms should hence be more political and far more general. Defining a set of norms for nation-states would require a much larger global public debate. This book will not pretend it has the answers. However, we make a few suggestions that could give an idea of what such a set of norms could look like. Here are a set of seven elements that could help shape a set of nation-state norms: – Preservation of internal peace Nation-states’ foremost responsibility must be to ensure internal peace and security, and to protect life and property. This is somewhat reflected in the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Such a responsibility for internal peace would include the monopoly to set laws and rules as well as the legitimacy to use force. It would also imply that the state controls its entire territory. – Accountability to citizens Nation-states must maintain a system in which governments are accountable to its citizens. This must not necessarily be in the form of parliamentary democracy, multiparty systems, or general elections. Societies have developed many other forms of holding their governments accountable. For many societies, general elections might be the least best option. – Universal access to justice Nation-states must provide universal access to justice. Justice is more than just a rule-of-law system that is built around the notion of individual 39 The Fund for Peace bases its ranking of fragile states on twelve primary social, economic, and political indicators: demographic pressures; refugees and IDPs; group grievances; human flight and brain drain; uneven economic development; poverty and economic decline; state legitimacy; public service; human rights and rule of law; security apparatus; divided and competing elites; and external interventions. See FFP, “Fragile States Index 2016.”

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

213

responsibilities. In most societies, such radical individualism is a foreign concept and finding justice among communities (or families and tribes) is often of much greater importance. Most traditional justice systems are founded on informal arrangements and not on formal courts. Replacing them with formal justice systems could exclude large sections of the population from justice. – Protection of human rights Nation-states must implement the human rights conventions. Human rights are possibly the most universal of all norms. Mistreating someone in Somalia or in Syria is, and should be, the same as mistreating someone in Guantanamo Bay. – Good governance Nation-states must maintain a transparent and efficient governance system in which collecting taxes and delivering services match. The relationship between paying taxes on the one hand and providing services on the other is one of the most sensitive aspects of governance. This relationship is mostly damaged by corruption and by bureaucratization. – Inclusiveness of society Nation-states must develop inclusive societies in which no community or individual is left out because of creed, race, or gender. Inclusiveness would require a framework in which different political views can be expressed. – Good neighborhood Nation-states must maintain good relations with neighboring nation-states. This is of importance for countries that have communities that settle on both sides of national borders. Although setting norms for nation-states and intrastate relations under a collective security system might be something new, there are, in fact, already many initiatives and conventions that exist and that regulate or promote solutions for intrastate relations. The recently adopted post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda40 with its seventeen objectives constitutes internationally accepted targets to be implemented in individual nation-states. Its Objective 16: “Promote 40 The post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda was approved at a summit meeting in New York commemorating the United Nation’s seventieth anniversary in September 2015 – a befitting

214 

On Building Peace

peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development” and Objective 17: “Strengthen means of implementing and revitalizing global partnerships” could help link the more political nation-state norms with the objectives of the post-2015 agenda. The most comprehensive set of conventions that define relations within nation-states are the human rights conventions, above all the Universal Human Rights Convention 41 adopted by the General Assembly in 1948. Also, international humanitarian law that aims at reducing the effects of wars and armed conflict on the civilian population has many aspects that touch the norms of nation-states. In this context, the principle of the Responsibility to Protect, adopted during the sixtieth anniversary of the United Nations in 2005, would have to be revived. There are several General Assembly resolutions that deal with intrastate relations and nation-state governance. The main ones would be the 2000 General Assembly resolution42 approving the Millennium Declaration that stresses democratic governance and the 2012 General Assembly resolution on the rule of law. 43 There are, of course, many more GA resolutions that would touch the issue of intrastate relations. The setting of norms for nation-states would probably be the best opportunity for the West to preserve many of its democratic values under a collective security system.

6.3

Risks of Fighting the Last Wars

An old military saying holds that generals tend to fight the last war. By relying on strategies and approaches that had worked in the past, they instinctively rely on their old strategies and refuse to accept the changes around them. However, history also teaches that seeking safety in the birthday present for “we, the people” and a key document for humankind’s future peace and security. 41 The six core human rights conventions are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its optional protocols; the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and its optional protocol; and the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its optional protocols. 42 UN General Assembly, “United Nations Millennium Declaration.” 43 UN General Assembly, “Strengthening the Rule of Law and the Reform of Criminal Justice Institutions.”

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

215

known leads mostly to defeat and a downfall. 44 Losers of previous military engagements and underdogs long thought too weak to be a threat are forced to rethink strategies and find new and unexpected ways to conduct battle.45 Is this what is happening to the West again? Are we trying to fight again the last successful war, the Cold War? Listening to many Western politicians and reading Western media, it feels as if we are back in the Cold War with Russia and China again being the enemies. Like the generals who win the “last wars,” aren’t we running the great risk of ignoring the geopolitical changes around us and the shift from interstate wars to intrastate armed conflicts? Are we returning to an East-West type of conflict while failing to realize that today’s threats are no longer coming from military alliances but from failing nation-states and belligerent nonstate actors? Today, the internationalization of the conflicts in places such as the Ukraine, Syria, Yemen and lately also Afghanistan take the character of old types of intrastate armed conflicts and Cold War rivalries, mostly between the West and Russia, but increasingly also among regional powers such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. This his has hugely adverse consequences for the people on those countries. Although the justification for those foreign military interventions and/or military support to local proxies is alleged to be humanitarian to save innocent civilians, women and children, the opposite happens. All these armed conflicts are essentially intrastate conflicts and we must learn to deal with them as such. Recipes from the Cold War will only make things worse. To contain and solve intra-state armed conflicts need international cooperation and a functioning collective security system and not foreign bombing raids against one or the other conflict party. They not only tend to intensify and prolong such conflicts such foreign military 44 The failure of French post-WWI defense strategy is often quoted as an example. Having been ultimately successful in holding off against German attacks in the war of the trenches, they built between 1930 and 1940 the so-called Maginot Line along the French-German border. The Maginot Line was a huge defense system, a type of fortified and technologically advanced “supertrench.” But by 1941, the Germans had learned from WWI and created a high-speed tank strategy that would simply bypass these defensive lines. The Maginot Line (called after the French minister of war at that time) was, after the Chinese Wall, the largest defense structure ever built. But this did not protect France from being invaded by Nazi Germany in only seven weeks. The French had prepared for the previous war and had lost the subsequent one. 45 A more recent example is the 9/11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Such an attack on American soil was something no US general had anticipated and their reactions were predictable: they fought back in a traditional way by attacking a country, Afghanistan, and they ultimately lost.

216 

On Building Peace

competitions carry the serious threats of bringing back interstate wars – so to speak through the back door of unrelated inter-communal armed strives. Today, China and Russia have the “privilege” of being identified once again the foremost threats to Western interests – some unclear threat of terrorism is relegated to a third rank. Even the moderate German weekly Die Zeit accused China and Russia of wanting to destroy Western democracies.46 A new type of axis of evil has been born. In a return to the language of the Cold War, we increasingly talk about the need for a dual containment strategy against both countries. China, for example, is accused not only of building up its military capabilities but also of expanding its military outreach into the South China Sea by building military bases on built-up islands. This, we are repeatedly told, is threatening the free passage in one of the most important shipping lines in the South China Sea. The US navy – the self-appointed protector of free access to the seas – is to mount several naval operations to contest Chinese claims on the territorial waters around these islands. There is talk about strengthening the US military doctrine of forward defenses against the Chinese along the outer islands of Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines. We hear of more US troops being stationed in the Pacific and of modern missile defense systems being installed in Japan and South Korea. In 2012, President Obama issued the “Pivot to the Pacific,” a strategy that should “rebalance” the Chinese threat with greater US economic and military presence in the Pacific. But is China so dangerous and aggressive that this deserves Cold War-type military responses? Its defense expenditures are less than one-third of that of the United States, its single old aircraft carrier (a second is being built to be commissioned in 2020) is no match for America’s ten modern aircraft carriers in service and the three aircraft carriers under construction. The Chinese military base on these islands could at best be an irritant to the many military bases the United States maintains in and around the Pacific region. Much worse – and far more dangerous for global peace – is the West’s reaction to Russia. We are swamped daily with new allegations against Russia that range to virtually any conceivable subject from the bad treatment of transsexuals to the alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs by its para-Olympians, to its allegedly dangerous rearmament program. 46 The chief editor of the influential German weekly Die Zeit, Josef Joffe, claimed that “Moscow and Peking want above all to destroy the global liberal order” (Joffe, “Trumputin”; translation by author). It is hardly conceivable that in 2016 a once serious weekly has fallen back to such dangerous Cold War propaganda. Unfortunately, Die Zeit is not alone in this.

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

217

In Western media, President Putin has become the symbol of everything evil in this world. There is no longer any effort to try to understand – but not necessarily agree with – the Russian position or its motives. Even in serious papers such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine or the New York Times many reports on Russia take pathological forms; in September 2014, the Neue Züricher Zeitung had a headline in bold letters across its front page, reading “Russia, the Enemy” (translation by the author). One would have to go back to WWI to find similar full-fledged hate news reporting on adversaries without even the slightest efforts to understand their position. NATO’s Declaration at the Wales Summit in September 2014 reads like a document coming from the 1960s when the Cold War had hit one of its lowest points. As in “the good old times” during the Cold War, NATO members renewed their pledge to stick together, 47 to fend off Russian imperial ambitions, and to defend free Europe against alleged Russian invasion plans. The result is the biggest build-up in military hardware since the end of the Cold War. This is accompanied by firebrand speeches and loose talk by NATO’s Secretary-General Stoltenberg48 in which he alleges that Russia has concrete plans to invade the Baltic States. He even claims that Russia threatens Europe with a nuclear war, 49 only to acclaim NATO’s innocence by adding that “we do not want a new nuclear war.” What he meant by a new nuclear war, Stoltenberg leaves unanswered.50 At the same time, the US administration is said to pursue an ambitious program to modernize its nuclear arsenal at the annual cost of $35 billion. To underline its resolve to counter any alleged Russian aggression, NATO is now stationing troops at the border with Russia and placed 300,000 NATO troops in Europe on “High Alert” in November 2016. As part of these deployments, Germany will send Leopard 2 tanks51 to Lithuania. Although Germany emphasizes the purely preventive character of this deployment, 47 Behind this declaration may have been strong institutional interests. NATO, long considered obsolete, has returned to its original glory as a bulwark of the civilized nations against threats coming from nasty autocrats typically found in the East. 48 Stoltenberg is a sad example of the dangers coming from mediocre politicians who hide behind tough talk. 49 Since when are Russia’s nuclear weapons offensive weapons? Aren’t they essentially deterrents against threats from superior military alliances, such as NATO? 50 Voice recording by Express News, 28 October 2016. 51 The deployment of German tanks is frighteningly reminiscent of the beginning of the German attack on Russia in WWII when German tanks were placed not far from where these Leopards were stationed – only then they were called Panthers and Tigers. Are we repeating the German tradition of tanks named after wild cats? One wonders if we are seeing an attempt to copy the style of the “tank war” elements of WWII?

218 

On Building Peace

this decision has some ugly historical parallels. Not far from where the Leopard tanks will be stationed, Germany had once placed its tanks pointing at Russia before. This deployment was the prelude to the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941.52 Then, as today, the core issues were the control over of the Baltic States and the Ukraine.53 At its summit in Wales, NATO considered an imminent invasion by Russia likely, something NATO did not expect from the much larger and more powerful Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Is Russia really such a threat to Europe and does it have the resources to invade Europe? Indeed, would Russia be able to do as much mischief as claimed? Hardly! Russia’s population of less than 150 million is only about one-sixth of the combined population of all NATO countries of over 900 million. The discrepancy is even greater if we consider that Russia’s total GDP is only 3 to 4% of the combined GDP of all NATO countries. Even more important in this context, Russia’s military expenditures are only between 6 to 7 % of the combined military expenditures of NATO countries.54 Could it be that Russia’s intentions are misrepresented?55 Isn’t it possible to interpret Russian activities in the Ukraine, the Crimea, and now in Syria as defensive moves to prevent it from being encircled, reflecting its security concerns that it might be cut off from the access to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean? We may still not agree with Russia’s actions, but to present Russia as an immediate threat to the survival of Europe and Western democracy justifying trillions in military expenditures, is a very dangerous road to march on. When asked by Foreign Affairs about the threats from Russia, the former chairman of the US Joint Chief of Staff, General Dempsey, described Russian intentions as being more circumspect: 52 In 1941, the German attack was justified as a preventive action and German soldiers were told that invading the Soviet Union was to forestall a planned Soviet attack on Germany. 53 The separate March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was an unfair and deeply flawed victor’s peace. By weakening Soviet Russia, Imperial Germany gained control over the Baltic states and the Ukraine. The Russian border that resulted from the treaty was about what the Russian borders are today. Only now, it is not Germany but the European Union and NATO with their enlargement policies that pushes Russia back. Without treating Russia fairly and accepting that it too has national security concerns, we will not be able to solve the Ukrainian conflict. 54 See Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, and NATO, “Defence Expenditures of NATO Countries (2009-2016).” 55 The Western attitudes toward Russia is reminiscent of a boy being bullied for years by a bunch of much stronger boys, but the moment the boy pushes back, they protest and denounce him for being the aggressive one. In its relations with Russia, the West has reached the lowest point of hypocrisy and double standards.

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

219

They look to reestablish a group of nations who can be their satellites, who can help them bolster their economy and their security, because they look into a period beyond 2020.56

Isn’t this what the West is trying to do, too? Would this justify NATO’s hysterical reactions? Isn’t there something terribly out of balance here? Could the return to a known East-West conflict have something to do with the internal crises both the United States and Europe are presently going through? With a divided American society and with Eurosceptics gaining support, an outside enemy could be a handy distraction, especially one that is too weak to ever become a real danger. Nothing unites more than a common enemy – especially one that is as nasty as the Russians and especially President Putin are daily depicted in most media. It would also justify the hugely expensive armament programs.57 The return to an East-West conflict scenario at around 2012-2014 may not have been a coincidence. By this time, military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya had all gone terribly wrong. The Ukrainian conflict had set into motion a downward spiral of actions and reactions that has brought us the closest to major military conflict in Europe since the end of the Cold War. Are the problems we face in the Ukraine and Syria signs that the post-Cold War order is seriously challenged? Has this motivated us to return into a conflict pattern based on military superiority, a conflict pattern that we had once won: The Cold War? In facing off alleged threats from Russia and China, are we still thinking with a Cold War mindset, just like France strategically planned the building of a kind of Maginot Line with a WWI mindset? Are they the result of nostalgia for the times of the Cold War when it was clear who was for and who against liberal democracy? Has falling back into the mindset of the Cold War completely blinded the West to the real threats emerging from intrastate armed conflicts. Both the Ukrainian and the Syrian conflicts are essentially such intrastate armed conflicts that, unfortunately, are now seen through the lenses of the renewed East-West conflict. This will make them far more difficult to solve. If we continue to see the world as a dangerous competition among nation-states, or, worse, intensify the nostalgia for the Cold War, we may one day experience a rude awakening. The terrorist threats we face from 56 Interview by the senior editor of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Rose; published in its September/ October 2016 issue. 57 See also Box 6.3.

220 

On Building Peace

organizations such as Islamic State might only be a small indication of what is to come. In a world soon to contain 11 to 12 billion people, increased nation-state failures resulting in widespread anarchy and desperation may provide the breeding grounds for more organizations such as Islamic State to emerge. These might attract hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of sympathizers, not only in the Middle East and Africa but also in Western countries. What unites them may be a common hatred against the West, against Western ways of living, and against the more well-to-do globalized elites. These may not only be Islamist extremists but could also be organizations formed around new messianic messages or simply around criminal motives. In the future, their weapons may not be limited to suicide bombers, to improvised explosive devices, or the cutting of throats. The sophistication of membership and the know-how available to radical belligerent nonstate organizations will continue to increase. This may bring the deployment of WMDs such as dirty bombs, sarin gas or anthrax within their reach. For this they would not even need any sophisticated delivery systems. A lone suicide bomber in a truck or a small plane would be enough to create havoc in our cities. Many of our modern installations are extremely vulnerable to such attacks such as our nuclear power stations or our water supplies. A drop of a chemical agent into the water supply system could close down entire neighborhoods and regions. None of our super-technological weapons will then be able to protect us, with or without NATO. And conflicts over control of the Donetsk region or some sandy South China Sea islands would, against such threat scenarios, be almost irrelevant. Instead of trading accusations against each other over the Ukraine and Syria, the West and Russia should sit together with China and possibly also with countries such as India, Brazil, and others to discuss the important normative questions that these intrastate armed conflicts raise. Answers to such normative questions would not only apply to the conflicts in the Ukraine and Syria, but to all countries with intrastate armed conflicts. Finding answers would hence be important for the future of intrastate conflict resolution. Let us look briefly at seven such normative questions for which we must find answers, not only for the Ukraine and Syrian conflicts but for all intrastate armed conflicts: – First, at what point does external support to an opposition movement in one country become an interference in the internal affairs of another country? To what extent can an outside power finance, equip, or train

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

–

–

–

–

–

221

opposition movements and under what condition, if ever, would it be legal to send weapons and train militants fighting a government? Under what circumstances would it be appropriate for a high government official of an outside power to meet with opposition groups and when would it be acceptable that a foreign minister of another country speak to demonstrators and encourages them to pursue their uprising? Second, under what circumstances would it be legal to intervene militarily in a country with an intrastate armed conflict? What would justify a preventive military intervention in such a country? Under what circumstances could a government that is challenged by an internal armed opposition request direct military support from an outside power? Would, in other words, Article 51 of the UN Charter apply to situations in which a government seeks outside support against an internal armed opposition? And what about providing only military equipment and training in support of government forces fighting an internal enemy? Third, what principles of war would apply to conducting intrastate armed conflicts?58 What principles would apply to protect civilians in intrastate armed conflicts? What should be the principles limiting the use of aerial bombing and how should one respond to either side in an intrastate armed conflict from using civilians as human shields? Fourth, what should be the role of negotiations with nonstate actors? Should a government facing armed nonstate actors be obliged to prove that it had first tried to negotiate before using its armed forces against an armed opposition and its militants? Should there be an international norm that obliges the forces on both sides to regularly pause in the fighting to give civilians the chance to flee and mediators to speak to the belligerents? Fifth, could or should there be a convention that lays down international norms on how to treat captured nonstate militants? Could the Geneva and the Hague Conventions be further developed to regulate the treatment of nonstate combatants more explicitly? How could this protection be extended to local communities that have sympathized with one side or the other in an intrastate armed conflict? Sixth, under what circumstances can a province or autonomous regions secede? What is the relationship between self-determination and

58 The Just War theories distinguish between jus ad bellum – the right to go to war – and jus in bello – the right conduct in war. Here we talk about jus in bello.

222 

On Building Peace

national territorial integrity? What role are outside powers allowed to play in supporting or in denying any secession?59 – Seventh, what should be the repercussions on either party in an intrastate armed conflict which do not comply with any of the internationally accepted norms? Should there be some kind of special justice system or should here be a role for the International Criminal Court? Would there be any difference in how government forces, militants, nonstate actors, or the forces of a foreign powers are treated? The most important question of all is this one: What extent will the same norms and principles apply to all countries? Are there circumstances that would allow one party (for example, the West) to apply different standards to its dealings with different nation-states such as, for example, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, or Iran? In fact, can there be any international law if one side claims the right to bomb targets in cities to fight militants of Islamic State while accusing others of war crimes? Determining the answer to this question is very important if we ever want to create international norms that apply to intrastate armed conflicts. The only protection from the dangers of chaos and anarchy are strong and legitimate nation-states and a collective security system based on globally accepted norms able to deal with those nation-states that fail. For this reason, we no longer need to foment Cold War-type conflicts and we no longer need weapon systems designed for interstate wars. We have to stop wanting to fight the “last wars” and instead prepare to face today’s threats to peace and security from intrastate armed conflicts, collapsing nationstates, and belligerent nonstate actors. This could begin with concluding internationally a grand bargain for a collective security system under a United Nations empowered to help stabilize nation-states, end intrastate armed conflicts and engage nonstate actors.

59 In the case of Kosovo, NATO justified its intervention with Serbia’s refusal to hold a referendum, but to this day no such referendum has been conducted; in the case of Crimea, the Russians justified its annexation by holding a local referendum. And there is another important difference: in the case of Kosovo, a NATO air campaign was conducted to force Serbia to give up its province where between 3,000 and 4,000 people were killed. NATO maintains a presence to this day in Kosovo and stood by when approximately 250,000 Kosovo Serbs were forced to flee their homes. Nothing at this magnitude happened when the Crimea was taken over. Of course, this does not make this move legal.

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

223

Box 6.1 Candles, Flowers, and the Caliphate While millions in France and other European countries mourned with candles and flowers the 130, mostly very young, people who were killed in a sequence of terrorist attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015, President Hollande declared that France was attacked by the so-called Caliphate and pledged to retaliate and destroy it. This is the second time that a Western president publicly declares war not on another nation-state or a military alliance of nation-states, but on a group of belligerent nonstate actors. However, there are some troubling questions. Strictly speaking it had been France that had attacked IS first. As part of a US-led fight against IS, it carried out air bombing on IS positions in Iraq and Syria since September 2014. Not surprisingly, IS justified the attacks in Paris with the French attacks on them when they claimed responsibility. And there is a further question: was this an attack organized by IS – or was this an attack organized and implemented by French and Belgian Muslim citizens? IS may have inspired these young attackers to become terrorist, but would this make them responsible? We will probably never know. However, placing the responsibility squarely on IS suits both sides. The French president can claim the terrorist attacks came from abroad and can direct military forces against a foreign enemy. The IS leadership, on the other hand, can claim that it has a far greater operational outreach, appearing stronger than they are. The risk of such suitable assessments is that it will detract from finding solutions. Instead, we may be drawn even deeper into a conflict abroad that we cannot win. The bombing campaign may, in fact, play into the hands of IS and deepen the problems with our young immigrant Muslim population. While many people in Europe hold up photographs of those unfortunate young women and men that perished in the Paris attacks and place flowers at the sites where they died and hold minutes of silence, many more Syrians and Iraqi civilians are dying in these aerial attacks. But these people have no names and there are no pictures to hold up. While we can account for each and every Westerner who died in terrorist attacks, nobody knows how many men, women, and children were killed in the Middle East during our “war on terror.” Who lights candles for them, sheds tears, or places flowers where they died? Their misfortune is to live in Aleppo, Homs, Raqqa, Deir-ez-Zor, Ramadi, Falluja, Tikrit, or Mosul. For Syrian and Iraqi families, it makes little difference who bombs them, whether it is Russia, the United States, or France. Those on the receiving side of our war on terror are all Muslims. Since the war on terror was declared in 2001, the number of Muslims killed by mostly US- or NATO-led Western air campaigns, drone attacks, or artillery fire in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Palestine, Pakistan, the Philippines, and increasingly

224 

On Building Peace

also in Mali, the Central African Republic, and soon Burkina Faso must be in the millions. Nobody knows their exact numbers and, sadly, nobody seems to want to know.

Box 6.2 Refugees, Migrants, and Teddy Bears As the main part of this book was being written, hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants were struggling to survive crossing the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas in unsafe and overcrowded boats in the hope of reaching the shores of Europe and, with it, a more secure and better world. This was the largest refugee movement Europe has seen since the end of WWII. Only this time, people were no longer fleeing from interstate wars and advancing armies; this time, they were trying to escape from intrastate armed conflicts and an array of government, militia, and rebel groups that were fighting among themselves. These refugees gave Europeans a first look into the brave new world that is increasingly dominated by dysfunctional nation-states, the rising powers of mostly radical nonstate actors, and the intensification of intrastate armed conflicts through the interference of outside powers. It had begun so well! We all remember the television pictures of welcoming private citizens at the Munich train station, helping long lines of arriving refugees and migrants. Nothing symbolized this cross-cultural solidarity more than the “German” teddy bears that well-wishers had brought to give to children among the refugees. This was in late 2015; in early 2016 attitudes toward refugees began to change; the dark side of this refugee crisis emerged. This time it may be television pictures of a shocked and desperate young Afghan man that symbolized this change as he was standing on a wet-cold day lost in a muddy and dirty makeshift camp in Idomeni along the Greek-Macedonian border.60 It was March 2016 – only three months after the heart-warming welcome in Munich. On 9 March 2016, the Macedonian authorities, encouraged by the European Union, completely sealed off the border to refugees and with it the main transit route over which almost a million of mostly Afghans, Syrians, and Iraqis had walked across the Balkans in the hope of finding a better life. Realizing that his dreams were now blocked by soldiers, armed vehicles, and barbed wires, this

60 Following President Trump’s decree of 27 January 2017 banning certain nationalities from entering the United States refugees, even those with valid entry visas got stuck at various airports. And while many European politicians criticized this decision, they too have built defense walls and asked paid Libyan militia to hold off waves of migrants trying to reach Europe. What is worse?

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

225

Afghan spoke in a broken voice, emitting a gurgling, panic-stricken, almost inhuman sound of utter desperation. I had heard such sounds only twice before in war situations: a first time from a group of mothers whose children were lost during the Iran-Iraq War and a second time from a father who had just realized that he had lost all his immediate family during a suicide bombing at a market in Baghdad. Such sounds of human desperation go through body and mind, making you feel helpless. They are difficult to forget. He and the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of fellow refugee men, women, and children have suddenly become the big losers in this refugee crisis. In hardly audible English, this shocked Afghan repeatedly screamed: “Why did you bring us to here?” Did he feel tricked by information from the German government that it had waved border controls or by information from wellmeaning NGOs about the safest routes to take and about a safety net that would await him once he reached Germany? Was he tricked by media reports about open borders, about the good life he could expect, about the possibilities of bringing his family, or about reports of welcoming Germans waiting for him at the Munich train station? Now, he will not be able to reach his destination. But worse, he probably may no longer be able to go back home, either. He has probably spent the entire investment his family had entrusted in him in the hope that he would pay them back once he reached Germany. His family may have borrowed money and now be in serious financial trouble. With him stuck in Greece, they will be in a much worse situation than when he left on this long and perilous journey. For a proud Afghan to lose face and to jeopardize the dignity of his entire family must be unbearable. Have our well-meant policies contributed to this? What has gone so terribly wrong? How could Europe with all its wealth and organization be so unprepared and have no answers to such an influx of refugees? Two developments that changed present-day refugee movements may have contributed to this: (i) The mobility of refugees has greatly increased; refugee movements have become increasingly globalized. What we saw in 2015/2016 is that large numbers of refugees fleeing armed conflicts in their countries have moved over very long distances and through several countries to reach the West. Not even the Mediterranean Sea appears an unsurpassable barrier anymore. Until then, refugees fleeing internal wars had largely remained in neighboring countries. Then, only small numbers of mostly political and economic elites were able to reach the West. The increased mobility has three consequences: First, refugees are now moving across cultural lines in large numbers and are arriving in countries with very different religious, cultural, and social value systems. This is new. In the past, the vast majority of refugees remained in

226 

On Building Peace

neighboring countries with similar cultural identities. Integration of refugees with very different cultural and religious backgrounds will be more difficult; because of their large numbers the risk is that refugee groups develop into parallel societies. This may create frictions in recipient counties for a long time to come. Second, almost all of the refugees arriving in Europe today are coming from counties in which the West has or had militarily intervened. This is new! In the past, large refugee movements were mostly caused by communist takeovers or communist military operations. In these situations refugees were essentially pro-Western, especially the elites who made it to the West. With today’s refugees this may be very different. They will bring with them deep scars caused by Western-conducted military interventions and blame the West for their plight.61 This may make many receptive to radicalized anti-Western messages. Third, large groups of refugees are now arriving in an unorganized and uncontrolled manner, creating potential security problems for recipient countries. This is also new! In the past, those who made it into the West arrived in small groups that were well-organized. They were either privileged opposition politicians or among those lucky few who came through resettlement programs. Today, the times of such well-controlled and organized refugee and migration movements might be over. It is unlikely that those fleeing civil wars can ever be processed through any controlled programs. (ii) The character of refugees has changed. Today, the distinction between refugees who deserve protection and illegal migrants who can be sent back no longer makes sense in the world of failing states and intrastate armed conflicts. The 1951 UN Refugee Convention was the answer to the atrocities of Nazi Germany; but it fails to give answers to the changed situation of today. Today’s refugees no longer fit the profile of the typical (political) refugee the convention had in mind. In an interview in September 2015, the German minister for refugees, migrants and integration, Aylan Oezogun, called the term “economic migrant” perverse 61 An example may be the Syrian refugees. Most have come from an urban, middle-class background. They began to pour into Europe in July 2015 and their flight was most likely triggered by fears of an imminent collapse of the Assad regime and a takeover by Islamist groups. Deep down, they will probably make the West responsible for their plight and feel more sympathies for Russia. Russia’s military intervention in September 2015 helped stabilize the Assad regime and prevented a possible a takeover by an array of Islamist groups. Even though it may be easier, safer, and financially advantageous to go to the West, this does not mean that their loyalties are also with the West.

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

227

and declared that “[t]hese are people who are coming to us because they see no future for themselves and their families in their own countries. This begs the question: would we want to live in a country plagued by corruption in which only a privileged elite benefit?”62 As shocking as this may be to many, she is right. Why would we provide only shelter to someone who flees the risk of being killed in a civil war but reject someone who flees for fear of dying from food and water shortages? These are uncomfortable questions that are morally difficult to answer. Pointing to the UN Refugee Convention may no longer suffice. Taking these two developments together, the influx of refugees and migrants in 2015 and 2016 may only be a prelude for much larger movements of people in search of greater safety and prosperity. And this will directly affect Europe. Most areas with intrastate conflicts and unstable governments are in the Middle East and Africa, areas close to Europe. Today, the estimated two million refugees who made into Europe over the last two years are only a fraction of the more than 65 million forcibly displaced people and the approximately 10 million stateless people around the world.63 If we now also add, as Oezogun suggests, economic migrants who are trying to escape bad governance, declining economic conditions, or natural and environmental disasters, the numbers of those we could expect coming over Europe’s borders could easily go into the hundreds of millions!64 An open-door policy would hence not be possible. The question is, has the welcoming of two million refugees/migrants in Europe65 helped or made an already complicated situation worse? One reason for concern is that large financial resources are now dedicated to the relatively few refugees who made it into Western countries, while the great mass of refugees and internally displaced receive very little. Germany alone is said to have spent in 2016 between €22 billion from its federal budget66 for its registered 1.1 million refugees.67 And this does not even include additional funding from regional gov62 Interview with the German online journal Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, September 2015 (translation by author). 63 UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Figures at a Glance. 64 It may not be Frontex that protects Europe from an ever-greater refugee/migration influx, but – ironically – the human traffickers we blame wrongly for this crisis. It is the high price they demand for their services that prevents most of today’s refugees and migrants from reaching Europe. All Frontex can hope to do is to make it more difficult for traffickers and hence increase the price tag they demand to bring people to Europe. 65 Only four of the 27 EU countries were willing to accept refugees. Accepting refugees has become one of the main divisions within the European Union. 66 These sums were reported by Die Welt on 27 January 2017, referring to a report by the German Ministry of Finance. I could not verify this independently. 67 Bundesregierung Deutschland. Aktuelle Zahlen zu Asyl.

228 

On Building Peace

ernments, local communities, and NGOs.68 It is also unclear how many resources are spent on the possibly 400,000 additional unreported refugees. Hence, in 2016, Germany alone spent substantially more on its refugee population than the total amount requested in the 2016 UN Global Humanitarian Appeal of US$22 billion for the 96 million destitute people worldwide. Ultimately, the United Nations received only US$10.1 billion in 2016, only half of the estimated need69 – and this, although those 96 million the appeal wanted to help are the most vulnerable people in the world70. Are we getting our priorities wrong? This raises serious questions about social justice. Those arriving in Europe must have each paid several thousand dollars for their journey, mostly to traffickers. In other words, only those who had sufficient financial resources had a chance of making it into Europe. Those less fortunate got stuck. Millions did not even make it over the borders of their conflict-stricken countries and remain internally displaced – often under appalling conditions and with little or no outside help. And what about those who made it only to shabby refugee camps across the Syrian border or ended up in dilapidated wild settlements like the refugee camps in the desert no-man’s-land between Syria and Jordan?71 When we embraced arriving refugees at the Munich train station, we may have unintentionally helped the “better-offs” at the detriment of those in much greater need. Refugees who flee to Europe cause substantial losses to their compatriots who decided to remain in their countries. The reason is that those leaving withdraw large financial amounts from mostly very poor countries. If, for example, we assume that about 400,000 to 450,000 Afghans have fled their country since 2015 and if each paid between US$4,000 to 5,000 to traffickers72 for their journey, it would amount to a total of approximately US$2 billion. This amount comes from private household incomes in Afghanistan, a country where 36% of the

68 Despite the refugee problem being at the top of the agenda, information about the number of those who arrived, where they came from, what age groups they are, what their motives are, or what the total costs of receiving them is remains surprisingly vague – even in a highly organized country such as Germany. We are hence relying largely on guestimates. 69 UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs. Financial Tracking Service. 70 Paul Collier, in his recent book Exodus, makes the calculation that a refugee in Europe costs 135 times what it costs to support a refugee within the region of origin. Today’s approach to deal with refugees and internally displaced is a huge misappropriation of financial resources resulting in unforgivable waste in valuable human resources that could help rebuild their devastated homelands. Collier, Exodus – How Migration is Changing the World. 71 Amnesty International News, “75,000 Refugees Trapped in Desert No-Man’s Land.” 72 The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, even claimed that the cost for families to send a member of their family to Germany may be between US$10,000 and US$30,000. See President Ghani’s interview with the BBC on 31 March 2016.

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

229

population lives under the poverty line of US$1.90 a day.73 It represents about half of all official development aid that Afghanistan received in 2015.74 Losses are not only financial but also add up in terms of human resources. Those who make it to Europe tend to be better educated and more highly qualified than the average Afghan. Afghanistan hence loses many of those needed most to help stabilize and reconstruct the country. Once settled in Germany, the likelihood of anyone going permanently back to Afghanistan – even if conditions improve – is remote. Questions on how to deal with those seeking safety and better livelihoods have divided the Western world. In the United States, a new president responds by wanting to build a wall to keep out its poorer neighbors to the south and has tried to ban mostly Muslim refugees from entering the country. Europe is also building border defenses and concludes highly questionable treaties with Turkey and Libyan militia forces to hold back, for financial gain, refugees so that they cannot cross the Mediterranean. This calls for new and comprehensive solutions. In 2017, the 1951 UN Refugee Convention was meant to solve the humanitarian problems of millions of people who were uprooted by an intrastate war, WWII. However, it is completely insufficient to provide a normative framework for the huge human problems caused by intrastate armed conflicts, collapsing nation-states and belligerent nonstate actors. To find solutions, we must accept that threats to peace and security – and with it the dislocation of ever-larger populations – are coming from intrastate conflicts and no longer from interstate wars. And we must accept that the West alone no longer has the power or moral superiority to impose a global solution. Europe’s refugee crisis requires a new global solution. Such a global solution can only be part of a wider grand bargain to develop a collective normative system to be able to deal with intrastate armed conflicts and their many adverse consequences. For this we would need a stronger United Nations. We need a new UN convention dealing collectively with these very different challenges.

Box 6.3 Are We Setting Ourselves Up for Failure? In 2005, Jared Diamond published a book entitled Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive.75 In it, he looks at several societies that, over the passage of history,

73 UN Development Programme. About Afghanistan. 74 OECD, Aid at a Glance. However, official assistance aid (ODA) is relatively ineffective in raising private household income and the estimated US$4.2 billion in ODA may have little impact on compensating for the financial losses caused by those felling Afghanistan. 75 Diamond, Collapse.

230 

On Building Peace

have vanished, leaving only forgotten ruins behind. They were all once developed and complex societies such as the Maya, the Anasazi, the Eastern Islanders, or the Greenland Norse. As diverse as these societies were, they had in common that their collapse was not the result of hostile neighbors or military conquests. They collapsed because they made the wrong decisions on how to deal with internal threats caused by rapid population growths and the destruction of their productive resources, mostly due to overexploitation and environmental degradation.76 Diamond argues77 that the inability to respond to such internal threats was due to (a) the general failures by societies to anticipate or perceive emerging threats for what they are and (b) the specific failures by local elites, due to their diverging interests, to provide leadership when it was needed most. This sounds frightfully familiar to us today. Are we going through a similar scenario of failing to respond to the real threats to peace and security, instead remaining stuck in old patterns of thinking? Looking at NATO country defense strategies,78 the West continues to see the world primarily as a competition among global and regional powers, and is hence preparing for the threat of interstate wars. At the same time, they appear to fail to recognize the magnitude of the threats emerging from intrastate armed conflicts, failing nation-states and the rise of powerful belligerent nonstate actors. These strategies fail to accept that in today’s world the problem may no longer be strong and functioning nation-states, but rather weak and dysfunctional nation-states. Because of this failure to respond to changing threats, military expenditures throughout the world remain unreasonably high; in 2015 they reached a staggering US$1.7 trillion in 2015.79 The United States, for example, announced a ten-year, US$1 trillion program to modernize its nuclear weapons. Worse, there are reports that the United States is developing smaller and tactical “smart” nukes! How can nuclear weapons ever be “smart”?! Are we trying to dodge the fear of mutual assured destruction (MAD) that has kept us from using such destructive weapons so far? Weapon systems are increasingly technologically sophisticated, equipped with modern stealth technologies and powered by nuclear energy. Robot 76 Of course, most of the great societies in our history such as Egypt, Greece, the Roman Empire, or the Byzantine Empire succumbed to military defeats. Here, dangerously and frighteningly similar to what we are seeing today, wrong decisions had begun to undermine the resilience of those societies well before they were militarily defeated. However, Diamond’s research is interesting for us because he looks primarily into unsolved intrasociety problems. 77 Diamond provides a whole range of mistakes that were made and caused their societies to collapse. I hope that he will forgive me for this rather insufficient summary. 78 A typical example is Bundesregierung Deutschland, Weissbuch zur Sicherheitspolitik und zur Zukunft der Bundeswehr. See Von der Schulenburg, “Deutschlands neue Kleider und seine Bundeswehr,” for a critique of the white paper. 79 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Military Expenditure Database.

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

231

weapons based on artificial intelligence are being designed to kill without anyone needed to pull the trigger. New battleships, submarines, aircraft carriers, bombers, fighter jets, rocket systems, cruise missiles, and smart bombs are being brought into service at the cost of billions of dollars. The combined destructive force of these weapon systems could wipe out all life on earth. Are we planning for a war after which there will be no life left? And this, 27 years after the end of the Cold War? Once this meant “better dead than red,” but what could be the thinking today? “Better dead than leaving the Crimea to the Russians”?80 Have we gone mad? During the Cold War, the arms race had been a mutual East-West affair. Now the arms race is exclusively driven by the West. The combined military expenditures of Western countries amount to over 65% of global military expenditures (according to O’Hanlon and Petraeus81), while that of its perceived main rivals Russia at about 4% and China at about 13% (according to SIPRI) are much smaller. What motivates this huge discrepancy in military expenditures? Is the West trying to intimidate or even destabilize countries such as Russia and China by outspending them militarily,82 or is the West subconsciously arming out of fear that it is losing its dominance over global affairs? Or is it that we need enemies such as Russia and China to justify such huge investments in otherwise senseless weapon systems? Are we ignoring President Eisenhower’s warning against the corrupting and unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex?83 What Eisenhower had to tell us in 1961 seems to be even more relevant for us today; it is worth recalling a key paragraph: In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-in80 In anticipation of the Munich Security Conference in February 2017, the Ukrainian minister of the interior, Arsen Avakov, warned the United States and Europe about making any deals with Russia by threatening that this would trigger a military attack by the Ukraine on Russia that could cost “tens of thousands of victims.” Such a threat in Europe in 2017! He made these threats in an interview given to Die Welt on 16 February 2017. 81 O’Hanlon and Petraeus, “America’s Awesome Military.” 82 An often-repeated, but probably mistaken, assumption was that President Reagan’s ambitious rearmament programs in the 1980s had brought the Soviet Union to its knees as it could no longer mobilize the economic resources to compete militarily. 83 How strong the grip of the weapons industry in the United States on politics is, became apparent when President Obama tried unsuccessfully to introduce relatively mild gun-control measures in June 2016. These were rejected by the Senate, even though around 80% of Americans supported such measures. If this is the case for relatively small businesses of locally sold handheld weapons, how much stronger must the industry lobby for war weapons that present a hundred-billion-dollar business be? On United States opinions, see Pew Research Center, “Opinions on Gun Policy and the 2016 Campaign.”

232 

On Building Peace

dustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.84 Almost all modern weapon systems are designed to fight interstate wars; however, in intrastate armed conflicts these weapons are next to useless. Our preoccupation with traditional defense strategies against a state enemy is further accentuated by the large gap85 that exists in what countries are prepared to allocate to the military to maintain their global and regional power status and in the financial resources they are prepared to spend on poverty alleviation and economic development. Only 3% of what is globally spent on the military is spent on reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)86 of water and sanitation, only 4% on reaching the SDG of agriculture and food security, only 5% on the SDG of health, and only 12% on the SDG of education. Today’s military expenditures are about equal to the combined gross national products (GNPs) of the 42 countries with the lowest Human Development Index87 in the world. Not surprisingly, we find all these 42 countries also among the most fragile countries in the 2015 Fragile State Index. Are our military expenditures contributing to state failures? Indeed, are we making the wrong decisions by investing heavily into interstate wars while ignoring the need to invest in solving intrastate armed conflicts? How can we expect to maintain global peace and security when 84 This is an excerpt from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell speech as president to the nation, delivered to television and radio audiences on 17 January 1961. Given the importance of this issue, it is worth reading the entire speech. It is enormously relevant for today. See Eisenhower, “Farewell Address.” 85 This shocking observation is made in Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2016. 86 On 25 September 2015, on the occasion of its seventieth anniversary, the UN General Assembly consisting of 194 member states adopted unanimously the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030, setting out seventeen ambitious global social, economic, and political goals for the next fifteen years. The Sustainable Development Agenda is a revolutionary achievement for the United Nations that can go a long way toward stabilizing fragile states, preventing root causes of intrastate armed conflicts, and bringing about global peace. 87 The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistical tool used to measure a country’s overall social and economic achievement based on the health of people, their level of education attainment, and their standard of living. See UN Development Programme, Human Development Report 2016: Human Development for Everyone.

Striking a New Gr and Bargain for Global Peace and Securit y

233

more nation-states begin to collapse under the pressures created by population increases and depletion of resources? Such a development can only end in more intrastate armed conflicts around the world, forcing hundreds of millions of desperate and angry people to move to safer places. This could trigger an unprecedented collapse of any international order. The human costs could be enormous. In such a case, none of our expensive, sophisticated, and “smart” weapon systems will help in protecting us or in solving such a quagmire. What will we say when we will have wasted our resources on a military to fight the wars of the past, but were unable to create the stable environment that would be needed to absorb and cater for billions of additional people. Ultimately, aren’t we just jeopardizing our own future security with such a decision?

7

Must Future Peace Be Different?

On 16 October 1911, a popular French magazine, Le Petit Journal, celebrated the Italian military occupation of Libya with a full front page drawing 1 captioned: “Par l’occupation italienne la tripolitaine s’ouvre enf in à la civilisation.”2 It showed the Goddess Liberty holding her flame of freedom high and leading the way for smartly dressed Italian officers stepping on Libyan soil. In front of them, frightened local men in their traditional dresses run away; the sight of civilization and progress on the march appears to have stricken fear into them. As if to underline the link between advanced civilization and superior firepower, we see in the background three battleships in full steam moving toward the shores of Libya. The Goddess Liberty appears to have been inspired by Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading the People celebrating the 1830 French revolution. However, while Delacroix’s Liberty standing on the barricades of Paris shows her bare breasts, Le Petit Journal’s Liberty stepping on Muslim soil takes a more decent posture with her dress covering her entire body. Even then military occupations made some attempt to be culturally sensitive. Almost exactly one hundred years later, on 16  September 2011, the French newspaper Le Figaro published a large front-page picture captioned “Sarkozy and Cameron accueillis en libérateur par les Libyens.”3 This time, it was to celebrate the successful overthrow of Libyan long-time dictator Qaddafi with the help of the French and British air forces. Although color photographs now replaced colored drawings and President Sarkozy and Prime Minister Cameron replaced the Goddess Liberty, the underlying message is still the same: The West brings freedom to this underdeveloped Muslim country, something it would not have achieved by itself. The West, the images convey further, is still needed as a force – and this is mostly meant a military force – of goodness and progress in the world. And in this, women must not be missed. While in 1911 a goddess led men into battle, the Le Figaro image showed several young women clad in huge red scarves

1 In 1911, it was technically not yet possible to print photographs in newspapers. For this reason, the cover of Le Petit Journal was a drawing. Such drawings were often more open in revealing true motives. Today’s use of photographs is more suggestive. 2 “With the Italian occupation, Tripolitania finally opens up to civilization” (translation by the author). At that time, the term “Libya” was not yet common and “Tripolitania” refers to the denomination of this area, which was then formally under Ottoman rule. 3 “The Libyans receive Sarkozy and Cameron as their liberators” (translation by the author).

236 

On Building Peace

enthusiastically thanking the two men from the West who had led the military foray into Libya, allegedly bringing them liberty. 4 Although these pictures are one hundred years apart, we can find in them the strange combination of the three elements that seem to accompany, in one form or the other, all Western interventions: military force, freedom, and women. These three elements were and still are the standard ingredients to justify to a general public in the West that these are just and, indeed, needed military interventions. However, do people on the recipient side of such military interventions see this the same way? Probably not! Sadly, the two Western military forays into Libya, though a hundred years apart, have something else in common: they both began with much acclaim, but ended in disasters.5 The Italians found themselves quickly embroiled in an armed struggle with local tribes and Islamic Sufi orders. Instead of promoting civilization, the Italian occupation forces acted with considerable brutality to suppress local rebellions. NATO also failed in bringing freedom and democracy, and instead created the conditions for the spread of anarchy and the infiltration of Islamist extremist forces. Libya has become yet another example of the post-Cold War illusion that freedom and democracy can be brought to very different cultures through military interventions. However, only three years after the Libyan debacle and 23 years after Francis Fukuyama had published The End of History and the Last Man, a German historian, Heinrich August Winkler, wrote the last of four volumes of his The History of the West6 chronicles. Like Fukuyama before him, Winkler makes passionate arguments for the superiority and universality of the Western model of liberal democracy. But there is a crucial difference between the two: in 1992 Fukuyama declared victory for liberal democracy; in 2015, Winkler argued that we must keep on fighting for the victory through 4 CNN now delivers similar pictures from the war front in Mosul. Will these be indications of a happier outcome or a similar public deception as the pictures we saw in the immediate aftermath of NATO’s Libyan intervention? Let us hope not! 5 Initially, NATO’s military intervention was hailed as a great success. The former US representative to NATO, Ivo H. Daalder, and the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO troops in Europe, James G. Stavridis, confidently declared that NATO has proven to be a factor of global stability and good, and that in Libya it has finally found “the right way to run an intervention” to prevent genocide and to create the conditions for democracy to take root. What an illusion! See Daalder and Stavridis, “NATO’s Victory in Libya.” 6 Winkler, Die Geschichte des Westens. Even if I do not agree with his fundamental approach that we are only at the beginning of global revolution bringing Western values, these are eminently interesting volumes that are, for a German, written in a style that is surprisingly accessible to the wider public.

Must Future Peace Be Different?

237

what he called “das normative Projekt des Westens” (the normative project of the West [author’s translation]). What was a done deal for Fukuyama, is for Winkler something that still needs to be achieved. Is this difference between Fukuyama’s optimism in 1992 and Winkler’s plea to keep on trying in 2015 a reflection of a now crumpling, Western-dominated, post-Cold War peace order? In making his argument that, despite all setbacks, we should continue fighting to spread liberal democracy globally, Winkler calls none other than Karl Marx to the witness stand, the founder of the communist ideology. In 1852, Karl Marx, frustrated by setbacks in bringing about a proletarian revolution – Napoleon III had just carried out a military coup in Paris, destroying the chance that the 1848 uprising would lead to a true revolution – called on his supporters to keep up their revolutionary hopes, but suggested changing tactics from open confrontation to more subversive action. In his political essay “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon,”7 Marx told his supporters to pursue world revolution through smaller and more underground actions that would slowly undermine the capitalist system. In the words of Marx, this would bring success and one day they would tell themselves: “Brav gewühlt, alter Maulwurf!” (Well done, old sport!8 ). This was in 1852. In 2015, on the very last page of his over 2,500 pages in four volumes, Winkler ends with a call on the West to ignore setbacks and to continue to promote Western values of human rights, rule of law, separation of power, peoples’ power, and representative democracy,9 but to rely less on military force and more on soft power. Borrowing from Karl Marx,10 he assures us that this would bring success and that one day we will tell ourselves: Brav gewühlt, alter Maulwurf! How bizarre! Is a call to copy a blind mole digging through the underground all what is left of the once victorious and all-powerful post-Cold War Western order? Is Winkler, like Karl Marx before him, calling on the West to switch to more 7 Marx, “Der 18te Brumaire des Louis Napoleon.” 8 The German expression used by Marx of “brav gewühlt, alter Maulwurf ” would translate directly as “Well done, keeping digging, old mole!” This expression implies a subversive activity of digging unseen through the underground to reach an objective. The English translation “Well done, old sport!” does not fully reflect this aspect. 9 Despite the critique here, some of Winkler’s arguments can be found in Chapter 6.2. In Winkler’s defense, he also rejects the use of military force to promote these values. 10 That Winkler calls on Karl Marx and borrows this quote about the mole to make the argument should not be surprising; both are ideologues rooted in Western ideas. For the Afghan opposition, be they called mujahedeen or Taliban, there was/is no difference between the Soviet and US-led invasion of their country; they were both trying to impose Western values. How right they are!

238 

On Building Peace

subversive tactics and clandestine regime-change activities? What happened to the superiority of liberal democracy that would unfold as soon as Western soldiers removed dictators if we now get our inspirations from the foremost communist theoretician? Communism, despite the many moles it had to do the digging, had ultimately lost; the world revolution that this digging was to bring about never happened. Is Winkler here subconsciously suggesting that the same fate may befall Western liberal democracy? There is another interesting parallel. Those who believe in the ultimate global victory of communism and those who, like Winkler, believe in the ultimate worldwide spread of liberal democracy have a very similar view of history. Both interpret and align historical events to establish patterns that allegedly prove the inevitability of a social development that would result in their respective political systems.11 And both argue that this is a universal development and that ultimately all people, irrespective of their histories, ideals, and cultures, would adopt the same political system.12 Not surprisingly, Winkler, as so many other political analysts in the West, rejects Huntington’s idea of a clash of civilizations.13 This book has deliberately avoided entering into the disputes over a clash of civilization. It suggests instead to begin listening to voices the from the Far East,14 the new global economic and political powerhouse. In 2008, Y.J. Choi,15 a Korean philosopher, diplomat, and a former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, published a regrettably littlenoticed book, East and West: Understanding the Rise of China. In it, he makes the argument that the West’s historical development was determined by dominating the seas around it, while China’s development was shaped by controlling its central plains. This resulted in widely different views of the world: a Western open-expanding world view versus a Far Eastern closedcircumscribed view of the world. As a result, Western power was based on 11 See also Box 1.1. 12 Karl Marx, in trying to reassure his followers of the coming of communism, uses the argument that historical developments are predestined and hence inevitable. In “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” he writes: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” 13 Huntington, Clash of Civilizations. 14 To use the term “Far East” betrays a Western-centric point of view. China considers itself not to be in the “East” but at the center of things. Its name is Zhonggou – the Middle Kingdom. 15 Y.J. Choi was once South Korea’s deputy foreign minister and became later the Special Representative of the Secretary-General to Cote d’Ivoire. He told me that he had written much of the book while the UN mission was in a lockdown during the constitutional crisis over the outcome of the 2010 elections and the resulting civil war.

Must Future Peace Be Different?

239

the continuous conquest and exploitation of foreign lands, while China, by contrast, has always been more inward-looking, trying to defend itself against foreign influences. Therefore, the West tends generally to be more ruthless with those who challenge its rule abroad, while China tends to be more ruthless with those who challenge its unity from within its empire.16 This has consequences to this day. China neither seeks to assemble a global system of allies nor build a global network of military bases.17 It is not embroiled in any wars outside its territory and keeps its distance from the many intrastate conflicts around the world. By contrast, the United States operates 38 major military bases around the world18 with smaller military presences in many more countries19 and is conducting military operations in at least eight countries away from its immediate security area. It can hardly accuse others of expanding their military outreach. In its history, China has rarely ventured outside its immediate neighborhood 20 or tried to acquire colonies overseas. On the other hand, the West has constantly invaded other countries, colonized them or at least tried to control them and their governments. China has never tried to impose its own way of life onto other cultures. By contrast, the West is far more ideological. The conquest of Latin America was accompanied by Christianization, the build-up of colonies around the world was claimed to

16 This may only be a very selective interpretation of Choi’s book that, in comparing the West with China, looks at many more aspects. I apologize for my selective view. 17 The military bases it is building on four artificial islands in the South China Sea – even if illegal by international law – fall probably into the category of China wanting to protect its mainland and its main trading route through the Straits of Malacca. Its only base outside its immediate neighborhood is in Djibouti, but this is rather a logistic support than a proper military base. 18 Overall, the United States maintains a military presence in 120 countries, that is, in twothirds of the world’s countries. And this is not all. The number of full-sized military bases are counted for each country as one, although there might be several. In Germany, for example, the United States maintains a total of 38 military subbases spread all over the country, each with a different military mandate. 19 Also, other Western countries maintain military bases around the world: for example, the United Kingdom has sixteen and France eleven bases. 20 In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, China was technically and militarily far more advanced than the Western nations that sailed the seas to establish colonies, but it was the West that ventured out. China’s flirtation with colonization was only a short-lived one. It took place when Cheng Ho led a huge maritime fleet into the Indian Ocean and to East Africa in the early fifteenth century. His efforts were abruptly stopped by the Chinese emperor 30 years later. It was Vasco da Gama’s voyages to India about 50 years later that initiated the era of global colonization by Western powers.

240 

On Building Peace

spread civilization, and today’s military invasions are justified by bringing the blessings of freedom and democracy. Choi draws our attention to the different attitudes to war as reflected by the teachings of the two most imminent military strategists of all times: Sun Tzu of the third century BC and Carl von Clausewitz of the nineteenth century AD. Sun Tzu teaches that avoiding battle is the greatest excellence while Clausewitz argues that destruction of the enemy is superior. Would these different attitudes explain the aggressive and war-mongering language that we find in today’s media and among politicians in the United States and Europe toward the alleged dangers emanating from Russia and China? Is the West inherently aggressive, even though it members see themselves as “do-gooders”? Given their importance in shaping our views on wars and hence also on peace, is worth quoting them. Sun Tzu (written around 440 BC): In war, taking the enemy nation intact is best, destroying it is only second best. Taking the enemy army intact is best; destroying it is only second best. […] To subjugate the enemy without engaging in battle is the highest excellence.21

Clausewitz (written around 1830 AD): Thus, it is evident that destruction of enemy forces is always the superior, more effective means with which others cannot compete.22

And there is another interesting observation Choi makes in his book: the very success in Western expansion in the past has now created a world in the twenty-first century in which its “expansion and conquest has changed the world from an open-expanding to a close-circumscribed one.”23 Because of Western-driven expansion – and we may call this globalization – the Western approach has reached its limits. The West must hence abandon its policies of expansion and conquest. Choi concludes that it is because of its successes that the West must now adopt to a more Chinese view of a closed and circumscribed world and act accordingly. Today’s world has become so tightly interconnected that interstate wars no longer make political, economic, or military sense. But at the same time, 21 Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Chapter 3. 22 Clausewitz, On War. 23 Choi, East and West.

Must Future Peace Be Different?

241

it is a world that is prone to new threats emerging from failing nation-states, rising powers of nonstate actors, and intrastate armed conflicts. In a closed and circumscribed world, the nation-state is simply a component of a larger, close-knit world. Maintaining world peace now means to preserve this global ensemble of close-knit nation-states. That is the reason why we must now focus on rescuing failing nation-states from collapse and on saving the United Nations as a forum for a strengthened collective security system. Both are two sides of the same coin. In his book, Choi is not dealing with the problems of intrastate armed conflicts, but his overall “Eastern” conclusion might just as well be the conclusion for this book: The international community needs now, more than at any other time in human history, mutual understanding and interaction among diverse civilizations. This is so because during earlier eras of expansion and conquest, only the vanquished were losers; but now, in a closedcircumscribed interdependent era, everybody becomes the loser when we fail to solve global problems.

If we follow the argument that Choi makes, we will need to strive for a very different peace. We must abandon seeking global peace through an “open and expansive” approach and follow a “closed and circumscribed” approach instead. If the “open and expansive” approach results in a form of peace in which nation-states and their alliances end up fighting each other, the hope is that the kind of peace provided by a “closed and circumscribed” world would be achieved by various communities finding ways of living together. World peace would be determined increasingly by managing interstate relations and less by intrastate relations. To do this we would need the collective security approach embedded in the United Nations. In 1948, when I was born, about 2.3 billion people lived in this earth, in the lifetime of my children world population is likely to increase to 11 billion! Five times in just two to three generations! This is a staggering increase on a planet whose resources cannot expand so quickly. We’d better get building peace right. Getting it wrong could lead to a disaster of unimaginable magnitude. Today, building peace must mean rescuing the nation-state and saving the United Nations!



Annex I UN Peace Missions: When Peacekeepers Turn into a Conflict Party

Much has been written about UN peacekeeping and the United Nations has conducted at least three comprehensive high-level reviews of its peacekeeping operations.1 Here we want to leave aside the many issues these reviews have raised: from the increasing delays in mobilizing peacekeepers to its missions being heavily underresourced, from being hampered by a growing bureaucracy to being challenged by the sexual contact of some of its peacekeeping forces. In this annex, we want to look at a specific and a more fundamental problem for UN peacekeepers, 2 namely, that peacekeepers no longer act as a neutral third party to a conflict but become themselves a party in the conflict they come to solve. This, we will argue, is not due to any misunderstandings or political naivety, it is the inevitable consequence of the shift in UN peacekeeping at the end of the Cold War from facilitating the end of interstate wars to finding peace in intrastate armed conflicts.3 To understand the vital importance of this shift, we have first to go back to the beginning of UN peacekeeping. When in June 1945, delegates from 46 countries and 4 so-called sponsoring countries4 signed the UN Charter in San Francisco, nobody considered the possibility that the United Nations should have its own troops to enforce UN decisions. In its Chapter VII, the Charter outlines possible enforcement actions, but its founding fathers had in mind a pattern used during WWII. Enforcement would be done through allied forces; after all, the United Nations was created by the victorious allied forces against Nazi Germany in WWII.5 1 The major UN reviews were conducted in the years 2000, 2005, and 2015. 2 Refer to Annex II. 3 In the book, I make this differentiation by speaking of traditional peacekeeping in interstate wars, but I retain the term “peacekeeping” to describe UN involvements in intrastate armed conflicts. See Annex IV. 4 The sponsoring countries were Argentine and the recently liberated Denmark as well as two Soviet republics, Belarus and the Ukraine; the last two meant to balance somewhat the overwhelming presence of “capitalist” countries. They later became full members, a reason why the Soviet Union had three members in the United Nations, an anomaly at that time. 5 The outbreak of the Cold War three years later completely ruled out such joint allied actions.

244 

On Building Peace

The still fresh memories of two world wars during which regular armed forces had created so much death, misery, and destruction is what led to the discrediting of armed forces playing any role in this new organization charged with maintaining global peace. Chapter VII was to be applied only in exceptional cases; the main work of the United Nations would rely on Chapter VI, which dealt with the peaceful settlement of disputes through diplomacy and negotiation. The sending of a UN military force such as UN peacekeepers was nowhere mentioned in the UN Charter. The “invention” of peacekeeping was due to outstanding personalities such as Folke Bernadotte, Ralph Bunche, and Lester Pearson. The image of the United Nations today is very much that of the so-called Blue Helmets.6 UN peacekeepers are engaged in sixteen different armed conflicts and with close to 120,000 troops and police,7 the United Nations maintains the largest “military force” on active duty in the world. It all had begun so very innocently. When in 1947, Ralph Bunche succeeded in negotiating an armistice between Israel and four of its Arab neighbors, he looked for staff who could monitor the implementation of the ceasefire and report to the Security Council. Who would be better suited to monitor troop movements than military officers? With the creation of the UN Truce Supervision Organizations (UNTSO) in May 1948, the concept of UN military observers was born – still completely unarmed.8 A year later, this concept of military observers was also applied to monitoring the Karachi ceasefire agreement9 that did not end the Indian-Pakistan armed conflict but stopped the fighting over the control of Kashmir. The Suez Crisis of 1956 presented the United Nations with a much greater challenge. A new UN force was to fill the vacuum left by withdrawing British and French troops and to separate Israeli and Egyptian armed forces. 6 The now famous blue helmets of the UN peacekeepers with a UN insignia came about by chance. At the time of forming UNEF, the United Nations decided that peacekeepers should keep their respective national uniforms, but wanted them to wear blue berets. However, there were not enough blue berets available, but there were many old helmets. So the helmets were painted blue and became today’s signature for the United Nations forces. 7 Taken from the UNDPKO website. These numbers are dated November 2015 and included military forces, military observers, and UN police officers. 8 Count Bernadotte, the UN mediator in the Israeli-Arab conflict until his assassination on 17 September 1948, had originally suggested the creation of a UN Guard Force, but this was later dismissed. The United Nations had no experience in leading any guard force; an initial effort had sunk due to disciplinary problems. 9 This is one of the few cases where UN military observers were dispatched to help bring about a ceasefire agreement. The Karachi Agreement to end the fighting over Kashmir was reached only six months after the arrival of the first UN military observers.

Annex I

245

The United Nations suddenly had to patrol and control large territories on the Sinai Peninsula and this required a much larger military engagement. Now, UN troops had to carry weapons for self-defense, they received their blue helmets, and began to raise the light-blue flag of the United Nations. With the creation of the UN Emergency Force in November 1956, the UN peacekeeper in the image of how we know them today was born. During the 44 years of the Cold War, all UN peacekeeping missions followed a similar pattern according to what we might call the 1+3 principles: One principle would set the political context of UN peacekeeping while the other three principles would def ine some basic parameters for its operational activities. The overriding political principle was that UN peacekeepers would only be sent in after a peace agreement was signed – hence the term “peacekeeper.” However, there were never any real peace agreements and the United Nations had to instead make do with ceasefire agreements. The peacekeeping job was exclusively to monitor the implementation of such ceasefire agreements, mostly in the form of the separation and/or withdrawal of warring national armed forces of the countries in question. An important aspect was that all these ceasefires were among UN member states and intended to end interstate wars. While the overall political principle was to prevent UN peacekeepers from becoming a fighting force, the three operational principles were to give UN peacekeepers a special character and to distinguish them from any other military interventions before them: First, the mutual consent by all conflict parties to the deployment of UN peacekeepers and of their role in monitoring ceasefire agreements; second, the strict neutrality of UN peacekeepers and abstention from any political interference in the internal affairs of opposing governments, and; third, the nonuse of armed force, except in self-defense. These 1+3 principles were genial inventions for peacekeeping; they allowed the United Nations to play the role of a neutral third party, hovering above conflicts in pursuit of only one task: to end all fighting. The problem with these 1+3 principles was that they only made sense when helping to end interstate wars. They would completely fail when the United Nations began to intervene in intrastate armed conflicts. Not only that, applied to intrastate armed conflicts, the three operational principles could do harm to UN efforts to end the intrastate armed conflicts. But this was exactly what happened at the end of the Cold War. The number of UN peacekeeping missions increased substantially from sixteen during the 44 years of the Cold War to 68 peacekeeping and peacebuilding

246 

On Building Peace

missions since the end of the Cold War. The character of most of these new UN peacekeeping missions changed fundamentally; UN peacekeepers were now almost exclusively sent into intrastate armed conflicts. With this, the political principle that peacekeepers would only be sent to help implement peace or ceasefire agreements was breached. In most of these intrastate armed conflicts, there were no peace or ceasefire agreements. Where there was a ceasefire agreement, it mostly did not hold. As pointed out in the 2000 Brahimi Report,10 UN peacekeepers were sent into conflict situations in which there was no peace to keep. In other words, UN peacekeepers stopped being peacekeepers. They found themselves operating in ongoing armed conflicts. And there was something else that was now very different, something virtually all UN peacekeeping mission would struggle with to this day: the armed conflicts were no longer between countries that involved governments and regular armed forces on both sides. They were now between government forces and irregular militants or belligerent nonstate actors. There was often more than one group of such belligerent nonstate actors, making the armed conflict perplexing for UN peacekeepers. In fact, in such intrastate armed conflicts, regular armed forces very often began to behave like irregular militants, making the armed conflict highly unpredictable. The use of daytime terrorist attacks and terror against the civilian population became part of this new form of warfare. There were no longer front lines. Even national borders no longer served as clear territorial delimitations. Armed conflict could suddenly break out almost anywhere. Although the United Nations officially stuck to its three operational principles, they no longer made sense in intrastate armed conflicts. There could no longer be any mutual consent for the deployment of UN peacekeepers. If the government agreed, their adversaries, belligerent nonstate actors would never agree – in fact, they were rarely, if never, asked. UN peacekeepers were also no longer impartial. They mostly came at the invitation of a government, hence acting at the request of one side in an intrastate armed conflict. This made UN peacekeepers “legitimate” targets for nonstate actors fighting the government. Thus, the United Nations found itself operating in hostile environments and this, in turn, challenged its third operational principle of a minimum use of force. UN peacekeepers now increasingly needed their resources to protect themselves from attacks, meaning less was available to bring security to 10 UN Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, “Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations” [Brahimi Report].

Annex I

247

the people they had been sent to help. Since 2008, the UN Security Council began to increasingly approve robust mandates under Chapter VII, requesting UN peacekeepers to use force not only in self-defense but also in “pursuit of its mandate.”11 With this, UN peacekeepers have completely lost their third-party impartiality; instead, they have become a party in a conflict. They are usually taking the side of a government, although not in all cases. The United Nations has never adapted its peacekeeping operations to the new situation and, despite all the odds being against it, are sticking to its three operational principles to this day. This has created much confusion to UN peacekeeping. Let us look at the first great failures of UN peacekeeping interventions in intrastate armed conflicts such as in Angola (1992), Somalia (1993), Rwanda (1994), and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1995). These might be the worst failures, but similar problems exist in almost all UN peace missions engaged in intrastate armed conflicts. In Angola, the United Nations had begun with a traditional peacekeeping task of monitoring the implementation of a ceasefire agreement, the 1991 Lisbon agreement, which included the withdrawal of the approximately 50,000 Cuban troops, the demobilization of combatants, and help to conduct national elections. But the Security Council authorized a UN mission – the UN Angola Verification Mission II (UNAVEM II) – of only a very small force of 500 military observers. These were about the same numbers of UN military observers as those that had been sent to observe the separation of troops that ended the Iran-Iraq War.12 Did the United Nations here try to end the sixteen-year intrastate armed conflict in Angola the same way it had helped end the eight-year interstate war between Iran and Iraq13 only three years earlier? The Angolan intervention went badly wrong, because the United Nations refused to accept that it had now entered a world of intrastate armed conflicts and that this needed very different responses. Somalia in the early 1990s was another example of the United Nations underestimating the complexities of intrastate armed conflicts. As a result, 11 UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations. United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines [The Capstone Doctrine]. 12 To make things worse, the United Nations organized general election in Angola in 1992 and discovered that elections do not solve intrastate armed conflict. Quite the contrary, as in Angola, they often fan renewed armed conflicts. In Angola, the armed conflict lasted another sixteen years and cost the lives of many more Angolans than the previous round of fighting. It all ended with a military victory by government forces. 13 The UN mission sent to help implement the ceasefire agreement between Iran and Iraq, the UN Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group, had about the same size with about 400 to 450 military observers. See also Box 3.2.

248 

On Building Peace

the UN Operation in Somalia I and II did not last for long and ended in failure. It was designed as a joint mission with separately operating US forces, Operation Restore Hope. Although, unlike the Angola mission, well resourced, neither the UN nor the US forces had any clear idea of the complexity of the situation they would enter. To make things worse, there was virtually no coordination between the United Nations and the United States on the ground. Namely, the US military mission failed to understand that, in an intrastate armed conflict, it needed to deal – and not necessarily fight – with belligerent nonstate actors. When one of these nonstate armed groups killed nineteen US soldiers following the downing of a US helicopter,14 the US intervention was called off and the UN mission closed shortly after that. This was the first post-Cold War encounter of the armed forces of the world’s only superpower, the United States, with belligerent nonstate actors, an encounter it lost – a bad omen for the many subsequent military encounters. Somalia is a crucial case study on how to misread intrastate armed conflicts, the collapse of governments, and the rise of nonstate actors. In Rwanda,15 the UN mission also came to help implement a peace agreement. But when this peace agreement became the trigger for one of the worst genocides since WWII, the United Nations was paralyzed. How could the UN Secretariat respond to pleas from on-the-ground UN peacekeepers to intervene and prevent a feared massacre? It had no mandate for it and would break its political principle of intervening to keep a peace. UN peacekeepers raiding arms caches would place it in opposition to the government and breach its operational principles of mutual consent, impartiality, and the use of force only in self-defense. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, how could the United Nations have agreed to request airstrikes against pro-Serbian Bosnian forces to relieve pressure on the UN-guarded safe zones, such as Srebrenica, without also breaching its operational principles of acting only with mutual consent with the conflict parties and to remain impartial in the intercommunal conflict? The fault in all these cases does not lie in local forces not respecting UN mandates. The real problem of these peacekeeping operations was that 14 We must not forget that US military operations trying to save their soldiers and subsequent revenge operations may have claimed the lives of over 1,000 Somalis. What happened in Somalia is a reminder of the West’s disrespect for the lives of locals, something that would be repeated in subsequent military engagements. While we know how many Western soldiers were killed in such engagement, we rarely have even any approximate idea of the number of locals who were killed. 15 See also Box 3.3.

Annex I

249

the United Nations wanted to apply a concept of peacekeeping that it had successfully developed for interstate wars to the very different conditions of intrastate armed conflicts. The central reason for UN fiascos in peacekeeping lies, therefore, in failing to recognize the implications of shifting from interstate wars to intrastate armed conflicts and not in any of the many technical and operational problems UN peacekeepers face. The only time the United Nations found itself engulfed in a complex intrastate conflict was during the Cold War. Named in French “Operation des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC),” it too had begun as a traditional peacekeeping operation to monitor the departure of Belgian colonial and foreign mercenary forces from the country after its independence. However, ONUC was quickly submerged in the internal conflicts of the Congo, with a weak government and multiple belligerent nonstate actors, many of them clandestinely supported by various outside governments. The Congo had become a battleground in the East-West conflict. For this reason, it was often argued that ONUC failed because of the East-West conflict. But this is only partly true. The main reason is that the United Nations found itself in an intrastate armed conflict for which traditional UN peacekeeping was not made. In fact, we can relate ONUC’s experiences with most of the UN peacekeeping missions in the post-Cold War era. It was seen as supporting only one side in the multifaceted civil war, the government. But, at the same time, the United Nations deeply mistrusted this very same government. It was authorized to use force and was using force – but without being sufficiently resourced, a fate later UN peacekeeping missions would share with ONUC. And ONUC, like virtually all later UN peacekeeping interventions in intrastate armed conflicts, would not know what the peace it wanted to help bring could look like. It was not only that peacekeepers no longer could keep a peace, now it was also that peacekeepers would not know what the peace is they were asked to keep. Peace in intrastate armed conflict has become evasive. To now rename UN “missions” to “peace missions” does not solve this fundamental problem, nor do robust mandates to authorize greater use of force, and nor do attempts to try turning UN peacekeeping into multidimensional interventions. None solve the basic problem that the United Nations was never designed nor organized to deal with intrastate armed conflicts. The real problem of peacekeeping was that the United Nations had now become a party in the conflicts they came to solve. Even where it tried to maintain “neutrality” as in Rwanda, the United Nations found itself supporting one side – in this case, the government. And this raised important

250 

On Building Peace

questions for which the United Nations has never even tried to find an answer: Whose side will the United Nations chose? Will this side always be the government? And what if the government itself is corrupt and the cause of the intrastate armed conflict. How do we deal with belligerent nonstate actors? What are the criteria and norms that could help a UN peace mission cross the minefields of intrastate armed conflicts? The three operational principles will not help guide UN peace missions. But what principles could replace them that are suited for engagements in intrastate armed conflicts? To this day, the United Nations does not even recognize that today’s peace missions raise these kinds of vital questions, and, not surprising, it has no answers. Even worse, the United Nations continues to refuse to accept the fundamental shift required that would erase the norm of sending UN peace missions to end interstate wars and adopt the norm of engaging adept UN peace missions in the new realities of intrastate armed conflicts, weakening nation-states, and powerful nonstate actors. A United Nations that does not recognize the challenges that result from this geopolitical shift and literally buries its head in the sand of its own New York City-based bureaucracy is only making a bad situation worse.



Annex II UN Reforms: Two Reviews Are One Too Many

At the end of 2014, the United Nations had launched two important reviews by groups of eminent external experts, diplomats, and political personalities to look more comprehensively at its core business: preventing wars and maintaining global peace and security. The first was a review of the United Nations’ peacebuilding architecture by an Advisory Group of Experts (AGE); the second was the even more ambitious review of the United Nations’ peacekeeping operations and special political missions through a High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO). While the first review was mandated by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council, the second was undertaken at the initiative of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Both the AGE and the HIPPO presented their respective reports at about the same time, the first on 29 June 20151 and the second a few days earlier, on 16 June 2015.2 On 2 September 2015, the Secretary-General followed the reviews up by issuing his own report to the UN General Assembly on UN peace operations.3 All three reports were meant to trigger a strategic discussion among member states about the future of the United Nations to coincide with the seventieth anniversary of its creation in 1945. They were seen as continuations of previous UN strategy reports, in particular Boutros-Ghali’s 1992 “Agenda for Peace,” Lakhdar Brahimi’s 2000 Report on United Nations Peace Operations and Kofi Annan’s sponsored 2005 Outlook Document. However, the 2015 reports lack the strategic depths of their predecessor reports. The 2015 reports were obviously written with the intent not to cause any political controversy with member states and to circumvent possible institutional sensitivities among UN departments. Although the reports make plenty of references to the great dangers facing the world (a use of language that is typical of so many UN reports), they rarely go beyond analyzing organizational, managerial, and petty bureaucratic issues. At times, the reports read as narrow wish lists of individual member states, UN departments, and their organizational units. The focus is on improving 1 2 3

UN Advisory Group of Experts, “Challenge of Sustaining Peace.” UN High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations, “Uniting our Strength for Peace.” UN Secretary-General, “The Future of United Nations Peace Operations.”

252 

On Building Peace

what is and does not to go much beyond this. Not surprisingly, instead of presenting sharp and provocative strategic options for the future of collective security, member states are now confronted with three different and, in many parts, incongruent reports, with a combined total of over 180 pages and almost as many recommendations and new initiatives. In following I focus on the Secretary-General’s report to the UN General Assembly. As the last of the three reports, it had the advantage of building the ones issued before it. In the Secretary-General’s report the most notable conclusions are his emphasis on the primacy of politics in conflict resolution and his warning that UN peace operations are not the appropriate tools for military counterterrorism operations. At a time when global and regional powers increasingly rely on military force in trying to settle intrastate armed conflicts and when even the Security Council calls increasingly for UN “stabilization” missions with robust military mandates, such conclusions are, no doubt, bold and laudable. However, the Secretary-General does not develop these conclusions any further and fails in identifying what the new political challenges for global peace and security are that the United Nations is facing. The Secretary-General’s report begins by reminding member states of the core purpose of the United Nations by quoting the opening words in the UN Charter: “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” But he fails to recognize that what was understood as “scourge of wars” was something completely different from what the international community faces today. At the time of the adoption of the UN Charter “the scourge of war” was exclusively understood to be interstate wars. In 1945, the organization’s founding members, the then anti-Nazi alliance, had just experienced two devastating interstate world wars and it was interstate war they hoped to control by creating a United Nations. By contrast, intrastate armed conflicts, though they too existed, were not yet on the radar of international concern. Today, this has changed: interstate wars have almost completely faded away and various forms of intrastate armed conflicts have replaced them as the main threat to global peace and security. The Secretary-General’s report belittles this shift from interstate to intrastate armed conflicts – for the United Nations as an interstate organization this is an inconvenient fact – by arguing that “labels such as internal, intra-state, regional, ethnic, sectarian for conflicts have become increasingly irrelevant.” But what than are relevant conflicts? Indeed, a strange conclusion. Today’s peace operations are not about “labeling” but about the realities of highly complex and often brutal intrastate armed

Annex II

253

conflicts. The perplexing view that “labels” do not matter disregards the fact that the characteristics and dynamics of intrastate conflicts – despite all variances – are very different from those of interstate wars and that these two types of armed conflicts demand fundamentally different UN responses and approaches. Ignoring that today’s main threats to global peace and security emanate from intrastate armed conflicts between weak and failing nation-states and increasingly powerful belligerent nonstate actors is at the root of why the two reviews and the Secretary-General’s report fall short of providing a strategic outlook for the United Nations’ future. Let us here again concentrate on the Secretary-General’s report: i The Secretary-General, in his report, fails to recognize the first characteristic of all intrastate armed conflicts: weak, fragile, failing, or even collapsing nation-states. He also does not recognize the key role that nation-states remain the cornerstones for not only ensuring intracountry peace, security, justice, and prosperity but also as building blocks for global peace, security, justice, and prosperity. This is surprising. Today, 31 of the 39 ongoing UN peace missions (or 75% of all its peacekeeping and special political missions) operate in intrastate conflict environments and about 90% of all UN peacekeepers, field staff, and other resources are assigned to peace operations that are working in fragile and even collapsing nation-states with violent internal conflicts. Although the report makes plenty of references to reconciling local communities and strengthening state institutions, it manages to do this without even mentioning the core importance of functioning nationstates once. Had he done so, the Secretary-General would have had to admit that UN peace interventions are in fact interferences in the internal affairs of a (though failing) member state. He may have feared that this could trigger unwanted debates over national sovereignty and noninterference in the internal affairs of member states. ii The Secretary-General, in his report, also fails to recognize the second characteristic of intrastate armed conflicts: the increasingly powerful role of belligerent nonstate actors in challenging and replacing state authority. Although the report makes references to terrorism and transnational crime, it never discusses the whole range of belligerent nonstate actors such as armed political opposition, Islamist extremists, procommunist movements, sectarian uprisings, separatist groups, or criminal syndicates. It does not acknowledge the key importance and difficulties for UN peace missions of dealing with (or ignoring) nonstate actors in their efforts of achieve peace in intrastate armed conflicts. For

254 

On Building Peace

this reason, the report offers no indication of how UN peace operations could best engage nonstate actors in general and how to approach different types of nonstate actors in particular. Although the report alleges the need for the United Nations to engage all parties in a conflict, the reality in UN peace operations and UN mediation efforts is often very different. They rather tend to isolate – or ignore – key belligerent nonstate actors that are considered as too extreme as is done in the cases of Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, Libya, and now in Syria. The consequence is that UN peace missions are accused by those left out as taking sides and become hence “legitimate” targets for them. This is not only a security problem for UN missions but poses a far more fundamental political dilemma that the report conveniently ignores. iii The Secretary-General, in his report, fails further to recognize the increase in so-called internationalized intrastate armed conflicts, even though foreign direct military interventions in intrastate armed conflicts have dramatically increased over the last ten to fifteen years. We now know that external military interference has rarely helped end intrastate armed conflicts or led to sustainable peace arrangements. Quite to the contrary, the internationalization of armed intrastate conflicts has made them worse, bloodier, and longer lasting. Increasingly, open and clandestine military interventions by outside powers are taking place without a mandate by the UN Security Council. What had begun in Kosovo appears now to become increasingly an “accepted” norm for global and regional players. How can the SecretaryGeneral of a global organization that has banned all use of military force for political aims except for self-defense remain silent about this? This touches the core of what the United Nations and international law is about! iv Most importantly, the Secretary-General fails to recognize important geopolitical shifts. Armed conflicts, be they interstate or intrastate, do not take place in a geopolitical vacuum and both their occurrence as well as their solutions, will ultimately depend on a wider peace order and the balance of power among major global and regional players. The once dominant position of the West and, in particular, the unique superpower status of the United States after the end of the Cold War is increasingly being replaced by a multipolar world. Today, Western influence on global affairs is weakening. Other, mostly non-Western global and regional players, are now increasingly taking greater influence on global and regional affairs. How can the United Nations ignore

Annex II



255

such geopolitical shifts when reviewing its future role in peacemaking and peace operations? All the report does is to call for greater cooperation with regional organizations. But with this it misses the point. The new geopolitical players think differently, have different priorities, and, above all, they will pursue different political interests. This has a huge impact on how intrastate armed conflicts evolve. It will also change the options the United Nations has for solving intrastate armed conflicts. It will ultimately even impact on the model of governance that the United Nations has traditionally promoted in its peace operations to resurrect weak nation-states: the liberal democratic system of governance. Whatever the answers to such questions may be, the Secretary-General’s report remains mute about them.

Because the Secretary-General’s report fails to recognize the shift from interstate to intrastate armed conflicts and to consider shifts in the geopolitical environment, the Secretary-General misses the opportunity to lay the grounds for a United Nations that can remain relevant for future generations. While many of the more operational and organizational proposals in his report are surely of value, there are six key issues that could have given his report a more strategic outlook: 1



Taking advantage of geopolitical shifts for invigorating collective security: Over all the lamenting that “the proliferation of conflicts is outpacing our [the United Nations’] efforts,” the Secretary-General oversees that ongoing geopolitical developments offer also a unique opportunity for the United Nations to finally play the central role for which it had been created: save succeeding generations from the scourge of war – which today would mean essentially intrastate armed conflicts. In fact, over the last 70 years of its existence, the United Nations never had the political space to play this role satisfactory. By 1947, only two years after its creation, the United Nations was caught in the Cold War that impacted everything it was doing – or not doing. Also at the end of the Cold War, the time of international cooperation lasted only for two years. With the breakdown of the communist world in 1992, the West had become the only global winner and as such began to decide over peace and war with at best only a faint reference to the United Nations. But an emerging multipolar world should provide an environment for a renewal of collective security – and hence of the United Nations. Today, an increasing number of political analysts – especially in the

256 

On Building Peace

West – express fears that a weakening of the singular superpower status of the United States and the parallel decline of Western dominance of global affairs could spiral international relations into a period of great chaos. Wouldn’t this call for a return to collective security and a greater interest in the United Nations? 2 Ending unilateral military interventions: The Secretary-General could have used these reviews and his report to the General Assembly to remind member states that the use of military force is banned by the UN Charter and call on them to refrain from any unilateral use of military interventions. This alone would amount to a return to a collective security system. Considering the magnitude of suffering that external interference in intrastate conflicts causes, to speak only about the primacy of politics is not enough. Such calls for restraints may not be popular among a number of member states but the geopolitical changes toward a more multipolar world would have given him the handle to defend the UN Charter and uphold the principles of collective security. 3 Principled peacebuilding interventions into failing member states: The Secretary-General could have developed ideas for a collective peacebuilding approach in dealing with intrastate armed conflicts that is based on internationally accepted principles. He could have clearly stated that UN peace missions could no longer pretend to operate on the United Nations’ three traditional peacekeeping principles of mutual consent, impartially and minimum use of force (the Secretary-General does not mention them). Instead, he could have suggested other principles to guide UN interventions in intrastate conflicts that would give UN peace operations their special character and would distinguished them for any bi-lateral military intervention. The Secretary-General’s report does not outline any such new approach for dealing more effectively with the combined problem of intrastate armed conflicts, failing nation-states, and the rising powers of nonstate actors. 4 Developing a holistic approach for UN peace operations: More surprising is that the Secretary-General, except for a faint reference to the Peacebuilding Commission, ignores the findings of the AGE review of the peacebuilding architecture. Although he emphasizes repeatedly the need for a holistic approach to UN peace operations – in fact, this is the justification of why he accepted to speak now of “peace operations” and no longer of peacekeeping missions – peacebuilding is not among the activities he lists in this context. This contradicts the AGE findings that peacebuilding should start at the very beginning of any UN peace operation – the reason why the AGE no longer wants to

Annex II

257

speak of “postconflict” peacebuilding. Indeed, if building peace is not part of UN peace missions, what is? To create a holistic approach, the Secretary-General would first have to break down the silo mentalities that prevent different departments within the UN Secretariat from working together. 5 Revising the principle of national sovereignty: The Secretary-General should have accepted that UN peace missions, especially those that include peacekeepers, are deliberate, time-bound interventions in the internal affairs of a member state. This raises the sensitive issue of national sovereignty. In today’s intrastate armed conflicts between weak governments and belligerent nonstate actors, the dilemma of how to deal with national sovereignty is at the core of all UN peace operations that intervene in such conflicts. Keeping quiet about it, does not solve it. Such important reviews should have made suggestions. The principle of national sovereignty is no longer sacrosanct. It has been repeatedly breached by more powerful member states, often claiming humanitarian concerns. One possibility to solve this issue could be to distinguish between national and state sovereignty. While national sovereignty remains absolute, state sovereignty could, under strict conditions and under collective security arrangements, be temporarily waived. To distinguish between national and state sovereignty would strengthen national sovereignty while creating an opening for UN peace operations to intervene in intrastate armed conflicts, if and when collectively decided. 6 Lifting the United Nations into the twenty-first century: The United Nations was a creation of the post-WWII era. At that time, wars among nation-states and their alliances were the main concern of the international community; intrastate armed conflicts – although they also existed – were not considered a matter for international peace. Consequently, the UN Charter gave the United Nations only a role in preventing and ending intrastate wars. It explicitly excluded the United Nations from interfering in the internal national affairs of member states. To circumvent these restrictions, the United Nations has adopted all sorts of false justifications such as claiming to have been invited by a frequently illegitimate government (and that is party to the intrastate armed conflict) or to operate on the three principles of UN peacekeeping that no longer make sense. In a world that is dominated by intrastate armed conflicts, the United Nations can no longer operate on principles of a UN Charter that had been developed in the wake of WWII. To remain relevant in order to

258 

On Building Peace

deal with the wars and armed conflicts of the twenty-first century, would require a revision of the UN Charter to make intrastate armed conflicts also part of the UN mandate. With this, the United Nations would become “a second leg”: in addition to being the global forum to help prevent or end interstate wars, it would also become the global forum to help prevent and end intrastate armed conflicts. All this would be highly provocative for many member states. But this would have been the time to raise these fundamental issues and begin a debate. A bold approach is needed if one wants to save the United Nations’ relevance for the future. As the Secretary-General enters his last year in office, he would have been in perfect position to do so. Instead, he chose a safer approach and, in the words of Arthur Boutellis,4 went only for “bureaucratic low-hanging fruits.” With this he missed an opportunity for the organization he has been heading for the last seven years. Instead of two reviews and three reports, the Secretary-General would have done better to concentrate on only one review and one report. But this would have needed a strategic vision and personal courage.

4

Boutellis, “From HIPPO to SG Legacy.”



Annex III A New Diplomacy for Intrastate Relations

In today’s world, building global peace and security means increasingly preserving and up-holding the institution of the nation-state. The book’s core argument is that today’s main threats to global peace and security come no longer primarily from conflicts among nation-states, but increasingly from conflicts within individual nation-states in which weak and dysfunctional governments battle increasingly powerful belligerent nonstate actors. As a result, intrastate armed conflicts have replaced interstate wars as the main “scourge of mankind.”1 Failing nation-states, especially those with intrastate armed conflicts, not only produce today’s great humanitarian tragedies but, more importantly, they are now the main source for global instability. They risk endangering a global system security order that continues to be built on individual but interconnected nation-states that cooperate within a system of international laws, conventions, treaties, and organizations. Such a global security order would need functioning and responsible nation-states. Without this, none of today’s global problems can be solved. The breakdown of this order could bring global chaos and, with it, greater human suffering; it could ultimately even lead to renewed interstate wars. Peacebuilding, the book asserts, is the international response to the threats posed by failing, conflict-ridden nation-states. The book defines peacebuilding therefore as the collective international effort to rescue failing, conflict-ridden nation-states from collapse and to rebuild them into responsible, sovereign members in the global community of nation-states. For diplomacy, peacebuilding opens an entirely new frontier: the nationstate. While traditionally diplomacy2 was the art of dealing with international relations, a new diplomacy would instead have to focus its attention on intrastate relations. This would be a major departure from traditional diplomacy. When focusing on intrastate conflicts, a new diplomacy would have to abandon many of its often century-old principles and face previously 1 The term is used in the Preamble of the UN Charter to describe wars. In the aftermath of two devastating world wars, the Charter used this term as a reference solely to interstate wars; intrastate armed conflicts, although they already existed, were then neither considered part of international diplomacy nor an issue for the United Nations. 2 The term “diplomacy” derives from the Greek word δίπλωμα, meaning making a deal with other countries; there are, however, also other explanations for this term.

260 

On Building Peace

unknown challenges, many of them wrought with ambiguities and even contradictions: i The challenge of defining national sovereignty: Traditional diplomacy is based on the Westphalian principles of national sovereignty and the noninterference in the internal affairs of other nation-states. The UN Charter also explicitly rules out any interference in the internal affairs of member states. However, peacebuilding is exactly this: a deliberate, target-oriented, and time-bound interference in the internal affairs of another nation-state that is unable – or deemed unable – to solve its internal violent conflicts without outside assistance. In dealing with failing conflict-ridden nation-states, peacebuilding would hence require redefining national sovereignty and noninterference in internal affairs, the very two principles that had once made the development of the nation-state possible. In other words, one would have to define the principle of national sovereignty more flexibly in order to save the sovereignty of the nation-state. ii The challenge of defining the role of the nation-state: The nation-state, the very institution peacebuilding wants to rescue, is today increasingly under external and internal threats of marginalization – externally from forces that are often summarized as globalization, and internally from numerous forces of powerful belligerent nonstate actors. But the forces that today threaten the survival of the nation-state, globalization and belligerent nonstate actors, are also the two main reasons why rescuing the nation-state is becoming more important than ever for preserving global peace and security. This would require redefining the role of the nation-state in a globalized world and it would need to find a new, preferably nonmilitary, approach in dealing with various forms of belligerent nonstate actors. iii The challenge of promoting political-economic systems: Any intervention in a failing nation-state raises the question about what political, economic, and social system could bring peace, stability, justice, and prosperity to an often-divided society. In the immediate post-Cold War era, the answer appeared very clear: liberal democracy. Western liberal democracy had come out of the Cold War as the winning political system and there was no competing system in sight. The hope was – and to a large extent still is – that liberal democracy would ultimately bring peace not only to intrastate conflicts but also ensure global peace. But now, 25 years later, such hopes are fading. Especially outside of Europe, there are ever fewer examples of where this has worked. Not only that, as the world becomes less Western-dominated, liberal democracy will

Annex III

261

lose additional appeal. At a time when dealing with the problem of failing states and their negative impact on global security becomes increasingly urgent, peacebuilding may be losing the very approach with which it had once been created. iv The challenge of impartiality: Contrary to peacekeeping interventions in interstate conflicts, peacebuilding interventions in intrastate conflicts will not be able to claim any neutrality or impartiality.3 Intrastate armed conflicts force such interventions to take positions and make decisions that will impact on the balance of power among the conflicting parties. Peacebuilding missions will quickly become party in the very conflict it has come to solve, making it a “legitimate” target for those who feel they are being acted against. But if peacebuilding can no longer be impartial, what will be the principles on which it acts partially? Spelling them out may potentially be a highly controversial enterprise. v The challenge of internationalized intrastate conflicts: Many intrastate conflicts tend to become “internationalized,” meaning that local conflict parties, be it the local government or one of the belligerent nonstate actors, receive outside military, logistical, or financial support. This complicates any solutions as conflicting local interests are overlapped by conflicting interests of outside powers. The great challenge for peacebuilders and diplomats alike would be to concentrate on solving conflicting local interests while insulating them from those of external supporters: local solutions must be given preference over international solutions. However, to be able to do this, peacebuilding would have to operate under a collective security system. vi The challenge of a collective UN security system: However, bringing peacebuilding under a collective security system has its own problems. Interventions in intrastate armed conflicts are high-risk endeavors that need clear mandates, a unified leadership, single strategies, strong decision-making, predictable resources, and unambiguous international political support. But these are exactly the attributes of which the United Nations is terribly short. This would hence require a major reform of the United Nations. Much of the book is about such reforms. 3 Discussions aimed at solving this dilemma often distinguish between neutrality and impartiality. But in the reality of intrastate armed conflicts, such efforts to make this distinction appears rather futile, if not outright counterproductive. If any conflict party sees a UN peacebuilding mission taking sides against it – mostly, but not always, for a government and against a nonstate actor – it will treat this mission as an enemy force and ignore any abstract explanations about it being neutral or impartial.

262 

On Building Peace

vii The challenge of choosing between order and chaos: The greatest challenge for a “new diplomacy” is how peacebuilding would relate to changes in the geopolitical environment. Ultimately, this may be a choice between order and chaos and not one between democracy and dictatorship. In other words, in order to preserve stability, one would have to give up the hope that all countries will ultimately transition into liberal democracies. Such a change would be the consequence of a shift in geopolitics away from a Western-dominated post-Cold War peace order toward a more multipolar world with many different global and regional political systems and powers. With such a change in geopolitics, the approach to peacebuilding would also have to change; it would make peacebuilding far more complex. The book argues that the geopolitical changes toward a multipolar world could also be a new opportunity for the United Nations, and a new postWestphalian United Nations at that, not only mandated to maintain peace and security among its member states, but also to help maintain peace and security within its member states. Indeed, the answers to these seven challenges may lie in a return to the collective security system of the United Nations and virtually all the proposals made in the book are directed at how to reform the United Nations for peacebuilding. This would also be the challenge for a new diplomacy.



Annex IV Glossary of Terms Used

Some clarifications first: For somebody who spent almost all his professional life in field operations, writing a book like this is a startling experience. One such startling experience is entering the haze of terminology. While I often felt it difficult to understand the real problems of conflicts in the field, I felt now puzzled by the conflicting use of so many terms in academic literature and documentation. Everyday terms appear suddenly questionable – even inappropriate. For example, we still speak of “peacekeeping” missions1 and this although these missions are now sent into situations in which there is no peace to keep. At the same time, we speak of “peacebuilding” in postconflict situations. But isn’t postconflict peacebuilding a contradiction? Why do we want to build peace if the conflict is over? Virtually all of today’s UN peace operations are operating in armed intrastate conflicts with no peace in sight. Wouldn’t it therefore be better to call today’s peacekeeping missions “peacebuilding operations”? With the use of these terms, we further imply that there is a sequence in which peacebuilding follows peacekeeping even though common logic suggests that one would have to “build” a peace before one can “keep” it. And so many other terms become ambiguous such as “fragile/failed/ failing states,” “nation building,” “state building,” and “the West.” It is not even clear what we mean when we speak of “the United Nations.” Is it a group of member states, the Security Council, the General Assembly, or the Secretary-General and his staff? Greater clarity would here be important. The meaning we give to any such terms will ultimately shape the arguments that we want to make – or is it that the arguments shape the meanings of terms used? We all have our preconceived ideas and may hence read something very different into a text, in part of how each of us understands the terminology used. All this tends to create misunderstandings and confusion between the writer and readers as well as among writers and readers. And it confuses an inexperienced writer like me. In this Glossary, I try to explain what I mean by the various terms used in the book. This is necessary as I have, at times, deviated from their more common use. I hope this will clarify and not further spread confusion. 1 However, according to the 2015 Review of UN peacekeeping in all cases the term should be “peace missions” and not “peacekeeping missions.” See Annex II.

264 

On Building Peace

Terms frequently used throughout the book and that might create confusion: Building peace “Building Peace” it is part of the book’s title and this was deliberately chosen over just “peacebuilding” as a reminder that this book tries to be more than just about a technical and operational approach to peace. Building peace is here a more generic term that includes all activities aimed at building and preserving peace. This could be activities directed at interstate wars and intrastate armed conflicts but also global warming, poverty alleviation, or humanitarian calamities. However, the argument made in this book is that in today’s world, building peace would have to primarily concentrate on preserving functioning nation-states embedded in a strengthened collective security system as a precondition of solving all other global problems. Peacebuilding In contrast to “building peace,” the book uses the term “peacebuilding” to describe the more operational concept and supporting tools for rescuing failing nation-states from collapse. UN peacebuilding is therefore understood in this book as the whole range of external interventions that may be necessary for building peace and security in countries with intrastate conflicts. Such use of the term “peacebuilding” will, no doubt, be controversial. But to invent a new term that specifically applies to intervening in failing nation-states – as contrary to intervening in interstate conflicts – would only add to confusion. Although peacebuilding literature rarely makes a clear distinction between building peace in inter- and intrastate conflicts, they all speak de facto only about building national institutions, hence implicitly refer to intrastate conflicts. There are many definitions for peacebuilding. Most of them emphasize institution- and capacity-building activities. In this book, we will use a more political definition of peacebuilding: as the art of rescuing a failing nation-state from collapse through UN Security Council-legitimized international interventions that consists of a country-specific combination of political, security (peacekeeping, police), human rights, justice, social, humanitarian, reconstruction, and development actions with the aim of helping: (i) build a more stable, peaceful, just, and prosperous society by reconciling the interests of its conflicting communities, including by involving the government, political parties, religious and traditional leaders, civil

Annex IV

265

societies, youth and women organizations, the media and, where possible, belligerent nonstate actors (ii) form a more inclusive, representative and accountable national government supported by functioning national institutions, able to provide basic public services to all its people equally, and (iii) re-create a fully sovereign nation-state that acts as a responsible member of the international community within the United Nations

Postconflict peacebuilding Much of the literature tends to add “postconflict” to peacebuilding. The term “postconflict peacebuilding” dominated the United Nations since “peacebuilding” was first introduced in 1992. Former Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali spoke of “postconflict peacebuilding” in his 1992 “Agenda for Peace,” in which he argues that “in the aftermath of international war, postconflict peacebuilding may take the form of concrete cooperative projects which link two or more countries in a mutually beneficial undertaking that can not only contribute to economic and social development but also enhance the confidence that is so fundamental to peace.”2 All subsequent UN documents describe peacebuilding as a “postconflict” activity: The 2000 Brahimi Report speaks of “recognized the role that UN peacebuilding efforts play in consolidating a postconflict peace” and the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document calls for “the need for a coordinated, coherent and integrated approach to postconflict peacebuilding and reconciliation with a view to achieving sustainable peace.”3 In 2007, the UN Policy Committee described peacebuilding in more abstract terms but clearly considered it as a postconflict activity: Peacebuilding involves a range of measures targeted to reduce the risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict by strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management, and to lay the foundations for sustainable peace and development.

2 In 1992, when Boutros-Ghali introduced his “Agenda for Peace” he still thought only of interstate wars and not of intrastate armed conflicts. In the agenda, it is argued that peacebuilding should take place “in the aftermath of international war” and hence it spoke of “postconflict peacebuilding.” With this he created a confusion within the United Nations that continues this day (Boutros-Ghali, “An Agenda for Peace”). 3 UN Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, “Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations” [Brahimi Report].

266 

On Building Peace

In 2008, the DPKO’s United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines [The Capstone Doctrine] does not define peacebuilding at all except calling under a section dedicated to peacebuilding for “programmes designed to prevent the recurrence of conflict.” In fact, the Capstone Doctrine only describes peacebuilding as a combination of specific program activities to consolidate peace such as disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR); mine action; security sector reform (SSR), rule of law-related activities; protection and promotion of human rights; electoral assistance, and support to the restoration and extension of state authority. The two 2015 UN reviews of UN peacebuilding and UN peace operations also make no effort to define “peacebuilding” – nor for that matter “peacekeeping.” Although these reports, like most other UN documents, read as if everybody knows clearly what is meant by “peacebuilding” and “peacekeeping,” they remain rather nebulous terms – probably out of a fear that any attempt at definition would open a Pandora’s Box. Many non-UN organizations (such as the RAND Corporation) tend to take a similar an approach to peacebuilding by simply listing concrete postconflict activities. Such a listing of activities completely depoliticizes peacebuilding – a result of the widely held conviction that liberal peace is the only solution and is a given that doesn’t deserve further consideration. This book rejects this assumption and that makes defining “peacebuilding” necessary. Peacebuilding interventions This book refers to “peacebuilding interventions” and not only to “peacebuilding missions.” The reason is to emphasize that these are not simply technical assistance/support missions but rather present planned, though time-limited, interference into the internal affairs of a failing nation-state. This touches on a core dilemma of the United Nations to pretend that its “peacebuilding interventions” – or now “peace missions” – are “assistance missions” – claiming, on the one hand, to support a government while, on the other hand. to be impartial. When speaking of peacebuilding interventions, the book wants to emphasize that security-related activities are part of peacebuilding; in other words, that peacekeeping (even if this naming is misleading) is only one, though an important, aspect of most peacebuilding interventions. The emphasis of various inputs to UN peacebuilding interactions may shift over time, but there is definitely no such sequence of peacekeeping first and peacebuilding later.

Annex IV

267

Liberal peacebuilding “Liberal peacebuilding” describes basically an approach of assisting nationstates recuperating from civil wars by introducing a Western political system of liberal democracy that includes representative government, democratic institutions, human rights and rule of law, separations of powers, and free market economies. Roland Paris describes “liberal peacebuilding” very well: Peacebuilding is in effect an enormous experiment in social engineering – an experiment that involves transplanting Western models of social, political and economic organization into war-shattered states in order to control conflict: in other words, pacification through political and economic liberalization.”4

The book maintains that peacebuilding was born as “liberal peacebuilding” in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War and that peacebuilding reflected the winner’s concept for a post-Cold War peace order. However, one of its core arguments is that with a global decline in Western influence and the emergence of new global and regional powers, a worldwide application of liberal democracy is increasingly challenged. Principled peacebuilding The book introduces the term “principled peacebuilding” to replace “liberal peacebuilding.” Behind this is the idea that a collective security system that increasingly focuses on intrastate armed conflicts requires to set internationally accepted principles/norms that define functioning nation-states. Such principles/norms could derive from the UN Charter, the Universal Human Rights Conventions, or other international conventions and norm such as the Responsibility to Protect. Such principles/norms would then form a framework within which individual nation-states could develop their own political systems. In all likelihood, such principles/norms would be greatly influenced by Western liberal democratic and economic ideas. Over the years, the UN General Assembly has developed a rudimentary framework that includes aspects of democracy and the rule of law. But these norms would have to sufficiently flexible to accommodate other forms of historically gown approaches to organizing a nation-state.

4

Paris, “Peacebuilding and the Limits of Liberal Internationalism.”

268 

On Building Peace

Peacekeeping Despite the fact that this term is problematic, the book continues to speak of “peacekeeping” to describe the engagement of UN Blue Helmets and UN police to help develop a secure local environment. The term is also used in the context of intrastate armed conflicts, although in this context, as the book points out repeatedly, this term “peacekeeping” makes no sense. An alternative would have been to speak of “stabilization forces” instead. The UN Security Council has referred recently to UN “stabilization missions” as in the case of Mali and the Central African Republic. However, UN peacekeeping has become more like a brand name and it was felt better not to change this – despite its inherent contradiction. Traditional peacekeeping The book refers to “traditional peacekeeping” in respect to the engagement of UN Blue Helmets in helping implement ceasef ire agreements, peace agreements, and similar arrangements to end interstate wars. It is called “traditional” because this was the original purpose for which UN peacekeeping had created in the 1950s and 1960s. But even then, this term was problematic. In helping separate hostile armed forces following a ceasefire, UN Blue Helmets were also not real “peacekeepers” but more some kind of “end-of-hostilities keepers.”5 In fact, traditional peacekeeping never resulted in any comprehensive peace agreements – it only froze interstate conflicts. Liberal peace Central to original peacebuilding is “liberal peace,” the idea that by implementing the Western political system of liberal democracy it would bring peace both at national as well as at international levels. In fact, this idea is so deeply ingrained in the peacebuilding literature that it is hardly mentioned. In most discussions about peacebuilding, peace no longer is an issue. This had the unfortunately consequences that peacebuilding is considered primarily a technical and institution-building issue and no longer a political question.

5 None of the traditional UN peacekeeping operations ever resulted in a comprehensive peace agreement between the warring countries. Traditional peacekeeping was therefore often criticized for just freezing and not solving interstate conflicts. This explains why some traditional UN peacekeeping missions lasted for decades.

Annex IV

269

This book argues that the liberal peace debate reflects a typical post-Cold War winner’s attitude. With the decline of a Western-dominated peace order also liberal peace will increasingly be questioned. What peace is or should be, is again a core issue for peacebuilding. Nation-state Throughout this book, the term “nation-state” will be used to describe what is usually only called a state or a country – and sometimes even a nation. This may raise many eyebrows. Especially in Europe the use of the term “nation” is highly controversial as this triggers fears of the nationalism that had such devastating effects during the two world wars. Virtually all European reviewers of the manuscript made this comment. Nonetheless, the book has kept the term of “nation-state” in large part because there was no apparent term that could replace it. With “nationstate” the book wants to underline one of its principle arguments, namely that for countries to work they not only need functioning state institutions but also something less tangible but equally if not more important, such as common values, a national loyalty/solidarity, and a feeling of belonging together. On the one hand, countries must have an accountable governance structures, common laws, functioning institutions, etc., but on the other, people living in the same state must identify with that state and support the basic values on which the state functions. While the book calls the first “state,” it calls the other aspect “nation.” Both the “nation” aspect and the “state” aspect of a country depend on each other; one does not exist without the other – in building peace in intrastate conflicts it is also important to distinguish between the two. The West may have spent billions of dollars in building state institutions in Afghanistan but all of this will come to nothing if many Afghans cannot identify with this state, its institutions, and its underlying values. Here “nation” has nothing to do with race or ethnicity, and common values must not be misunderstood with any kind of nationalism. In modern nation-states, these have much more to do with constitutional values that underpin state institutions.6 There seems to be no appropriate term that could express a value-based society. Furthermore, nation is a term often 6 Some countries created a huge multimillion euro bureaucracy with the right to carry out clandestine operations. For example, Germany created the Verfassungsschutz, an agency for the protection of the constitution. Its job is it to identify and prosecute anyone who commits acts that are not in line with the German constitution – not so different from the task if the Inquisition.

270 

On Building Peace

positively used, for example, in national reconciliation, national pledge of allegiance, national anthem, and national teams, but also in “nation building”7 (more used by Americans who have less problems with this term). And, of course, it is part of the name of the United Nations. Peacebuilding literature tends to concentrate mainly on what is called here the institutional, hence “state,” aspect; one of its main shortcomings. Failing nation-state Like for so many other terms related to political issues, the term “failing state” is controversial and has no commonly agreed definition. The book is here guided by the description given by the Fund for Peace (FFP), which characterizes failed states as being those with the (i) loss of control of its territory, or of the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force; (ii) erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions; (iii) inability to provide public services; and (iv) inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community. Since 2014, the FFP has renamed its “failed states index” into the “fragile states index” in large part because the index measures the respective “fragility” of virtually all countries and not only that of failing states. It ranges them in a number of categories: very high alert – high alert – alert – high warning – warning – low warning – less stable – stable – more stable – sustainable – very sustainable. When we speak of “failing states” we refer to countries that are more likely rated under the three alert categories. This book introduces a further consideration for failing states, namely, that of failing nation-states. The argument made here is that nation-state failure is not limited to state failures but has two sides to it: divided national loyalties and years of bad governance. In other words, the book maintains that for countries to fail both their nation and their state aspects have to fail. Both are interdependent and feed on each other, turning into a vicious downward spiral that will end in intrastate armed conflicts. The term “failing state” is also controversial for another reason. Charles T. Call makes the argument that such description is only used to set up weak countries to Western interventions.8 But this is probably more an argument of who would decide (a) that a nation-state is failing; (b) if this 7 The terms “nation” and “nation building” are more often used by Americans. The reason is probably that the United States is one of the few countries (as is, strangely, also Prussia) in which the development of a constitution and the creation of state institutions coincided. For most Asian and European countries these were historically separate processes. 8 Call, “Beyond the ‘Failed State.’”

Annex IV

271

would necessitate an international intervention; and (c) at what level this international intervention should take place. The argument the book makes is that such decisions must not be taken unilaterally by the West but become part of a revamped collective security system under the United Nations. Belligerent nonstate actors The book gives great attention to what it calls “belligerent nonstate actors,” arguing that nonstate actors fighting a national government are at the core of all intrastate armed conflict. In fact, the term “nonstate” actor was chosen to emphasize that they compete and clash with state actors over control of territory, political power, and/or access to resources. Typical belligerent nonstate actors are extremist Islamic and other ideologically motivated groups, secessionist movements, militia and rebel forces, or transnational crime syndicates. The adjective “belligerent” is added to nonstate actors to make a distinction to all those nonstate actors that are not using force to further their interests and are generally not considered an existential threat to a nation-state and its government. The term of “belligerent nonstate actor” was chosen to underline that not all belligerent nonstate actors are necessarily destructive forces. Actually, in many intrastate armed conflicts, government forces might be equally bad or even worse than the irregular fighters of nonstate actors. In fact, there may be cases in which international sympathies are more with armed opposition groups than with an existing government – posing a huge dilemma for the United Nations. Civil nonstate actors While belligerent nonstate actors are those that have taken up arms to fight a government, there are many nonbelligerent nonstate actors that equally challenge existing nation-states – above all transnational companies. “Civil nonstate actors” include traditional society organizations, civil societies, NGOs, religious communities, political parties, the media, and, of course, the private sector. They, too, can challenge the nation-state. Terrorist In this book, I avoid using the term “terrorist.” The reason is that this term is too ideologically and politically charged for a common definition to be agreed. Who is a “terrorist” – and who is not – will depend on the beholder. While in the West we consider terrorists those who try to bring about political change by spreading fear and terror, others see Western military

272 

On Building Peace

interventions and the bombing of cities to impose a political solution as acts of terrorism. While the West identifies the use of suicide bombers with terrorism, others see drone attacks as a form of terrorism. Interstate wars The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) defines “interstate armed conflicts” as those between two or more states. In the book, we will follow this definition but speak of “interstate wars” instead. Intrastate armed conflict The UCDP defines “internal armed conflicts” as those between a government and one or more internal “opposition groups.” In the book follows this definition but we use the terms “intrastate armed conflicts” and “belligerent nonstate actors” instead. Internationalized intrastate armed conflict The UCDP defines “internationalized internal armed conflicts” as between a government and one or more internal opposition groups, with intervention from other states in the form of troops on behalf of either of the conflict parties. In this book, we use the term “internalized intrastate armed conflicts” and instead of internal opposition we speak of “belligerent nonstate actors.” Wars versus armed conflicts The UCDP applies a different definition for the use of the terms “armed conflicts” and “wars”: – Armed conflicts are violent clashes over “contested incompatibilities” that concern government or territories or both with more than 25 and less than 1,000 annual battle-related fatalities. – Wars are violent clashes over “contested incompatibilities” that concern government or territories or both with more than 1,000 annual battle-related fatalities.

The book uses the term “war” exclusively in the context of interstate conflicts while it describes violent clashes in intrastate conflicts as “armed conflicts.” There is no deeper reason behind this except to make it easier to distinguish between interstate and intrastate violent conflicts. The terms “interstate” and “intrastate” are so similar that may be difficult for readers of this book to keep the distinction clear in their minds. However, the

Annex IV

273

distinction between “interstate wars” and “intrastate armed conflicts” is essential to understand most of the discussions in this book. Grand bargain “Grand bargain” is the core recommendation of the book to bring intrastate conflicts under a collective security system of the United Nations. The term “grand bargain” is used to describe an agreement among UN member states to expand the mandate of the United Nations to enable it to respond to intrastate armed conflicts. The “grand bargain” would require a (i) change of the UN Charter; (ii) the development of international norms and standards for intrastate relations; (iii) levels of peacebuilding interventions in failing member states; and (iv) a broadening to UN decision-making. United Nations The term “United Nations” has several different meanings. Unless otherwise specified, this book will understand with the term “United Nations” the rules-based collective security system to which 193 member states have subscribed. The United Nations could also mean only the UN Secretariat or the totality of its member states or the totality (or parts) of the United Nations organizations, agencies, funds, and programs. However, when this is the case, the book will point this out. The West Although often used, the term “the West” is fluid. It has historical, political and regional aspects. This book follows a definition given by Heinrich August Winkler in the introduction to his Die Geschichte des Westens: Von den Anfängen in der Antike bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (The history of the West: From its beginning to the twentieth century). According to this book the West includes the United States, Canada, all members of the European Union, Switzerland, Norway, Island, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and, of course, the United Kingdom, once it has left the European Union.

Bibliography This is not an academic book. For this reason, it does not weigh the various arguments made in it with those of other writers and academics on similar subjects. It simply refers to some of them, and then only to support what had just been said. The idea is to maintain the spontaneity and directness of an analysis that is based primarily on professional real-life experiences rather than intense academic study. However, many books and academic works have influenced my thinking though not necessarily mentioned in the text. I have therefore included those I considered important in this bibliography. Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. Why Nations Fail. Crown Business, 2012. Ackerman, Bruce. The Decline and Fall of the American Republic. Harvard University Press, 2013. “All Politics Is Local.” The Economist, 10 October 2015. Amnesty International News, “75,000 Refugees Trapped in Desert No-Man’s Land.” 15 September 2016. Annan, Kofi. Interventions: A Life in War and Peace. Penguin, 2012. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. C. 1270. Bader, Erwin, ed. Krieg und Frieden. Lit Verlag, 2012. Baudet, Thierry. The Significance of Borders. Brill, 2012. Boutellis, Arthur. “From HIPPO to SG Legacy: What Prospects for UN Peace Operations Reform?” IPI Global Observatory, 24 September 2015. https://theglobalobservatory.org/2015/09/ hippo-peacekeeping-peacebuilding-united-nations/ Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. “An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and PeaceKeeping.” A/47/277 and S/24111. United Nations, 17 June 1992. http://www.un-documents. net/a47-277.htm Brenner, Ian. Superpower: Three Choices for America’s Role in the World. Portfolio, 2015. Brown, Nathan J. Constitutions in a Non-Constitutional World: Arab Basic Laws and the Prospects For Accountable Government. State University of New York Press, 2002. Brück, Tilman, Olaf J. de Groot, and Friedrich Schneider. “The Economic Costs of the German Participation in the Afghan War.” Journal of Peace Research 48.6 (2011): 793-805. Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Strategic Vision. Basic Books, 2012. Buchanan, Patrick J. The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil our Country and Civilization. St. Martin’s Press, 2002. Bundesregierung Deutschland. Aktuelle Zahlen zu Asyl [Current figures on asylum]. Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, 2016. Bundesregierung Deutschland. Weissbuch zur Sicherheitspolitik und zur Zukunft der Bundeswehr [White paper on security policy and the future of the Federal Defence Forces of Germany]. 30 July 2016. Call, Charles T. “Beyond the ‘Failed State’: Toward Conceptional Alternatives.” European Journal of International Relations 17.2 (2011): 303-326. Caplan, Richard, ed. Exist Strategies and State Building. Oxford University Press, 2012. Center on International Cooperation. Global Peace Operations. Lynne Rienner, 2013.

276 

On Building Peace

Chesterman, Simon. You, The People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration, and State-Building. Oxford University Press, 2004. Chetail, Vincent, and Oliver Juetersonke, eds. Peacebuilding. 4 vols. Routledge, 2015. Choi, Y.J. East and West: Understanding the Rise of China. Yonsei University Press, 2008. Chollet, Derek, and Ben Fishman. “Who Lost Libya? Obama’s Intervention in Retrospect.” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2015. Clausewitz, Carl von. On War. Trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Princeton University Press, 1976. Collier, Paul. The Bottom Billion. Oxford University Press, 2007. Collier, Paul. The Plundered Planet. Oxford University Press, 2010. Collier, Paul. Exodus – How Migration is Changing our World, Oxford University Press, 2015. Commission on Global Governance. Our Global Neighborhood. Oxford University Press, 1995. Cooper, Robert. The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the 21st Century. Grove Press, 2003. Cox, Michael. Why the West Rules for Now – And Is Likely to for a Long Time To Come. Polity Press, 2013. Curtis, Devon, and Gwinyayi A. Dzinesa, eds. Peacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa. Ohio University Press, 2012. Daalder, Ivo H., and James G. Stavridis. “NATO’s Victory in Libya: The Right Way to Run an Intervention.” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2012. Davis, Norman. Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe. Penguin, 2011. Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Fail or Survive. Penguin, 2005. Diamond, Larry. “Democracy’s Deepening Recession.” Atlantic, May 2014. Diehl, Paul F., and Brian Frederking, eds. The Politics of Global Governance: International Organizations in an Interdependent World. 4th ed. Lynne Rienner, 2010. Dobbins, James. “Talking to the Taliban.” International Herald Tribune, 11 May 2010. Donini, Antonio. “The Policies of Mercy: UN Coordination in Afghanistan, Mozambique, and Rwanda.” Occasional Paper #22. The Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies, 1996. Eisenhower, Dwight D. “Farewell Address.” Delivered 17 January 1961. http://www.american­ rhetoric.com/speeches/dwightdeisenhowerfarewell.html Elworthy, Scilla, and Gabrielle Rifkind. Making Terrorism History: 20 Ways to Understand and Overcome Divisions in Our Society. Rider, 2006. Enayat, Hamid. Modern Islamic Political Thought. University of Texas Press, 1982. European Council. “Ministerial Declaration on the Recognition of New States in Europe.” 16 December 1991. FBI. “Firearms Death Statistics.” Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015. Ferguson, Niall. Civilization: The West and the Rest. Penguin, 2011. Ferguson, Niall. Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World. Penguin, 2003. Ferguson, Niall. The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economics Die. Penguin, 2013. FFP. “Fragile States Index 2015.” Fund for Peace, 2015. http://fsi.fundforpeace.org/rankings-2015. FFP. “Fragile States Index 2016.” Fund for Peace, 2016. http://fsi.fundforpeace.org/rankings-2016. Foley, Conor. The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War. Verso, 2010. Freedom House. Discarding Democracy: Return to the Iron Fist. 2015.

Bibliogr aphy

277

Freedom House. “Freedom in the World 2015.” https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/ freedom-world-2015 Fukuyama, Francis. America at the Crossroads. Yale University Press, 2006. Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. Simon and Schuster, 1992. Fukuyama, Francis. Political Order and Political Decay. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. Fukuyama, Francis. State-Building. Cornell University Press, 2004. Galtung, Johan. “Editorial.” Journal of Peace Research, 1964. Ghani, Ashraf, and Clare Lockhart. Fixing Failed States. Oxford University Press, 2008. Goldstein, Joshua S. Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide. Dutton, 2011. Gorbachev, Mikhail. “It All Looks As If the World Is Preparing for War.” Time, January 2017. Guehenno, Jean-Marie. The End of the Nation-State. Trans. Victoria Elliot. University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Guehenno, Jean-Marie. The Fog of Peace: A Memoir of International Peacekeeping in the 21st Century. Brookings Institution Press, 2015. Gurr, Ted Robert. Why Men Rebel. Princeton University Press, 1970. Hagopian, A., et al. “Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003-2011 War and Occupation: Findings from a National Cluster Sample Survey by the University Collaborative Iraq Mortality Study.” PLoS Med 10.10 (2013): 1-15. Hayek, Friedrich A. The Road to Serfdom. University of Chicago Press, 1944. Heather, Peter. Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe. Macmillan, 2009. Held, David, and Charles Roger, eds., Global Governance at Risk. Polity Press, 2013. Hersh, Seymour. “Who’s Sarin?” London Review of Books, December 2013. Holmes, James R. Theodor Roosevelt and the World Order. Potomac Books, 2006. Huntington, Samuel P. Clash of Civilizations. Simon & Schuster, 1996. IMF. World Economic Outlook. International Monetary Fund, 2014. International Forum for the Challenges of Peace Operations. Challenges Forum Report 2011: Peace Operations beyond the Horizon. Elanders, 2012. IOM. “Global Migration Trends Factsheet.” Global Migration Data Analysis Centre, International Organization of Migration, 2015. https://gmdac.iom.int/global-migration-trends-factsheet “Iraq Coalition Causality Count.” iCasualties.org Iraqi Mortality Study, 2003-2011. University of Washington, Johns Hopkins University, Simon Fraser University, and Mustansiriya University, 2013. Joffe, Josef. “Trumputin.” Die Zeit, 4 August 2016. Johnson, Simon. “Die USA sind und bleiben die Größten.” IPG-journal, 1 September 2015. http:// www.ipg-journal.de/regionen/nordamerika/artikel/detail/die-­u sa-sind-und-bleiben-diegroessten-1051/ Kagan, Robert. Of Paradise and Power – America and Europe in the new World Order, Knopf, 2003. Kagan, Robert. The World America Made. Vintage, 2006. Kaplan, Robert D. The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post-Cold War. Random House, 2000.

278 

On Building Peace

Kennedy, Paul. The Parliament of Man: The United Nations and the Quest for World Government. Penguin, 2006. Kissinger, Henry. World Order. Penguin, 2014. Kuehne, Winrich. “Zukunft der UN-Friedenseinsätze: Lehren aus dem Brahimi-Report.” Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 11 (November 2000): 1355-1364. Kuperman, Alan J. “Obama’s Libya Debacle: How a Well-Meaning Intervention Ended in Failure.” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2015. Kurbalija, Jovan. An Introduction to Internet Governance. Diplo Foundation, 2012. Lakitsch, Maximilian, ed. Political Power Reconsidered. Lit Verlag, 2013. Lawrence, Andrew. “Imperial Peace or Imperial Method? Skeptical Inquiries into Ambiguous Evidence for the ‘Democratic Peace.’” In Theory and Evidence in Comparative Politics and International Relations, ed. R. Lebow and M. Lichbach. Palgrave, 2007, 199-226. Lea, Ruth. “EU-28 Is No Longer the World’s Largest Economy.” Global Vision, 14 November 2013. http://www.global-vision.net/blogging-brussels--beyond/eu-28-is-no-longer-the-worldslargest-economy Mackay, Neil. “Bush Planned Iraq ‘Regime Change’ before Becoming President.” Sunday Herald, 15 September 2002. Marshall, Tim. Prisoner of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything about the World. Simon & Schuster, 2015. Marx, Karl. “Der 18te Brumaire des Louis Napoleon” (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon). Die Revolution (1852). Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. Manual on Constitution Building: Structures and Principles of a Constitution. Heidelberg, 2009. Mazower, Mark. Governing the World: The History of an Idea. Penguin, 2012. McRae, Hamish. The World in 2020: Power, Culture and Prosperity. Harvard Business School Press, 1994. Mearsheimer, John J. “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault.” Foreign Affairs, September/ October 2014. Morris, Ian. The Measure of Civilization: How Social Development Decides the Fate of Nations. Princeton University Press, 2013. Morris, Ian. Why the West Rules – For Now. Profile Books, 2011. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Religion and the Order of Nature. Oxford University Press, 1996. NATO. “Defence Expenditures of NATO Countries (2009-2016).” Press Release PR/CP(2016)116. 4 July 2016. http://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2016_07/20160704_160704pr2016-116.pdf Neyer, Jürgen. Globale Demokratie: eine zeitgemäße Einführung in die internationalen Beziehungen. Nomos, 2013. Nordic UN Project. The United Nations, Issues and Options. Almquist & Wiksell. 1991. Nye, Joseph. The Future of Power. United States by PublicAffairs, 2011. Nye, Joseph. Is the American Century Over? Polity Press, 2015. Nye, Joseph. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. PublicAffairs, 2009. Obama, Barack. “A Just and Lasting Peace.” Speech delivered at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, 2009. https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/obama​ -lecture_en.html

Bibliogr aphy

279

OECD. Aid at a Glance. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2016. O’Hanlon, Michael, and David Petraeus. “America’s Awesome Military: And How to Make It Even Better.” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2016. O’Rourke, P.J. Give War a Chance. Grove Press, 1992. Otobo, Ejeviome Eloho. Consolidating Peace in Africa: The Role of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission. AMV Publishing Services, 2015. Paris, Roland. “Peacebuilding and the Limits of Liberal Internationalism.” International Security 22.2 (1997): 54-89. Paris, Roland. “Saving Liberal Peacebuilding.” Review of International Studies 36.2 (2010): 337-365. Perle, Richard. “United They Fall.” The Spectator, 22 March 2003. Pettersson, Therése, and Peter Wallensteen. “Armed Conflicts, 1946-2014.” Journal of Peace Research 52.4 (2015): 536-550. Pew Research Center. “Opinions on Gun Policy and the 2016 Campaign.” August, 2016. http:// www.people-press.org/2016/08/26/opinions-on-gun-policy-and-the-2016-campaign/ Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Penguin, 2011. Ploughshares Fund. “World Nuclear Weapon.” March 2016. Rahman, Zia Haider. In the Light of What We Know. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. Ramsbotham, Oliver, Tom Woodhouse, and Hugh Miall. Contemporary Conflict Resolution: The Prevention, Management and Transformation of Deadly Conflicts. 3rd ed. Polity Press, 2011. RAND Corporation. Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building. 2007. Rotberg, Robert I., ed. When States Fail. Princeton University Press, 2004. Rubio. Marco. “Restoring America’s Strength – My Vision of a US Foreign Policy.” Foreign Affairs. September/October 2015. Sachs, Jeffrey. “Alle Wege führen nach Peking.” IPG-journal. 25 November 2014. http://www. ipg-journal.de/kommentar/artikel/alle-wege-fuehren-nach-peking-682/ Sandole, Dennis J.D. Peacebuilding: Preventing Violent Conflict in a Complex World. Polity Press, 2010. Sedlácek, Tomáš, and David Orrell. Bescheidenheit – für eine neue Ökonomie. Hansa, 2012. Seibel, Wolfgang. “Peace Operations and Modern Protectorates: The Logic of Successful Failure.” In The New Protectorates, ed. J. Mayal and R. Soares de Olivera. Hurst & Company, 2012, 163-182. Shaw, Mark, and Walter Kemp. Spotting the Spoiler: A Guide to Analyzing Organized Crime in Fragile States. International Peace Institute, 2012. Sorkin, Andrew. “What to Make of the Davos Class in the Trump Era.” New York Times, 16 January 2017. Soros, George. “A Partnership with China to Avoid World War.” New York Review of Books, October 2015. Steglitz, Joseph. Globalization and Its Discontents. Penguin, 2002. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. SIPRI Military Expenditure Database. 2016. https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. SIPRI Yearbook 2016: Armaments, Disarmament And International Security. Oxford University Press, 2016. Sun Tzu. The Art of War. Trans. Samuel B. Griffith. Oxford University Press, 1971.

280 

On Building Peace

UN Advisory Group of Experts. “Challenge of Sustaining Peace: Report of the Advisory Group of Experts on the Review of the Peacebuilding Architecture.” A/69/968 and S/2015/490. United Nations, 30 June 2015. https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N15/202/94/PDF/ N1520294.pdf?OpenElement UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations. “Peacekeeping Fact Sheet.” United Nations, November 2016. http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/resources/statistics/factsheet.shtml UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations. United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines [The Capstone Doctrine]. United Nations, 2008. http://www.un.org/en/ peacekeeping/documents/capstone_eng.pdf UN Development Programme. About Afghanistan. United Nations, 2016. http://www.af.undp.org/ UN Development Programme. Human Development Report 2010: The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development. United Nations, 2010. http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/ files/reports/270/hdr_2010_en_complete_reprint.pdf UN Development Programme. Human Development Report 2013: The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World. United Nations, 2013. http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/ reports/14/hdr2013_en_complete.pdf UN Development Programme. Human Development Report 2016: Human Development for Everyone. United Nations, 2016. http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2016_human_development_report.pdf UN General Assembly. “Strengthening the Rule of Law and the Reform of Criminal Justice Institutions.” A/RES/67/186. 12 March 2013. http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc. asp?symbol=A/RES/67/186 UN General Assembly. “United Nations Millennium Declaration.” A/RES/55/2. United Nations, 18 December 2000. http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/ROL%20A%20RES55%202.pdf UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. “Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine, 16 May to 15 August 2016.” United Nations, September 2016. http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/UA/Ukraine15thReport.pdf UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. “The Situation of Detainees at Guantanamo Bay.” E/CN.4/2006/120. United Nations, 2006. http://www.un.org/Docs/journal/asp/ws.asp?m=E/ CN.4/2006/120 UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Figures at a Glance. United Nations, 2016. http://www. unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html UN High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations. “Uniting our Strength for Peace: Politics, Partnership and People.” A/70/95 and S/2015/446. United Nations, 17 June 2015. https:// documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N15/181/45/PDF/N1518145.pdf?OpenElement UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs. Financial Tracking Service: Humanitarian Contributions. United Nations, 2016. UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Global Study on Homicide: Trends, Context, Data. United Nations, 2014. https://www.unodc.org/documents/gsh/pdfs/2014_GLOBAL_HOMICIDE_BOOK_web. pdf UN Panel on United Nations Peace Operations. “Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations” [Brahimi Report]. A/55/305 and S/2000/809. United Nations, 21 August 2000. http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/55/305 UN Population Division. World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision: Key Findings and Advanced Tables. United Nations, 2015. https://esa.un.org/Unpd/wpp/Publications/Files/ Key_Findings_WPP_2015.pdf

Bibliogr aphy

281

UN Secretary-General. “The Future of United Nations Peace Operations: Implementation of the Recommendations of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations.” A/70/357 and S/2015/682. United Nations, 2 September 2015. https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/ UNDOC/GEN/N15/270/74/PDF/N1527074.pdf?OpenElement UN Secretary-General. “Implementing the Responsibility to Protect.” A/63/677. United Nations, 12  January 2009. https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N09/206/10/PDF/ N0920610.pdf?OpenElement UN Security Council. “Agreement on Provisional Arrangements in Afghanistan Pending the Re-establishment of Permanent Government Institutions.” S/2001/1154. United Nations, 5 December 2001. http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/Afgh%20S2001%201154.pdf UN Security Council. “Concept Note: Maintenance of International Peace and Security: Reflect on History, Reaffirm the Strong Commitment to the Purposes and Principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” United Nations, 3 February 2015. S/2015/87. http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/s_2015_87.pdf UN Security Council. “Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda.” S/199/1257. United Nations, 16 December 1999. http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/POC%20S19991257.pdf Uppsala Conflict Data Programme. Annual Reports 2014, 2015, 2016. Urquhart, Brian. A Life in Peace and War. Harper & Row, 1987. US Government, Counterinsurgency Guide (COIN). 2009. US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program.” S. Report 113-288. 9 December 2014. https:// www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/CRPT-113srpt288.pdf Von der Schulenburg, Michael. “Lighter Footprint for Greater Impact: A Concept for UNAMA.” Unpublished paper. UN Department of Political Affairs, December 2001.Von der Schulenburg, Michael. “Afghanistan’s Peace in a Glasshouse.” Unpublished paper. UN Department of Political Affairs, July 2002. Von der Schulenburg, Michael. “Fighting Terrorism in Afghanistan and Milton Friedman’s Airplane.” Unpublished paper. UN Department of Political Affairs, January 2002. Von der Schulenburg, Michael. “Peace and Foreign Troops in Afghanistan.” Unpublished paper. UN Department of Political Affairs, February 2002. Von der Schulenburg, Michael, Peace-building Needs More Effective Tools, in: Malcolm Chalmers (ed.), Rescuing the State – Europe’s next Challenge, British Council, The Foreign Policy Center, 2005. Von der Schulenburg, Michael. “Keeping or Building Peace?: The Challenges of Solving Armed Intra-state Conflicts.” Center on International Cooperation, New York University, December 2014. http://cic.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/keeping_building_peace_jan30_4.pdf Von der Schulenburg, Michael, “Rethinking Peacebuilding: Transforming the UN Approach” International Peace Institute, September 2014. https://www.ipinst.org/wp-content/uploads/ publications/ipi_e_pub_rethinking_peacebuilding.pdf Von der Schulenburg, Michael, Can Peace-building Drive the UN Change Agenda? in: Stephen Browne, Thomas G. Weiss (eds.), Post-2015 UN Development – Making Change Happen, Routledge, Global Institutions Series, 2014.

282 

On Building Peace

Von der Schulenburg, Michael, The IS, the US and us – options for confronting the ISIS (im Deutschen erschienen unter dem Titel: Lasst die IS doch einfach an sich selbst scheitern), online Journal für International Politik und Gesellschaft (IPG), September 2014. Von der Schulenburg, Michael. “Deutschlands neue Kleider und seine Bundeswehr” [Germany’s new clothing and its army]. Forthcoming, 2017. Von der Schulenburg, Michael, Leading UN Peace Mission in Intra-State Armed Conflict, in: Manuel Fröhlich/Dorothea Prell/Patrick Rosenow (eds.), Leaders and Leadership in UN Peace Operations, Baden-Baden (Nomos)/London et al. (Bloomsbury), 2017 (under publication). Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars. 4th ed. Basic Books, 1977. Winkler, Heinrich August. Die Geschichte des Westens. 4 vols. H.C. Beck. 2009-2015. Zartman, William I., ed. Peacemaking in International Conflict: Methods and Techniques. United States Institute of Peace, 2007. Zeilizer, Craig, ed. Integrated Peacebuilding: Innovative Approaches to Transforming Conflict. Westview Press, 2013.