The Morality of Peacekeeping 9780748675906

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THE MORALITY OF PEACEKEEPING

Studies in Global Justice and Human Rights Series Editor: Thom Brooks Immigration Justice Peter W. Higgins Rwanda and the Moral Obligation of Humanitarian Intervention Joshua J. Kassner Health Inequalities and Global Injustice Patti Tamara Lenard and Christine Straehle The Morality of Peacekeeping Daniel H. Levine Institutions in Global Distributive Justice András Miklós Community and Human Rights Oche Onazi Retheorising Statelessness Kelly Staples www.euppublishing.com/series/sgjhr

THE M O RA LI T Y OF PE A CE KE E PI N G

Daniel H. Levine

For Lauren E. Fleming, 1980–2011. Life is fragile, protect it.

© Daniel H. Levine, 2014 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 11/13 Palatino Light by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 7589 0 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 7590 6 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 7592 0 (epub) The right of Daniel H. Levine to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

CONTENTS

Prefacevii

Part I  General Considerations

 1 Introduction   2 A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping

3 20

Part II  The Holy Trinity

 3 Consent

73

 4 Impartiality

102

  5 Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force

132

  6 Minimum Use of Force (B): Peacekeeper Violence

193



Part III  Protecting Civilians

  7 Protection and Vulnerability

215

  8 Protection of Civilians from Non-enemies: A Case Study of MONUC Support to Kimia II in the DRC

258

  9 Protecting with Civilians

287

10 Conclusion

323

vi

The Morality of Peacekeeping Part IV  Appendices

A List of Acronyms B Interviews

329 333

Bibliography336 Index358

PREFACE

This book is something of a love letter to peacekeeping. Peacekeeping (at least as contemporarily understood) is a sort of improvisation, a bricolage created to try to keep the global peace in the face of Cold War restrictions on the UN’s scope of action, and shaped by repeated course-corrections when the post-WWII world turned out to be dominated by collapsing colonial empires and distributed, decentralized sub-state violence rather than the clash of great powers. So it is not surprising that there seems to be a recurrent tendency to want to free peacekeeping from its constraints, to make it more “robust,” better able to take control of a situation with military force, more like war. With the end of the Cold War and the mutual veto threat between the US and the USSR at the Security Council, peacekeeping seemed ready to be liberated, only to founder in the face of slaughter in the Balkans and Rwanda. Currently, the “responsibility to protect” concept seems a possible way to escape the constraints of outdated notions of sovereignty that tied peacekeeping’s hands in the 1990s, and it has been accompanied by other moves to place human rights above sovereignty within and without the UN system, such as the transformation of the anti-interventionist Organization of African Unity into the African Union. It is indeed easy to see peacekeeping as a “second best,” a tool that can be used when no actor is politically or practically ready to step in with overwhelming force and simply end a conflict. But, while no one may have designed peacekeeping the way it exists were they starting from scratch, from its checkered history an interesting and valuable practice has emerged. I realized this during my first round of interviews for this book – ­originally conceived as simply an application of traditional jus in bello vii

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to the circumstances of UN peacekeeping operations. I asked three Ghanaian generals with long peacekeeping experience, and who seemed genuinely remorseful about the times they had not been able to protect people in the field, whether it would have been an improvement had they had more military power at their command. They laughed at me.1 They told me that I must be an American for asking the question that way – and they explained that you need to approach peacekeeping as a process of negotiation with the parties. You could kill people with better weapons, but you could not bring peace, which required making space for them to solve their problems. You cannot bomb people into reconciliation. That conversation led me to try to analyze peacekeeping on its own terms, as something like war, but not simply a variety of it. (After all, it is not as if anyone designed war, either.) This book is also something of a love letter to peacekeepers. One of the first programs I learned about when I started studying peacekeeping was the United States Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) peacekeeper training program. This immediately struck me as rather odd – the US does not have that many peacekeepers, yet here we are training others to do it. So, in the spirit of Rawlsian reflective equilibrium, I wanted to look at peacekeeping from the ­perspective that the moral views of the people who actually did it (primarily, troops from developing nations, and emerging powers like India and Brazil) were more or less in order and had something to teach us – us, Western academics/analysts and members of more “advanced” militaries. Even in the field, I learned, the assumption that Western militaries need to bring relatively benighted Africans up to speed seems to creep into the most well-meaning conversations. For instance, I spoke to one officer who lamented the lack of American, European, and Australian officers in the mission in Darfur, explaining that that kind of broader mindset is something that most definitely in the Western world we have. In Australia, subcontinent, they have it too, particularly India and Pakistan, to a lesser degree Bangladesh, China. But it’s certainly not there when you’re talking about African nations. You know, there you’re down to the very basic elements of military schooling: how do I fire a rifle, how do I put together my kit, how do I maneuver, what’s a patrol? . . . the reality is, it is Africa.2

Preface ix As I hope to show throughout the book, the interviews that my colleagues and I conducted with African (and Indian) peacekeepers, particularly from Ghana and Rwanda, showed much evidence of a “broader” mindset. Though I cannot lay too much blame on the officer I quoted – the difficulties of dealing with cultural divides within missions is perhaps the largest issue that emerged from interviews that I will not be able to explore in the book. The result of these two impulses is this book, which still feels inadequate in relation to the richness, complexity, and difficulty of the practice. As a work of philosophy, it is destined to gloss over some of the practical details too quickly. And as a work that delves into empirical details, its philosophical reflection is probably not air-tight. I hope that it will be the beginning of a conversation about the peculiar morality of peacekeeping, rather than an attempt to make a premature end to it. Many people have helped me write this book, both before and after I met those Ghanaian generals. I enjoyed tremendous cooperation from peacekeepers and other interview partners here and abroad. While confidentiality prevents me from naming individual interview partners, this would not have been possible without the aid of people who believed in the project’s promise and were willing to help open doors for me. Amanda Balderston and Joseph Siegele at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies generously reached out to the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) and US Africa Command (AFRICOM) on my behalf. General Francis Agyemfra and General Emmanuel Quist gave me extremely deep access to the leadership of the GAF, and I was saddened to learn of General Quist’s passing in 2010. At AFRICOM, Stephen Hrcik facilitated conversations with many of his colleagues. Kwesi Aning kindly helped me arrange interviews at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeper Training Center – though he and I have an uncanny ability to miss each other when I am actually in Ghana. Alix Boucher put me in touch with many of her contacts at the UN in New York. Yves Durieux advocated for me at the UN; without his support, I probably would not have received permission to conduct interviews with MONUC. General J. B. Kazura made all the interviews conducted in Rwanda possible. Susan Merril put me in touch with her former colleagues at the US Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, through which I was brought into contact with other members of the US military working on peacekeeping; she also used her contacts with Liberian non-governmental organizations on behalf of this project.

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Sanam Anderlini not only helped orient my research on the contributions of women in Liberia, but put me in touch with many of them. Cerue Garlo was also very generous with her contacts among Liberian peacemakers. Over the course of the research, I enjoyed the assistance of two very able Maryland School of Public Policy graduate students. Michael Kniss accompanied me to Rwanda and the DRC (where the fact that we were in a war zone and at the foot of an active volcano took him by surprise), and I am indebted to him for his facility in getting people to open up in interviews, for his knowledge of the Mennonite peace literature, for keeping the worst of my absent-minded-professor tendencies in check, and for not complaining when he learned that field interviews involved a lot of sitting around and waiting (or even when he learned about the active volcano!). Susan Merrill shared not only her deep contacts from a long career in peacekeeping before coming to Maryland, but her able assistance in the field in Liberia. Without her help, I am sure that many of our partners would not have been so forthcoming, and I would have missed out on several experiences with her contacts there that let me get out of Monrovia and gain a fuller appreciation of how far Liberia has come since the war. She also wisely restrained me from simply getting a taxi to General Butt-Naked’s home in the hopes of ­interviewing him. I have also benefited from the attention of two fantastic mentors. I first met Victoria Holt when I sent her an email in desperate confusion about oversight of the ACOTA program, having decided to contact her because I had seen her name on several pieces of Congressional testimony. Despite my arrival out of the blue with a complicated and long-winded question, she was happy to share her vast knowledge of peacekeeping with me. I spent nine months as her intern, and she continued to advise me on my research even as I moved on to a professorship and she moved on from the Stimson Center to the State Department. Through it all, she has been patiently indulgent of my philosophical flights of fancy, even if I suspect she sometimes believes I am making the business of saving lives entirely too complicated. Through her, I have also enjoyed a good relationship with members of the Future of Peace Operations program at Stimson, which has been invaluable for my work. Nancy Gallagher of the Center for International and Security Studies

Preface xi at Maryland (CISSM) has for years also been a valued supporter and adviser. She has probably read more of this book, in more of its iterations, than anyone besides myself, and has made CISSM a welcoming academic home for my research. Her work on nuclear weapons and disarmament is much more likely than my own to save humanity from utter destruction. I have been lucky enough to have several supportive institutional homes while writing this. I am currently based at CISSM, but I began work on this project at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, under Mark Sagoff. And I spent the Fall 2011 semester as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Ghana’s department of Philosophy and Classics, which would not have been possible without the hard work of its head of department, Helen Lauer. Of course, aside from the interview partners, the project has been helped by conversations with a large number of people, many of whom have also kindly made comments on drafts of bits and pieces of this project. In addition to Nancy, Tori, Susan, and Michael, I would like to thank Deane-Peter Baker, Casey Barrs, Linda Bishai, Alix Boucher, Michael Dziedzic, Nick Evans, Laura Garnett, Allison Giffen, Aditi Gorur, Guy Hammond, Max Kelly, Bob Lamb, Kevin Jones, David Luban, Joshua Miller, Dwight Raymond, Henry Richardson, Jerry Seagal, Jonas Seigel, Karol Soltan, John Steinbruner, Robert Wachbroit, and Erin Weir. Bob was the first (besides me) to slog through the entire manuscript from start to finish. Jonas in particular has done yeoman’s work cleaning up my prose as the editor for the CISSM working paper series; and Joshua did me a service by being steadfastly unconvinced by my use of care ethics and by pushing me to consider republicanism as an alternative. Several parts of the book have appeared in other places (in more or less altered form) before. Parts of Chapter 2 are adapted from my “Care and Counterinsurgency” (Journal of Military Ethics 9: 2, 2010); that paper was also presented to the “Philosophical works in progress” group at the University of Maryland, to the International Society for Military Ethics conference, and to the CISSM forum in 2009. Chapter 4 originally appeared as “Peacekeeper Impartiality: Standards, Processes, and Operations” (Journal of International Peacekeeping 15, 2011); it was also presented at the 2010 International Society for African Philosophy and Studies conference. Chapter 6 originally appeared as “Peacekeeper Violence” in The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and War, ed. Fritz Alhoff,

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Nicholas G. Evans, and Adam Henschke (Routledge, 2013); it was also presented at a workshop on morality convened by the University of Maryland Graduate Field Committee in Developmental Science. Chapter 8 originally appeared as “Civilian Protection and the Image of the ‘Total Spoiler’: Reflections on MONUC Support to Kimia II” (African Security Review 20: 1, 2011). Chapter 9 originally appeared as “Some Moral Considerations for Civilian–Peacekeeper Alliances” (Ethics and Global Politics 6, 2013). The section of Chapter 9 on appeal was presented to the Department of Philosophy and Classics at the University of Ghana in 2011, and to the 2012 meeting of the Arendt Circle. Many thanks are due to the editors and anonymous reviewers at the journals and anthology, and to participants in and organizers of the conferences and workshops for their input. Thanks also to the journals and to Routledge for allowing the re-use of other work. In its current form, the book has been shaped under the able guidance of Thom Brooks, its series editor. I thank Thom for taking a chance on a young professor who contacted him out of the blue with no idea of how to get a book published, and for helping me bring it to completion. At EUP, I have benefited greatly from the support and hard editing work of Michelle Houston, Jenny Peebles, Eddie Clark, and my longsuffering copy editor Michael Ayton. None of the field research for this book would have been possible without the financial support of a Young Faculty fellowship from the Smith-Richardson Foundation and summer research grants from the School of Public Policy. The book was written originally in LaTeX (via Scrivener) on an Asus EEE PC running Ubuntu Linux (at the time of completion, 12.10 “Quantal Quetzal”). I’d like to offer many thanks to the open-source software community for making this possible in general terms, and to my local Linux/LaTeX guru Matthew Burstein for making it possible for me in particular. Finally, I would not have made it through the process of writing this book without the support of my wife, Melissa Schober. For four years, she has helped me find and apply for funding, taken care of our daughter while I’ve been traipsing around military installations, listened patiently as I monologue about whatever idea I’m chewing over, comforted me when the anxiety of the project threatened to be overwhelming, and put up with me going back to work in the evenings and at weekends. Her intelligence and dedication to the important and

Preface xiii complicated details of her own policy area have been an inspiration for me to step up my own work. I have been inspired in a different way by my daughter, Ruth Zcharya Schober-Levine. She was born just before I began my research, and as a result this book has consistently been my second most important major project over the past four years. The book is my feeble contribution to her growing up in a world where the drumbeat of war seems a bit less constant. Notes 1. Interview 1. 2. Interview 2.

Part I

General Considerations

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

WHY TALK ABOUT PEACEKEEPING?

At least since the 1990s, the question of whether and how to use military force to end violence and protect human rights has been a common topic of policy, legal, and philosophical analysis. Whether under the term “humanitarian intervention” or the newer responsibility to protect (R2P) concept, a phenomenal amount of ink has been spilled on the question of whether military intervention to protect human rights could be justified under the principles of jus ad bellum; particularly whether the defense of human rights could ever constitute a “just cause” for war. But within that literature, relatively little attention has been paid to questions of jus in bello in respect of humanrights-centric military interventions. The implicit attitude seems to be that, if it is moral to initiate a war to end some human rights abuse, and the abuser can be identified, then all we need know about the conduct of the war is that the cause is being pursued in accord with the traditional jus in bello principles of discrimination – soldiers should not intentionally target noncombatants – and proportionality – any harm done by individual military acts should be comparable (at least roughly) to the gain to be had. In addition, one of the most common types of military interventions with a human rights aspect – peacekeeping – has received scant philosophical attention. For some rare exceptions, see for example Pfaff 2000; Blocq 2006; Tripodi 2006; Tronto 2008; Hill 2009. While this is not a statement on their theoretical quality, note that most of these are written by individuals who are part of militaries, rather than primarily academic philosophers. Tronto is an important exception, but her piece is the one least engaged with the details of peacekeeping as a concrete 3

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The Morality of Peacekeeping

military practice. As she herself says, “[p]eacekeeping is a term of art in international discourse, and I will use the term somewhat more broadly and imprecisely . . . ‘peacekeeping’ is broadened to include all forms of military humanitarian intervention in situations of conflict” (p. 180). As will become clear below, this broad definition papers over important distinctions that are crucial to a moral assessment of peacekeeping – crucially by putting both peacekeeping and “peace enforcement” under one umbrella. This lack of attention is problematic, as it risks missing the moral detail of peacekeeping as a particular practice, and ignoring the ways in which traditional just war theory may not easily be applied to those details. Nor is peacekeeping a peculiar historical artifact whose details we can ignore in favor of a purer philosophical theory of what conflict interventions should look like. While unilateral, regional, or “coalition of the willing” interventions (like NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) in the late 1990s, or the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the early twenty-first century) tend to loom larger in English-language philosophical discussion of just war, much of the actual military activity in defense of peace and human rights still operates in contact with the conceptual space of peacekeeping. In Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the militarily powerful Western states that led the interventions quickly realized that “winning the peace” would require collaboration with multinational interventions that looked much more like peacekeeping forces – the idea that “rogue states” could quickly be “decapitated” and that a new order would then arise spontaneously, without a need for external nation-building, turned out to be mistaken. Moreover, peacekeeping or peace enforcement (more on the distinction below) has quietly continued as the dominant framework for organizing military operations around the world – in places like Mali, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Côte d’Ivoire, the Sudan (north and south), Cyprus, Haiti, and until recently (at the time of writing) East Timor – that may not make the front pages of American newspapers as often. The debates within peacekeeping circles about how such missions should be organized, and in particular about whether they should shift to a more “robust” stance on the use of force and how “impartiality” should be understood, cast a long practical shadow on global military operations, and so are of great moral import. This book proceeds from two central convictions. First, peacekeeping

Introduction 5 is more than just a limited form of war. It combines elements of war, governance, and policing, but itself is something sui generis and distinct from all three. Peacekeepers are expected to enforce standards without being empowered by a local population to regulate them, and to direct violence at people who are not their enemies. These are complicated moral tasks. Second, everyone involved – the peacekeepers themselves, the civilians, the armed factions, the politicians, the civil society activists, the opportunists – are human beings capable of a full range of agency, and both good and evil action and intent. The argument for the first conviction will be more explicit than that for the second, but in some ways the second is more important. Before turning to substantive issues, a note on the scope and nature of this book. The book is about how individual peacekeepers should conduct themselves, but two caveats are in order. First, this is not a book of ethical rules or operational guidance. It is a reflection on the moral nature of peacekeeping, and is intended as part of a conversation on that deeper moral nature rather than as a handbook for a peacekeeper to hew to. Rarely will I be so bold as to claim that peacekeepers must do thus-and-so in detail; my main aim is to illuminate some of the issues that arise and provide a theoretical framework for thinking them through. Second, that said, I hope that this book might be of use, or at least interest, to peacekeepers in the field. Some of what I have to say may seem to reach issues far beyond the authority of the average peacekeeper. But my research has led me to believe that, even for peacekeepers consumed with the operational day-to-day, their tasks are not so clear cut that simply obeying orders and following the mandate will be enough to avoid all moral dilemmas. Peacekeepers live in the age of the “strategic corporal” as much as any other contemporary force, and peacekeeping troops in the field even at fairly low levels are likely to be faced with situations in which their guidance is ambiguous but the potential impact of their decisions on the mission is large. I hope that thinking about some of the big questions associated with peacekeeping may help with these decisions, even if there is no simple rule for resolving them. Third, since this is not a book on jus ad bellum, I will bracket questions of when and where peacekeeping operations (PKOs) are morally justified. Throughout, I will assume that we are talking about the

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obligations and moral claims that face peacekeepers engaged in a morally justified PKO. WHAT IS PEACEKEEPING?

The fact that nearly every discussion of peacekeeping needs to open with some version of this question indicates some of the problems that plague its analysis. Peacekeeping is never defined in the charter of the United Nations, the organization that has carried out the bulk of modern peacekeeping (and whose activities tend to be looked to as a template for the practice). Dag Hammarskjöld improvised the practice in response to the Suez crisis with the creation of the First United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF I), and later Secretaries-General of the United Nations (UN) have followed in his footsteps by adapting peacekeeping on the fly to meet new international challenges. In this discussion, I will follow the definition of “peacekeeping” used by the UN’s peacekeeping capstone doctrine as I believe that, for all its broadness, it marks an important moral and conceptual boundary.1 According to UN doctrine, “[p]eacekeeping is a technique designed to preserve the peace, however fragile, where fighting has been halted, and to assist in implementing agreements achieved by the ­peacemakers . . . [it incorporates] a complex model of many elements – military, police and civilian – working together to help lay the foundations for sustainable peace”(UN DPKO 2008: 18). Peacekeeping is distinguished from peacemaking (primarily diplomatic efforts to resolve a conflict) and post-conflict peacebuilding (long-term enhancement of state capacities to prevent future violence). In the discussion that follows, the most important distinction is between peacekeeping and peace enforcement, which is the use of military force to compel an end to a conflict. I will have more to say on this line below. Peacekeeping requires that there be some agreement in place to make sense. The agreement need not be a formal peace treaty; it can be a ceasefire or other lesser arrangement. But without some commitment on the part of the parties in conflict to end that conflict, the peacekeeper’s role is simply meaningless. Peacekeepers are there to be midwives of more stable political arrangements, not to impose them. This is a conceptual matter, and not just a limitation of their power. The old quip used to be that there can be no peacekeeping without a peace to keep. Following the UN definition, this statement is too strong – peace can

Introduction 7 be very partial as long as the situation can be meaningfully interpreted in terms of parties seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict (even with significant caveats at violations), even if there is no stable peace yet. The existence of a meaningful process is more important than any ­document – there can be a peace process even before a formal agreement is made, or between groups that are not party to any agreement, and peacekeeping can be inappropriate in situations where there is a signed agreement that is de facto a dead letter. Peacekeeping forces are generally third parties to the conflict, and most often authorized by an intergovernmental body, such as the UN, European Union (EU), or African Union (AU). I will have a bit more to say about legal authorities for peacekeeping below, but for most peacekeepers the central guiding document is the mission’s mandate, which lays out its purposes and authorities (importantly including the general conditions under which it is authorized to use force). A number of supporting documents are derived from the mandate, such as a Concept of Operations (ConOps) and Rules of Engagement (ROE). In reality, in addition to the mandate, peacekeepers are often under (generally informal, but no less important for that) instructions from their home nations, which may be more restrictive than the mandate they are given by the international organization under whose aegis they are deployed. As part of this mandate, peacekeeping is often “robust,” authorized to “use all necessary means” [the standard UN jargon for the authorization to use force] to deter forceful attempts to disrupt the political process, protect civilians under imminent threat of physical attack, and/or assist the national authorities in maintaining law and order. Peacekeeping missions are still distinguished from peace enforcement, in principle at least, by the fact that they are authorized to use force only at the “tactical” and not the “strategic” level. The doctrine does not precisely define the distinction, but explicates by saying that “[t]he ultimate aim of the use of force is to influence and deter spoilers working against the peace process or seeking to harm civilians; and not to seek their military defeat” (UN DPKO 2008: 34–5). This distinction will be discussed more below, and is a central theme of Chapter 2. What Peacekeepers Do To preserve peace, peacekeepers are mandated to engage in a wide variety of tasks. While it is easy to consider PKOs essentially a kind

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of military operation – and this book will be as guilty of that as any discussion – their breadth in practice is exemplified by the fact that the head of UN PKOs, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG), is almost invariably a civilian. The chief of the military component, the force commander, reports to the civilian head, along with representatives of a variety of other political and humanitarian tasks. In addition, the head of a PKO – UN or otherwise – is generally among the de facto coordinators of humanitarian support, even outside the scope of her formal authority. While other elements of a PKO may provide education on elections, distribute food, and help re-home children, my focus in this book will be on what the military component of the PKO can and should do. To that end, from here on in, when I refer to “peacekeepers” without further modification, I will mean armed military personnel associated with the mission – what in UN missions would be termed the “blue helmets.” This is not to downplay the importance of other elements of the mission, but just to keep the book from being even lengthier than it is, and to save on constantly repeating the adjective “military.” Some of what I have to say may be relevant to other elements of the PKO, especially police components who may be called on to use violence or coercion (such as members of paramilitary “formed police units”), but they are not my main focus. Military peacekeepers support peace in various ways. They may use violence to deter “spoilers,” armed factions that threaten to or actually disrupt the peace process. They engage in security tasks which do not necessarily involve the use of force, but which need to be conducted by personnel who can protect themselves from violence effectively (often through the possession of means of force): patrolling; Cordon and Search Operations (CASOs), disarmament (in some circumstances); observation of compliance with ceasefire/peace agreement terms or human rights norms; protection of safe areas for local civilians and freedom of movement and access for civilians (local and international) engaged in humanitarian relief and diplomatic/political efforts; escort/ protection of displaced and other vulnerable persons; and perhaps detention of dangerous individuals. Peacekeepers may also use their logistical capabilities to assist the local population in ways that are not distinctively “military.” Though I will not focus on these, it bears noting that military units often bring with them field hospitals which they open to locals, they can carry in

Introduction 9 supplies in large quantities, and they often possess engineering equipment that can be used for purposes such as rebuilding roads or leveling ground for a football pitch. Legal Sources While they do not appear explicitly in the UN Charter, UN PKOs are generally understood to be legally authorized under some combination of Chapter VI, which gives the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) (and to a lesser extent the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)) the authority to take steps for the “pacific settlement of disputes,” and Chapter VII, which authorizes the UNSC to take coercive action to restore “international peace and security” (Charter of the United Nations 1945, Chs VI–VII). Peacekeepers are intended to use force sparingly and seek reconciliation rather than military victory, in a Chapter VI-like way, but are often authorized to pursue at least some elements of their mandate (in the contemporary situation, especially protection of civilians: see Part III) using coercion and force, under Chapter VII. As a result, UN PKOs are sometimes referred to as “chapter six-and-a-half” missions. Non-UN PKOs can be authorized by UNSC action, as was the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) (UNSC 2007). Internally, however, most non-UN organizations (or individual states, though there are few uncontroversial examples of “peacekeeping” by individual states or ad hoc coalitions) authorize PKOs under their own rules that do not formally require the UN’s approval. AU PKOs, such as AMISOM and African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), are authorized within the AU system under Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act, which declares “the right of the Union to intervene in a Member State pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity” (African Union 2000, Art. 4(h)). Non-UN PKOs that have not received UN authorization have a somewhat ambiguous legal status at the international level. Some take them to be implicitly authorized under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, which gives “regional arrangements” the authority to deal with matters of international peace and security that are “appropriate for regional action” – though the Chapter is clear that “enforcement action” cannot be taken without security council authorization (Charter of the United

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Nations 1945, Ch. VIII, Arts 52(1), 53(1)). This has led to the use of “Chapter VIII missions” to refer to some regional PKOs. One jus in bello-like moral concern is sometimes tied up with the discussion of legal sources.2 Because it is only under Chapter VII that coercive measures are authorized, the VI/VII distinction might seem to mark the line between peacekeeping and peace enforcement (at least for UN PKOs). For better or worse, however, the distinctions do not neatly line up. Quite “robust” PKOs, arguably edging into peace enforcement, have been authorized without explicit reference to Chapter VII (which is generally taken to imply a Chapter VI mandate), such as the Opération des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC) (UNSC 1960). We will have to look for the moral core of the peacekeeping/ peace enforcement distinction elsewhere than in the legal materials. Beyond this, the book will not get into many details on the legal, as opposed to the moral, complexities of PKOs. For a comprehensive look at legal materials relating to UN PKOs, see Oswald, Durham, and Bates 2010; for a look at legal issues that arise with regional organizations through the lens of ECOWAS (Cease-fire) Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) operations in West Africa, see Olonisakin 2000; for legal issues with protection specifically, see Wills 2009. Peacekeeping vs. Peace Enforcement – “Crossing the Mogadishu Line” The new buzzword on Bosnia is the “Mogadishu line” and ­suddenly policy-makers and critics from Paris to Washington are worrying about it and wondering if it has been crossed. The term derives from the debacle of the American-led intervention in Somalia, and it refers to that dangerous moment when United Nations troops change from being peacekeepers to ­combatants. (Darnton 1995) The distinction between peacekeeping and peace enforcement is sometimes thought of as a distinction in the level of force used. This is not quite right, and it can lead to some confusion between peacekeeping and peace enforcement because, in practice, peacekeepers can be called on to use quite a lot of force. As forces labeled “peacekeeping” are given more and more robust mandates, it has become a commonplace that the line between peacekeeping and peace enforcement is eroding in practice.

Introduction 11 The fact that missions considered “peacekeeping” can vary so widely in terms of the levels of force they use and their other tasks has led some analysts to develop a more variegated taxonomy of peacekeeping and related operations than the UN’s tripartite peacebuilding/ peacekeeping/peace enforcement division. For instance, Bellamy and Williams distinguish seven types of operations: ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

Preventative deployment Traditional peacekeeping Wider peacekeeping Peace enforcement Assisting transitions Transitional administrations Peace support operations (Bellamy and Williams 2010, part III)

The Bellamy/Williams taxonomy is helpful for many questions about PKOs, because it more finely slices peacekeeping-like operations along a variety of dimensions. Preventative deployments, traditional and wider peacekeeping, transition assistance and transitional administrations (though in later stages these shade into peacebuilding), and many peace support operations would all be “peacekeeping” on the distinction I am borrowing from the UN – this despite the fact that they may differ not only in appropriate and mandated levels of force, but in the kinds of non-military structures and goals they bring to bear, their legal authority over day-to-day life in the area of operations, their justifications, the typical size of the force, and so forth. Meanwhile, the level and kind of force used in “peace enforcement” may not seem to differ that much from the level and kind of force used by a peace support operation. After all, being on the receiving end of “tactical” rather than “strategic” violence may seem like cold comfort. While there are purposes for which lumping such diverse kinds of mission together as “peacekeeping” would obscure important issues (and I agree with Bellamy and Williams that there are many distinctions between peacekeeping-like operations to which we should attend in a full analysis), the UN definition seems to mark out an important dividing line – just not one between levels of force. For example, one salient aspect of the US/UN involvement in Somalia in the early 1990s was that the mission used a level of military force not seen in a “peacekeeping” mission since ONUC in the 1960s (itself widely regarded as a failure).

12

The Morality of Peacekeeping

(For an overview of UNOSOM I and II and the associated US missions in Somalia see Durch 1996; for an overview of ONUC see Durch 1993.) So it is easy to see the “Mogadishu line” as being about use of force, but the usage is more subtle than that. Bellamy and Williams understand the line to be about consent (Bellamy and Williams 2010: 196–7). Relatedly, but slightly differently, we might understand it as non-interference in the political course of the conflict.3 Focusing on consent and non-interference in politics (especially through using force on the side of one party or another) gets us closer to what I think the important distinction between peacekeeping and other sorts of operation is, but I think we do even better to look at the conception put forward by General Michael Rose, the commander of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) and the person to whom the phrase “crossing the Mogadishu line” is most commonly attributed: it is impossible to draw a clear line between the permissible use of force in a peacekeeping mission and an act of war. The limit that I termed the “Mogadishu Line” is defined by the goals being pursued, the levels of force, the strategic imperatives facing the combatants, and the political circumstances existing at the time. (Rose 1999: 354) The key moral distinction is in “the goals being pursued.” When we look at incidences of the use of force one by one – Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en République Démocratique du Congo (MONUSCO) attack helicopters firing on militia positions in the eastern DRC, say – it can be difficult to see the distinction between peacekeeping (however defined) and peace enforcement, let alone outright warfare (Al Jazeera 2012). But the problem lies precisely in looking at the uses of force, or even the tactics, separately from the overall concept of the conflict. The first goal of peacekeeping – it sounds obvious but is worth reminding ourselves of – is peace. The UN was established to end the “scourge of war,” Chapter VI of the Charter is concerned with “pacific settlement of disputes,” and Chapter VII with ending threats to “international peace and security” (Charter of the United Nations 1945, ­preamble, ch. VI (the phrase is from the chapter title), Art. 39). Other organizations that have deployed PKOs (or at least missions

Introduction 13 that are arguably PKOs) have similar stated purposes. Among the AU’s principles are the right of members to “request intervention . . . to restore peace and security” (African Union 2000, Art. 4). The EU treaty calls for EU PKOs to be undertaken in accord with “the principles of the United Nations Charter” (European Union 2010, Art. 42(1)). In addition, a general aim of the EU’s international relations is ostensibly to “preserve peace, prevent conflicts, and strengthen international ­security” (ibid., Art. 21(2)(a)). While recent peacekeeping has leaned in the direction of robust, partial-or-full Chapter VII mandates that authorize the use of force, defeating an enemy is only one way of bringing peace. A fundamental vision of peacekeeping, both within and without the UN system, is the prevention of conflict that has not yet erupted into full force, or shepherding a peace process after attempts by one side to defeat the other militarily have proven futile and destructive. In some sense, all military operations (ostensibly) aim at peace, and so to reduce peacekeeping to just a military operation that might operate under some limits as a result of its typically international character is to lose what makes it distinctive. Durch and England rightly argue that peacekeeping has an “identity as a security-related military function that is honorably separable from war,” and this honorable separation consists fundamentally in not having enemies (Durch and England 2009: 1). This will be expanded upon in Chapter 2. THE PLAN OF THE BOOK

Making good on this claim that peacekeeping can combine nonenmity with coercion is the essential task of the remainder of this book. Peacekeeping is a sui generis enterprise. It sits uncomfortably between warfighting, policing, and governance, with elements of all of them, but is identical to none of them. Unlike warfighters, peacekeepers have no enemies and must keep their moral horizons open toward eventually re-creating a stable political community that will need to include many members of the armed groups they are trying to pacify; this means that they need more detailed principles than the outer limits of violence set by the traditional just war framework. Unlike police or governors, they are outsiders to that political community (though, as I argue, they become entangled with it, rather than remaining as arbiters or judges of it), and cannot rely on the background assumption

14

The Morality of Peacekeeping

of a single unified governmental structure with a virtual monopoly on violence. The next chapter will go into more detail about what it means to say that peacekeepers have no enemies, and about the limitations of just war theory for an analysis of peacekeeping. Its major task will be to outline an overall theoretical framework that will orient the further discussion of specific issues in the morality of peacekeeping. The guiding idea will be that peacekeepers are tasked with rehabilitating (or, in some cases, creating) a political community in their area of operations, where social conflicts will be stably channeled in nonviolent directions. A state can only maintain security against a background of broad societal harmony – something approximating (but of course not achieving entirely) Kant’s “Kingdom of Ends” in which each person takes it as her obligation to play a role in a social structure that permits everyone to pursue their values and goals. Chapter 2 will discuss the peacekeepers’ role in building social respect and joint values, that can ultimately lead to a large-scale shared project – the polity. It ends with a focus on the virtues that the individual peacekeeper should cultivate to serve this goal: caring virtues of attentiveness, restraint, and creativity. Part two of the book considers the “holy trinity” of peacekeeping principles: consent, impartiality, and minimum use of force (or, in the more recent doctrine, non-use of force except in self-defense or defense of mandate). Despite the fact that the trinity was developed in a very different geopolitical and peacekeeping context, the principles still give important moral guidance to peacekeepers. They have been variously interpreted by peacekeepers and analysts, however, so the chapters in this section will attempt to explicate their moral core and take a stance on some controversies about them. In the case of each principle, the virtues of attentiveness, restraint, and creativity will support the ­peacekeepers’ work. Chapter 3 deals with consent. Consent is not just a condition on the entry of peacekeepers, part of their specific jus ad bellum. Consent, if it has any moral meaning, must mean something like societal acceptance of the peacekeepers’ presence and their coercive powers. In the conflicts that merit peacekeepers, there is not likely to be any entity that is competent to accept the peacekeepers on behalf of the people. Consent is partial and provisional to start with, and is best understood as a relationship that the peacekeepers build over the course of the operation. For military peacekeepers, a key role will be ensuring that people in the

Introduction 15 area of operations – civilians and members of armed factions – have the necessary safety when trying to build social and political connections with others, hence creating the kind of social structures that could deepen and broaden consent. Chapter 4 considers impartiality. There has been an evolution from an interpretation of impartiality as neutrality – not taking action against any party to the conflict – to an interpretation of it as even-handed adherence to standards. The debate, however, has focused on what the standards for impartiality should be more than on how they should be interpreted and implemented – and a variety of different understandings of impartiality can be found in the literature and among peacekeepers. In this chapter I will discuss the full range of the concepts of impartiality and argue that impartiality is best understood as fidelity to the peace process, a process that must be understood in light of the perceptions of all parties, not just peacekeepers’ judgments. Chapters 5 and 6 consider the use of force, one of the issues at the center of debates about the nature and future of peacekeeping. In Chapter 5, I discuss issues surrounding the resort to force. First, I trace the historical development from the early “minimum use of force” standard to the contemporary (less pithy) “non-use of force except in self-defense and defense of mandate” standard endorsed by the UN. Second, I consider cases in which peacekeepers may resort to force and coercion. There are at least two issues here. Peacekeepers routinely (and seemingly acceptably) use coercion against the civilian population in their area of operations, a stance which we expect of states and police forces, but which is difficult to justify within the standard just war framework. Drawing on civic republican theory and the relational model of consent from Chapter 3, I argue that such coercion can be justified only if it contributes to a societal structure in which the reduction of violent threats makes it more possible for individuals to participate in social decisions about when and how security forces – the peacekeepers included – are permitted to use coercion. The other issue is when peacekeepers can resort to force against combatants. Unlike soldiers in conventional wars, because peacekeepers are looking forward toward reintegration of armed groups – they have no enemies – they cannot simply use the maximum force permissible by jus in bello rules that protect noncombatants. I argue that peacekeepers should not take the “defense of mandate” exception

16

The Morality of Peacekeeping

to non-use of force as a blanket authorization to use force any time it seems to be consistent with mandated purposes. Rather, I argue that peacekeepers should take a slightly revisionist stance on current UN doctrine, and look to Hammarskjöld’s original formulation, in which peacekeepers focused on completing their nonviolent tasks, hewing to non-initiation of force, but using appropriate and graduated force when obstructed. But of course, there will be cases in which force must be used. In Chapter 6, I address how peacekeepers should comport themselves when using force, in recognition of the fact that violence is traumatizing and undercuts the very social connections at the center of their project. Peacekeepers may be called on to be violent, but they should recognize this as a tragic situation, and realize that they may need to support practices of mourning in the population, even if those killed by ­peacekeepers were engaged in abusive behavior. Part III turns from the core principles of peacekeeping to the protection of civilians, one of the toughest central tasks that peacekeepers face – both practically and morally. In Chapter 7, I discuss what we mean by “protection.” This might seem obvious on the face of it, but the problem is actually a difficult one. Peacekeepers cannot protect people by walling them in in their homes. Ultimately, what peacekeepers need to seek is a way of helping the political community build decisions about how to distribute risks that are in line with their shared values. Unfortunately, this also means addressing cases in which peacekeepers themselves become the threat. Chapter 8 is a case study in problematic protection. In 2009, the Mission des Nations Unies en République Démocratique du Congo (MONUC) provided support to the government of the DRC’s campaign against the Forces Démocratique de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) and other armed groups, known as Kimia II. Widespread abuses of civilians took place, both by government and rebel forces. I argue that this was not just a matter of poor oversight by the UN peacekeepers, but showed a lack of careful attention to the dynamics of protection. Chapter 9 expands the discussion of protection from what peacekeepers can do on their own to how they interact with the existing protection activities of civilians. Civilians are not passive actors – they protect themselves instead of waiting for peacekeepers to arrive. Peacekeepers can and should coordinate their efforts with civilians, but in doing so must recognize that protection is tied up with local politics,

Introduction 17 and ensure that they are not simply taking sides in the name of protecting civilians. Doing so will bring them full circle to considerations relevant to the construction of consent, as they should focus on making broader and deeper interactions between social groups safer, providing people with protection with rather than from each other. A NOTE ON SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY

A reviewer of one of the papers that ultimately became a chapter in this book remarked that the paper seemed to be an odd mixture of empirical research and personal opinion. That is probably as good a ­description of applied ethics as any. I am sure that my methodology in this book will leave many readers cold. That would be a fair criticism. This section is designed only to explain it a little, so that people reading this from different fields – ­philosophy, political science, security theory, peacekeeping ­practitioners – will at least understand the intent. From 2009 to 2011, I, with the assistance of my graduate students Michael Kniss (in the DRC and Rwanda) and Susan Merril (in Liberia), conducted a number of interviews, primarily with peacekeepers and trainers, both in the field and at leadership institutions. Interviews were conducted at UN headquarters in New York and at permanent missions from Troop-contributing Countries (TCCs) to the UN there; at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeper Training Center and with members of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) (a major TCC) in and around Accra, Ghana; at the Rwandan Ministry of Defense in Kigali; with the Eastern Division of MONUC in and around Goma, DRC; at the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) in Carlisle, PA; at US Africa Command (AFRICOM) in Stuttgart, Germany; and, with members of various civil society groups in Monrovia, Liberia.4 A list of interviews cited in the text is given in Appendix B. A number of other interviews were useful for background information and for helping me to orient myself regarding the issues, but were not directly cited here. The interviews were confidential and semi-structured. As a result, interview partners are identified only by salient but nonspecific information in the interview list and the text (typically nationality, gender, general position and location/date of the interview). Owing to the interviews’ semi-structured nature, there is no standard ­questionnaire to reproduce.

18

The Morality of Peacekeeping

The way I used the interviews was as part of an attempt to engage in a variation on what Rawls famously called “reflective equilibrium,” but this extended across more than just my own reflections (Rawls 1999: 40–6). Rawls’ method of ethical research was to start from particular intuitions about which acts or kinds of act were right or wrong, and try to build theories that would account for the pattern of intuitions. The theories are then tested against other particular intuitions to see if they “predict” them accurately. Where they do not, it is a judgment call – either we should conclude that the theory is sound and that the intuition must be biased, mistaken, or otherwise unreliable (just as my general theory of physics causes me to reject the evidence of my senses when a pencil seems to bend or break as a result of being placed in a glass of water), or, if the intuition seems too strong or credible to reject, we should go back and revise the theory to accommodate it. This backand-forth process continues until a maximal amount of harmony, equilibrium, is reached between our theories and our reflective i­ntuitions on cases. In his treatment, Rawls seems to imagine this reflection going on entirely within the mind of a single thinker. But I have never served in a PKO, and so what I would say on my own about how peacekeepers should act is relatively uninteresting. Interviews with peacekeepers were intended to elicit their intuitions about what was difficult in peacekeeping, what was easy, what dilemmas bothered them, and which ones had clear solutions. On top of that, I have tried to build theories of the morality of peacekeeping that stand in maximum harmony with the views shared with me. In some cases, I have been hubristic enough to quibble with the views of my interview partners (in good reflective equilibrium fashion), and I hope that they will at least be able to understand why and that we will have interesting grounds for dispute. I have benefited from being able to have a back-and-forth discussion in the semi-structured interviews, and also from having been able to speak again with several interview partners as the theorybuilding proceeded. But, while the method I used has advantages in that it draws on more than just my own thoughts, its disadvantage is that I was not able to carry out the back-and-forth motion of reflective equilibrium with the full set of interview partners. The interviews essentially served as part of a process of hypothesisgeneration. I am not trying to establish any statistically sound claim about what peacekeepers think. Any quotations or paraphrases I use

Introduction 19 should be understood as representing just what that particular interview partner thought (or, at least, what she said). The argument for any theoretical claims I make is unabashedly philosophical. To the extent that there is any reason to believe what I say, it is because a persuasive argument stands behind it, not because it represents a consensus of peacekeepers or analysts. Notes 1. The UN is not the only organization that deploys PKOs. But UN PKOs have been at the center of analysis and development of peacekeeping, and the concepts developed to understand and structure them have cast a long shadow on non-UN peacekeeping. Throughout this book, while I do not want to imply that only the UN engages in peacekeeping, I will inevitably look to UN doctrine and practice as a central example. 2. Of course, concerns about sovereignty, the power of international institutions, and the propriety of humanitarian intervention all figure prominently in jus ad bellum-like discussions of peacekeeping. 3. Different, because non-coercive measures, like patterns in the provision of humanitarian aid, may affect the course of the conflict without directly raising issues of consent. “When U.S. troops intervened in December 1992 to stop the theft of food, they disrupted the political economy and stepped deep into the muck of Somali politics . . . How could anyone believe that landing 30,000 troops in a country was anything but a gross interference in its politics? The Mogadishu line was crossed as soon as troops were sent in” (Clarke and Herbst 1996: 74). 4. Note that while the book focuses on the military side of peacekeeping, in the field I and my colleagues found ourselves with opportunities to interview police and other civilian members of missions that we did not pass up. I have referenced some of their remarks in the book as well, where I think that they illuminate issues relevant to the military.

Chapter 2 A NORMATIVE FRAMEWORK FOR PEACEKEEPING

peacekeeping forces [have] no “enemies,” just a series of difficult and sometimes homicidal clients. (Urquhart 1987: 293) INTRODUCTION

In the introduction, I argued that the defining feature of peacekeeping is that it is a kind of military operation in which force is used only tactically, not strategically. That may seem like a subtle distinction between peacekeeping on the one hand, and other operations from peace enforcement through counterinsurgency to warfighting on the other. But its implications are far-reaching. The idea that peacekeepers have no enemies is both the central problematic and the first principle of the rest of this book. Over the course of this chapter and Part II, I will lay out a broad framework for thinking about peacekeeping and then use it to shed light on core concepts of the PKO project. I will stake the adequacy of the theoretical framework on its ability to show us more than merely trying to apply the standard principles of jus in bello to peacekeeping would about how PKOs ought to operate. This chapter proceeds in three stages. First, I must say more about what it means to claim that peacekeepers have no enemies, and why we should accept that principle as more than just the naïve hope of early peacekeepers and international idealists. Next, I will briefly explore the history of the peacekeeping concept, primarily at the UN, with an eye toward how concepts of the proper role of the peacekeeper and her relationship to factions in the conflict have evolved over time. I will then argue that non-enmity is made meaningful through the concept of cooperation. Peacekeepers should take as their core guiding 20

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 21 light the idea that they are engaging in a large, complicated joint project with people in the area of operations: a joint project whose aim is itself to create the macro-scale joint project we call a state or political community. To do so, they must understand themselves as forging shared values, creating a “Kingdom of Ends” in the language of Kant and Korsgaard, to whose theories I will make crucial appeals. This approach does not lose the sense that peacekeepers should not let abuses pass, but opens space for approaches to abuse besides punishment and military defeat. Then, I will be able to bring things back down to earth and focus on the virtues that individual peacekeepers should foster in themselves to live up to these abstract concepts in the fluid and dangerous context of a PKO. If cooperation is the high ideal, care will prove to be a congenial way of understanding what cooperation looks like from the perspective of the individual trying to cooperate. As an aside, it may seem odd to mostly avoid the debates about jus in bello and jus post bellum in this chapter. The basic reason is that peacekeeping, as I will argue, is not simply a form of warfare, but deserves its own analytic approach. Jus in bello rules are mostly concerned with the proper use of force in a context where enmity is the baseline assumption, and so can only address some of the issues that arise for peacekeepers. They will be considered in more detail in Chapter 5, which deals with that special sub-section of peacekeeping morality. Jus post bellum principles may illuminate some of peacekeeping, but ultimately fail to apply because peacekeepers are not best understood as operating in a post-war situation. The specific problem for peacekeepers is how to conduct themselves in a conflict that is not a war. As one of my interview partners put it, “if there are principles of war there are principles of peace. Why can’t we study peace as we study war? Why can’t we teach coexistence?”1 We should study peacekeeping on its own terms. PEACEKEEPERS HAVE NO ENEMIES

What Does It Mean to Have an Enemy? What does it mean to say that peacekeepers have no enemies, when I have claimed that this is not a matter of placing limits on the nature or level of force they can use? How can I come armed to kill someone and not become her enemy?

22

The Morality of Peacekeeping

Let us start with the official sources. According to the capstone doctrine, “the ultimate aim of the use of force is to influence and deter spoilers working against the peace process or seeking to harm civilians; and not to seek their military defeat” (UN DPKO 2008: 35, emphasis mine). This might seem like a distinction without a difference, but it radically undermines one of the traditional assumptions of just war theory – that combatancy is a persistent status. Walzer’s discussion of “naked soldiers” is the classic treatment (Walzer 2006a: 138–43). Walzer relates several anecdotes of soldiers finding themselves with a good shot at an enemy soldier who is engaged in some very human, often biological and/or embarrassing, activity rather than directly ­fighting – drinking coffee, enjoying the sunshine, having a bath, or pulling up his pants after having relieved himself. In these cases, the authors of the anecdotes often chose not to fire (though in one case an officer handed his gun to a subordinate to kill the enemy). Walzer is clear that the reluctance to shoot in such circumstances is a “kindness” and possibly even morally supererogatory, but is not morally required. So long as someone is an enemy, in this view, it is always permissible to kill him or her. At the very least, the “influence and deter” standard seems to undercut this judgment. So long as a member of a rebel militia is taking a bath, it is not clear that killing her, if one could, would influence or deter her group. It might. It might also enrage them, or cause them to take reprisals against civilians, or convince members of her family who were on the fence about the PKO to reject it and take up arms. Underlying Walzer’s judgment is a view that combat is “coercively collectivizing” (Walzer 2006b: 43). Because war “overrides individuality,” judgments about how one must treat the individual enemy one faces do not depend on anything about that individual. In the piece where he uses the phrase, Walzer is focusing on being unconcerned with the reasons why any particular combatant has entered the war – arguing that the distinction between coerced conscripts and willing (or even enthusiastic) volunteers is morally meaningless; but the same view of warfare as a supra-individual project seems to justify his ­position on “naked” soldiers.2 This perspective on conflict is not unique to Walzer. It has roots at least in Schmitt’s concept of enmity. For Schmitt, the enemy is “existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible,” and is an “adversary [who] intends

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 23 to negate his opponent’s way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one’s own form of existence” (Schmitt 2007, locs 881, 884). War is an attempt to existentially negate – in plain English, kill – the enemy, and is justified because the enemy poses a similarly existential threat (ibid., loc. 949). This kind of view nicely coheres with the traditional “war convention,” as articulated by many just war theorists and enshrined in international law. The morality of the relationship between individual soldiers is governed entirely by the political relationship between their states (or, perhaps, state-like entities) and any specific rules of conduct between enemies that they agree upon (the rules of jus in bello). The question of whether some armed group ought to be destroyed is “above the pay grade” of the individual soldier – if the group is designated as to-be-destroyed because it is an enemy, the only question is how most effectively to do that. And, if the enemy is a Schmittian enemy, then the situation of the naked soldier is morally explicable. Even when the enemy soldier is taking a bath, she is part of the collective other who needs to be eradicated or driven back. The fact that she can take a bath here, on my country’s ground/in the disputed territory, admits that her existence here may be acceptable, and that is precisely what the concept of enmity rules out. Enmity ends only when there is a political shift at the level of the leadership or when the enemy is destroyed. What Does It Mean to Have No Enemy? We can get some grip on what it means to not have an enemy by reflecting on what the inverse of Schmitt looks like (and this will bring us back to Walzer’s naked soldiers). For all his fascism, Schmitt is still read because his discussion captures something important regarding the nature of the “enemy,” its connection with the definition of politics and the political community. Political communities are not just legal jurisdictions or sets of political institutions. In fact, one of the features of the world often blamed for the sort of civil conflicts into which peacekeepers tend to get deployed is that the borders of states and the boundaries of the communities that are salient to individuals do not line up in much of the post-colonial world. In the broader sense, political communities are networks of identification and common practice. They are people bound together by some practical sense of “us-ness,” a sense that there are common projects

24

The Morality of Peacekeeping

or at least concerns among the population. This need not be an overly centralized notion – many political communities are characterized by multiple overlapping projects, and most people will be involved in most other people’s projects primarily by being committed to letting them flourish and participating in some relatively thin cultural practices. Participation in the formal structures of a government, for many political communities, will be part of that, but only one part. In the Kantian terminology I will introduce more fully below, political communities are “Kingdoms of Ends.” The insight that Schmitt captures is that the boundaries of such communities, where we are willing to see ourselves as governed by common norms and concerns, are also the boundaries where “existential negation” and enmity begin to make sense. If I do not see myself as bound with someone by at least some common values and concerns, there are really only two options. If we are not in conflict, then we can mutually ignore each other. If we do come into conflict, then what can we do but fight? This is the Hobbesian predicament – without any common norms to which we can appeal (in both Hobbes and Schmitt, because those norms are entirely internal to politics), we have no other way of resolving the conflict. It need not be a fight to the death, but it will be a fight until one of us gives up. Laying it out this way, we can already see some cracks in the model. Few of us see people outside our political and social/moral community as so radically other as this account implies. Most of us are at least willing to regard almost anyone else as human – genocides and the like are spectacular breakdowns. Genocidal othering does not seem to be a natural default position for human beings. It is fairly plausible to see much of the just war theory as embodying this point – even as we are willing to kill other human beings for the sake of our communal projects, most of us feel a need for some rules of restraint that let us reconcile the killing with thinking of them as human beings. (As Nagel famously put it, “shooting at someone establishes an I–thou ­relationship.” Nagel 1972, 138n.) In addition, if we demystify the state (as we should), we can see that the boundaries of political communities are inevitably “fuzzy,” and many of us could meaningfully think of ourselves as belonging to several at once.3 State membership may be exclusive, but participation in the workings of a state – which, after all, is just a glorified bureaucratic institution – is only one element of a community, and may be of

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 25 greater or lesser importance depending on the nature of the state and the individual in question. This means that we are never entirely without connection to people with whom we may be in conflict. We will often share with them a perception of common humanity (even if this is indoctrinated out, it will typically leave psychological scars as evidence). And we may share other, “thicker” connections – a common history, common interests (e.g. the common interests of the working classes that Marxists call on to defuse wars, or simply a common interest in something like the land in this area being distributed in a stable manner). These connections provide handholds for acts of what Lederach calls “moral imagination.” Moral imagination is the “capacity to imagine something rooted in the challenges of the real world yet capable of giving birth to that which does not yet exist” (Lederach 2005: 29). From this fairly abstract definition, Lederach brings things down to earth by focusing on relationships. The “tap root” of the moral imagination is the “capacity of individuals and communities to imagine themselves in a web of relationship even with their enemies” (ibid.: 34). To imagine oneself in a web of relationship is critical because relationships are the core of political community. The Schmittian concept of enmity gets its grip from the thought that communities are wholly other and capable of being existentially opposed at the whim of their leadership – Lederachian moral imagination asks us to draw instead on our tendency to see both otherness and sameness in those we are in conflict with and ask whether we have a different way of relating than blind obedience to the political vision that has brought us into conflict. By contrast, the Schmittian concept is a deliberate act of “amoral imagination,” of abstraction from human fellow-feeling. It is the soldier telling himself that he is merely being kind by not shooting someone enjoying the spring air, but that it means nothing more, and it is the member of the interahamwe getting drunk and psyching himself up with his fellows before doing the psychically brutal work of killing other human beings. We should not demonize/romanticize the vicious and genocidal by imagining that all human connections must be built and that those who lack empathy and fellow-feeling are simply in our “natural” state. I will have more to say about imagination and creativity at the end of this chapter, and I hope to convince you that they are central to the peacekeeper’s task. The basic point, however, is that refusing to see

26

The Morality of Peacekeeping

the opponent as an enemy, whether in the full Schmittian sense or the somewhat weaker sense envisioned by Walzer, is an act of moral imagination that transforms the basic attitude toward them. In the case of the naked soldier, enmity shoots or congratulates itself on kindness. It takes an act of enmity-producing amoral imagination to move from this person bathing or enjoying the sun to the prospect that they will at some point be shooting at you if you do not shoot at them. Moral imagination says, “Wait. Perhaps if I do not shoot, our next encounter might be something other than violent. Perhaps.” And is willing to take that risk.4 This is a fundamental moral and operational distinction. It is worth marking out a class of operations that all start from the principle of having no enemies, even if they have many other distinguishing characteristics. This is not only a matter of moral attitude, but also ­influences the way the PKO will approach groups it has conflicts with. First, there is a higher-level version of the rejection of Walzer’s attitude toward naked soldiers. If some individual is not my enemy, I will not harm her unless she is doing something right now that I need to stop. If some group is not my enemy, then I will not seek its defeat for defeat’s sake – as the UN doctrine lays out. This leads us to a second operational consequence. The most tempting reason to go after a group that is not currently engaging in human rights abuses is that it is not in “legitimate” control of the area. This is especially tempting once the international backers of the PKO have legitimated a state government. But to the extent that a group can control an area without widespread abuse this is an indication that whatever formal government there is does not represent a stable social compact. And especially in the kinds of situations that peacekeepers tend to find themselves in, we should be careful not to apply a double standard to “abuse” – if the territorial government is corrupt and abusive to some extent, peacekeepers should be prepared to either challenge that government or not expect non-government forces to be perfect.5 To do otherwise is to stop being peacekeepers and become counterinsurgents on the side of the government. Should Peacekeepers Have No Enemies? All of this might be only a moderately interesting terminological discussion. We might agree to only call missions “peacekeeping” if they

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 27 respect the principle of having no enemies, but conclude that “peacekeeping” so defined is not a particularly worthwhile thing to do, or at least that there is no reason not to switch between peacekeeping and peace enforcement. This seems to be the attitude behind many actual operations, where the border between peacekeeping and peace enforcement is practically muddied. MONUC, discussed at length in Chapter 8, is only one recent example. Some analysts of peacekeeping seem happy to treat the distinction between peacekeeping and peace enforcement as of little practical importance. For instance, Bellamy and Williams’ concept of PSOs seems to straddle the line of enmity that I am using to draw the boundary of peacekeeping. They include the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) among their examples of PSOs, despite the fact that ISAF was mandated to support the US-backed government of Afghanistan (the US being one of the parties to the conflict in this case) and that it engaged in “war-fighting” against the Taliban (Bellamy and Williams 2010: 291). It is hard to read the Taliban, in this case, as other than an enemy in the relevant sense. At one point, Bellamy and Williams do indicate the mismatch between the US Operation Enduring Freedom’s strong counterterrorism focus and ISAF’s concern with maintaining legitimacy through consent; they also focus on the shift to warfighting needed to interrupt attacks on civilians (ibid.: 291, 295). Bellamy and Williams are not entirely clear whether they think that the Taliban and Taliban-supporting civilians should be brought into a consensual relationship with ISAF, and if the attacks on Taliban should have been restrained to prevent attacks on civilians. If they do, then their concept of Peace Support Operation (PSO) is fully on the peacekeeping side of my line, though I might still quibble over including ISAF on the ­peacekeeping side. But if Bellamy and Williams are careful and nuanced even if they do not seem to place the weight on the enemy/no-enemy distinction as I do, other analysts are more blunt. Kelly and Giffen argue: Where the behavior targeted for change is intrinsic to the goals or the existence of armed actors, strategies designed to pressure them to adopt alternate means of pursuing their goals will probably prove ineffective. In such cases, the only viable option may involve using force to neutralize armed actors – that is “[t]o diminish the effectiveness of the [armed actor], to the extent that [it] is

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The Morality of Peacekeeping

either unable to participate in combat or at least cannot fulfill [its] intention.” (Kelly and Giffen 2011: 29, quoting the United Kingdom Glossary of Joint and Multinational Terms and Definitions) As Kelly and Giffen point out, their quotation constitutes the definition of “defeat” in UK military doctrine – in other words, a direct repudiation of UN peacekeeping doctrine, or at least a direct repudiation of the idea that staying within the bounds of “peacekeeping” should be an important goal for a mission. The reference to the “behavior targeted for change” – in context, breaches of the peace or attacks on civilians – being intrinsic to the goals of an armed actor is a clear echo of the concept of the “spoiler,” particularly the “total spoiler” in the broader civil conflict literature. The jargon goes back to Stedman’s (1997) seminal taxonomy of spoilers. Spoilers are “leaders and parties who believe that the peace ­emerging from negotiations threatens their power, worldview, and interests, and use violence to undermine attempts to achieve it” (ibid.: 5). Stedman distinguishes spoilers on the basis of whether they are “inside” or “outside” the peace process (a distinction not important for this discussion), and on whether their goals are “limited,” “greedy,” or “total.”6 “Limited” spoilers are those with some specific goal that does not require a dominant position in the post-conflict order, such as redress of a specific grievance or safety for the members of the group they take themselves to represent. At the other end are “total” spoilers, whose goals are far-reaching, immutable, and radical, and who as a result cannot be reconciled to anything less than a dominant position or sole authority in the post-conflict situation. Leaders of total spoiler groups are often “pathological,” preventing them from compromising. In between are “greedy” spoilers, who will take as much as they think they can get (ibid.: 10–11). If we take as a given that peacekeepers are there to try to secure peace, then total spoilers are the most likely candidates for enmity. Because total spoilers hold radical and immutable preferences, Stedman argues, the only options for dealing with them are defeat or marginalization (the equivalent of driving a Schmittian enemy across a border). In particular, they cannot be appeased with a compromise because their preferences are radical and all-or-nothing (it would be immoral to offer, say, half a genocide, and anyway would not satisfy a genocidal

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 29 total spoiler). Further, they cannot be “socialized,” or brought to adhere to norms more compatible with peace through a combination of incentives and persuasion, because their preferences are immutable. The least confrontational appropriate way to deal with a total spoiler is through a “departing train” approach, where it is made clear to the spoiler that a new political dispensation based on the peace agreement will be put in place, and if the spoiler does not join on the agreement’s terms, it will be marginalized (Stedman 1997: 14–15). So, the depiction of total spoilers forestalls moral imagination. If a peacekeeper says to herself that perhaps taking a conciliatory or restrained attitude toward a total spoiler will leave space for a reconfigured relationship, the answer will always be that no, ex hypothesi, that is impossible. But a lot rides on the designation of a group as a “total spoiler,” and it is far from clear there are any such things. It is far too easy to take the fact that some group engages in actions that violate human rights norms – let us not mince words, evil acts – and conclude that it is an evil group, composed of evil people. Stedman’s own analysis shows some of the limitations of the concept of a total spoiler – why would a departing train strategy work? If we presume that the spoiler’s aims are immutable and radical, they will never take the deal on offer to become part of the new regime in return for giving up their goals. The departing train strategy, for a truly total spoiler, would collapse into a marginalization strategy (and it is not clear why, if the peacekeepers plus local authorities have the power to marginalize the group by force, they should not go as far as ­destroying it if they can). More fundamentally, the moral judgment of the spoilers seems to be playing a problematic role. Moral imagination does not need to deny that groups and individuals can take evil actions. The question is whether the evil is inherent or immutable, “intrinsic to their goals or existence.” Thinking this through reveals that attributing evil actions to inherent evil is typically fairly simplistic. Most of the time, when we look at a group engaging in evil, this is not simply because they are sociopaths – in fact, it would be hard to find enough true sociopaths to fill the ranks of a militant group, and Stedman seems to assume that non-pathological people will easily find themselves helplessly in the grip of a pathological leader. If people are doing the bidding of a sociopath, there is bound to be a reason that goes beyond their own evil. It

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The Morality of Peacekeeping

may not be a good reason, and it may have as much to do with being caught up in group dynamics as any logical train of thought, but it is unlikely to be brute and immutable evil. When we scratch the surface of groups that are credible candidates for “total spoiler” status, we usually find underlying motives and perspectives that, if not necessarily laudable, at least make the evil actions of the group intelligible. One interview partner who served in AMIS gave me this perspective on the notorious government-aligned janjawid militias in the Darfur region of Sudan: I would say that all of them that I dealt with were guilty, I mean from a . . . look at that, all involved in one way or the other in these atrocities. Whether SLA [Sudan Liberation Army], or as JEM [Justice and Equality Movement ] or as government. But my philosophy, or my personal feeling, has always been that these people are in such dire situations, I should prioritize. What I want first is peace. And whatever I will do to get that peace, I will do that. After that, human rights can follow it . . . Well, you will need some of these so-called guys who have committed atrocities to get peace here. You need them. So, if you start demonizing them, you’ll fail. And not only fail then, you’ll get the population against you, because they have, they have built their bases, they have built their constituencies. You can’t just say, because you announce it that he’s a criminal, that the people on the ground accept him as a criminal. No. You’ve got to understand the dynamics on the ground. Some of them are not doing that because they like fighting. They were chiefs, they were elders in their community. So, it was their responsibility to protect, just like we are saying, “responsibility to protect,” they also had a responsibility to protect their tribe. So, any fighting they did, any atrocities you think they committed, was done in the name of that. You need to understand these dynamics . . . I believe, personally, that we could have played things differently, and maybe we would have gotten different results. Because when we first started engaging the government of Sudan, the government was not that stubborn, the way it is today. They were amenable to, you know, accepting some of these things because they

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 31 also wanted an international commission. So, I still can’t believe that we didn’t do that. We were like, very confrontational . . . And I believe that is what has landed us in this situation.7 The point is that evil acts are typically not done for the sake of evil, but for the sake of something perceived as good. Stedman’s description of spoilers as individuals or groups who feel threatened by “the peace” can obscure the point that evil acts are means to ends. Total spoilers do not necessarily oppose peace (though there may be some narrow slice of groups that benefits specifically from high levels of violence) – they oppose this peace, because they see some ox of theirs being gored in it. Even genocidal and democidal groups typically have some theory of why the genocide is necessary. All of this points to a different analysis of spoilers. Rather than being groups that have radical and immutable agendas, “total” spoilers are apparently acting as they do because of the way they see the structure of opportunities and threats in the peace process. They are spoiling and/or engaging in rights abuses because they see that as the best way to achieve their goals. On this analysis, moral imagination potentially re-enters the picture. If the spoilers are regarded as recalcitrant members of the political community, the peacekeepers or other “custodians of the peace process” can meaningfully think through how their preferences might be accommodated or transformed through the peace process. This can be as hard-nosed as any negotiation: Greenhill and Major (2006/7) propose a “capabilities-based” model of spoilers that focuses on the idea that preferences (radical or otherwise) are relatively stable and hence that the fact that a peace agreement was at some point struck indicates that there is some agreement that the parties are willing to make.8 If this is the situation, a peacekeeping force’s goal should be to “countercyclically intervene” in the developing situation such that no party’s power rises to the point where it thinks it can do better by renegotiating the agreement (ibid.: 12–13). If, like Lederach, we are more skeptical about preferences being always fixed, even greater space is open, without our imagining that everyone is negotiating in good faith – the peacekeepers may be able to make available to various groups ways of pursuing or even understanding their goals that were not available during the conflict. For instance, if my interlocutor was right that many janjawid leaders were motivated in part

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The Morality of Peacekeeping

by a desire to keep their “constituents” safe, a PKO with a civilian protection mandate may be able to assure that safety in a new and attractive way.9 This analysis also highlights two serious reasons for taking the “no enemies” perspective of peacekeeping as morally important. First, and most obviously, if spoiler “type” is malleable then treating some group as a total spoiler may create conflict that could have been avoided. As Tronto points out, if “the peacekeepers view the ‘spoilers’ as waiting for the right moment to defect, rather than as people who can be persuaded to become more cooperative, then their idea is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy” (Tronto 2008: 193). In addition, spoilers may have genuine moral claims underneath their abuses. Spoiler groups are led by individuals who hope to gain some advantage from leadership, of course. But they are also fueled by people who see some advantage in supporting or at least acquiescing in the group. This is not to paint a rosy picture of spoiler groups – many get support through being more fearsome than the next group (but even here, if peacekeepers give no relief from fear, accepting the spoiler is not irrational). Spoilers are nothing more mysterious than organized groups of people; they are ways in which people are pursuing their own goals and interests, and to the extent that peacekeepers are concerned with creating a new political situation in which people can pursue their own goals in relative peace and freedom from fear, they should take care that by destroying a spoiler group they are not destroying the avenue through which some interests were protected. Just to ensure that we go for the most extreme example, consider the Nazis. As Coady points out, the German population was subjected to serious abuses by victorious Soviet troops after World War II (Coady 2008: 270–1). While his main point is that a negotiated surrender might have brought an earlier end to the war, and the kind of stability that would rein in such abuses, it also illuminates a separate issue: while the Nazis were engaged in many evil acts, they also protected much of their population (not the Jews or Roma of course) against other evil acts. In peacekeeping situations, except for rare cases where the PKO serves as a transitional administration (and often even there, because its control is rarely as complete as a state’s), defeating an abusive spoiler group does not automatically mean that the population under that group will be able to spontaneously create a humane community that protects its interests, or even that it will come under the

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 33 administration of the PKO. Rather, the real choice is usually between being subject to the authority of one group or another, with the new authority not having morally clean hands either (and perhaps subjecting individuals to abuses themselves, as the sad fates of many Serbs in Kosovo and Hutu in Rwanda/DRC attest). This is not to make a claim of moral equivalence; just to point out that we should understand, from the perspective of PKOs, that when a choice is made to subject one organization to “justice,” the choice is not between an evil political regime and a good one, but often between an evil one and a lesser evil. Insisting on the destruction of some group or its exclusion from the political settlement may violate the duty of “leaving the population of the surrendering enemy nation [or other political group] in a position to contribute to an independent political life for themselves after the war” (Coady 2008: 276). None of this means that peacekeepers should or could give up on coercion. If it was attractive to achieve some goal through human rights abuses before peacekeepers arrived, unless peacekeepers obstruct and punish abuses, that means will still seem attractive, and uncertainty about any new alternative proposed by peacekeepers will tend to ­disadvantage it. All of this brings us back to the key point: coercion and enmity are not inextricably linked. We coerce people in all sorts of situations where it would be wildly inappropriate to treat them as Schmittian enemies or total spoilers who are radically recalcitrant and must be destroyed. I ensured that my daughter got a yellow fever shot before visiting me in Africa, against her will. I do not seek to existentially negate her. Police use coercion as part of their duties, but if they begin to treat criminals and the people who support them as enemies, rather than as dangerous but redeemable parts of the polity, they risk rupturing the social contract.10 To define someone as an enemy or total spoiler, entering the space of war, is to take an extreme rather than a mandatory position. Peacekeepers are not parents, nor are they police, but their work lives in that grey space of coercing while looking forward to a future, nonviolent relationship. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT OF PEACEKEEPING

It will help us understand how morally to approach the seemingly paradoxical situation of peacekeepers as fighters without enemies if we

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The Morality of Peacekeeping

look at the development of the peacekeeping concept. The non-enmity principle and the concept of peacekeeping as we have it now comes out of an attempt by the UN and other organizations to develop solutions to the problem of conflict, and bears the marks of that history. Early Years The creation of peacekeeping is generally traced to the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO). (Nevertheless, there were operations that bore many of the hallmarks of PKOs as far back as the nineteenth century: see Bellamy and Williams 2010: 71–81, 83. For an overview of UNTSO, see Ghali 1993b.) But the core principles of ­ peacekeeping – the “holy trinity” of consent, neutrality/­ impartiality, and minimum use of force – are generally credited to Dag Hammarskjöld’s summary study of UNEF I (Hammarskjöld 1958; for an overview of UNEF I, see Ghali 1993a). In that document, he laid out a vision of peacekeeping generally identified with “traditional,” conservative peacekeeping. First, consent as host-state agreement: it follows from international law and the [UN] Charter that the United Nations cannot undertake to implement [UN decisions] by stationing units on the territory of a Member State without the consent of the Government concerned. (Hammarskjöld 1958, §155) Second, impartiality as strict non-interference in the outcome of a conflict: United Nations personnel cannot be permitted in any sense to be a party to internal conflicts . . . the Force should not be used to enforce any specific political solution of pending problems or to influence the political balance decisive to such a solution. (ibid., §§166–7) And finally, minimum use of force primarily restricted to self-defense: the rule is applied that men engaged in the operation may never take the initiative in the use of armed force, but are entitled to

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 35 respond with force to an attack with arms, including attempts to make them withdraw from positions which they occupy under orders from the Commander . . .11 Cold War UN and non-UN peacekeeping mostly earned its reputation for being restricted in scope and mandate – for being primarily focused on overseeing ceasefires and peace agreements, with limited capacity to do anything assertive about violations. (On non-UN PKOs during the Cold War, see Bellamy and Williams 2010: 88–91.) The one glaring exception was ONUC, which was much more like a contemporary “peace enforcement” operation, and ended up essentially taking the side of the Congolese government against the Kantangan separatists, though it did so awkwardly in the face of a mandate and a concept of PKOs that did not clearly authorize assertive military action (Durch 1993: 326–9). In part, ONUC may have ensured that it was exceptional, as the mission was widely seen as a political failure, even if it did achieve many of its mandated tasks, at extreme cost (Durch 1993: 345–9; Bellamy and Williams 2010: 86–8). An Agenda for Peace The end of the Cold War ushered in a re-assessment of the fairly conservative approach to peacekeeping that dominated UN PKOs in the wake of the political problems of ONUC. The 1992 report An Agenda for Peace was written in the light of optimism that the UN’s security functions would no longer be hobbled by Cold War dynamics, the dueling US and USSR vetoes on the UNSC being a key disabling circumstance the UN was “not created or equipped to control” (Boutros-Ghali 1992, §15). “Through peacekeeping,” it argues, the UN could and should now “work to preserve peace, however fragile, where fighting has been halted, and assist in implementing agreements achieved by the peacemakers” (ibid., §15). In his supplement to the Agenda Boutros-Ghali singled out mandates for civilian protection and “pressing the parties to achieve national reconciliation” as major reasons for PKOs getting into trouble, as in Somalia and the Balkans (Boutros-Ghali 1995, §34).

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The Morality of Peacekeeping Protection of Civilians and R2P

Earlier peacekeeping documents, like An Agenda for Peace, tended not to focus on the protection of civilians or defense of human rights outside the context of creating peace. But, by the end of the 1990s, that focus was shifting – in no small part because of the centrality of attacks on civilians to the negative narratives of Rwanda and Bosnia. Moreover, the dawn of the twenty-first century saw the creation of a new influential concept, R2P. The Rwanda and Srebrenica Inquiries The report of the UN inquiry into the Rwandan genocide cited the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR)’s ROE that permitted the use of force only in self-defense as a serious problem, especially as “[c]ivilians were drawn to UNAMIR posts but the mission proved incapable of sustaining protection of them” (Carlsson, SungJoo, and Kupolati 1999: 35–6). The report also contrasts the creation of peace with the protection of civilians, citing with approval the Nigerian ambassador to the UN’s comments that “too much attention was being paid to the cease-fire negotiations and too little to the massacres,” and stating that “[t]he persistent attempts to view the situation in Kigali . . . as one where the cease-fire had broken down and therefore needed to be restored through negotiations, rather than one of genocide . . . [were] a costly error of judgment” (ibid.: 41–2). In its conclusions the report points out that, even if a PKO is not explicitly mandated to protect civilians (which, at that time, most were not), many people both on the ground and in the international community will expect it to provide protection. Given its recommendations, the authors of the report clearly take this perception to be reasonable. For example, they do not suggest that PKOs have better public relations campaigns to make the limits of their mandates clear, and they bolster the argument for a responsibility for PKOs to respond to genocide by invoking UN members’ obligations under the Genocide Convention (ibid.: 38, 51). The inquiry into the fall of the UN-declared “safe zone” in Srebrenica, Bosnia, raised similar issues. “The fall of Srebrenica is also shocking because the enclave’s inhabitants believed that the authority of the United Nations Security Council, the presence of UNPROFOR

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 37 peacekeepers, and the might of NATO air power, would ensure their safety” (Annan 1999, §468). As in the Rwanda report, the Srebrenica report contrasts the protection of civilians with the more “traditional” goal of supporting ceasefires and political processes: many of the errors the United Nations made flowed from a single and no doubt well-intentioned effort: we tried to keep the peace and apply the rules of peacekeeping when there was no peace to keep. Knowing that any other course of action would jeopardize the lives of troops, we tried to create – or imagine – an environment in which the tenets of peacekeeping – agreement between the parties, deployment by consent, and impartiality – could be upheld. We tried to stabilize the situation on the ground through ceasefire agreements, which brought us close to the Serbs, who controlled the larger proportion of the land. We tried to eschew the use of force except in self-defence, which brought us into conflict with the defenders of the safe areas, whose safety depended on our use of force. (ibid., §488) In the Rwanda and Srebrenica reports, we can see the beginning of a tension over the concept of what can and cannot be countenanced in the name of peace and reconciliation. While earlier concepts took the position that the PKO was there to shepherd a peace process involving various groups of equal moral standing, perhaps with a statist bias (clearest in ONUC), Rwanda and Srebrenica highlighted the problems associated with unwillingness to shape the political/military situation even in terms of respect for basic human rights. The Brahimi Report In 2000, the Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, more commonly known as the “Brahimi report” (after the head of the panel), was published, in no small part in reaction both to perceived failures in Somalia, the Balkans, and Rwanda and to the widespread (though not universal) perception that the NATO intervention in Kosovo had been successful despite going forward without UN approval. According to the Brahimi report, peacekeeping is a “complex model of many elements, military and civilian, working together to build peace in the dangerous aftermath of civil wars.”12 Interestingly, the

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The Morality of Peacekeeping

Brahimi report seems to define peacekeeping in terms of civil conflict intervention, rather than just expanding the definition to cover it. By 2000, nearly all active PKOs involved intrastate conflict, rather than the interstate interpositions that are often considered characteristic of “traditional” PKOs (ONUC notwithstanding). Despite this reference to the “aftermath,” the report acknowledges that PKOs do not deploy into post-conflict situations so much as they deploy to create such situations. That is, they work to divert the unfinished conflict, and the personal, political, or other agendas that drove it, from the military to the political arena, and to make that diversion permanent. (Panel on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations 2000, §20) Peacekeepers support peacebuilders, and the peacebuilders in turn “support the political, social and economic changes that create a secure environment that is self-sustaining” (ibid., §28). While the report states that “the United Nations does not wage war,” it echoes the Rwanda and Srebrenica inquiries’ calls for the UN to de-emphasize a negotiated, neutral role (ibid., §53). Famously, the report said: In some cases, local parties consist not of moral equals but of obvious aggressors and victims, and peacekeepers may not only be operationally justified in using force but morally compelled to do so. Genocide in Rwanda went as far as it did in part because the international community failed to use or to reinforce the operation then on the ground in that country to oppose obvious evil. (Panel on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations 2000, §50) The idea that there are some “obvious evils” that peacekeepers must oppose has been influential in thinking about peacekeeping since. Part of my argument throughout this chapter and Part II will be that peacekeepers should focus on interfering with evil acts without being tempted to treat groups or individuals as inherently evil, as enemies. Protection of Civilian Mandates in UN Peacekeeping The Brahimi report represented a strand of thinking at the UN that had been developing for some time: that it needed to be made clear, especially to the peacekeepers themselves, that they were expected to take action to protect civilians.

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 39 In part in response to the recognition of that lack of clarity in mandates to protect civilians, the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) in 1999 became the first UN PKO to be explicitly and clearly mandated to use force, with a Chapter VII mandate, to protect civilians. Earlier missions had language that implied protection, but not as clearly or directly, leaving more room for confusion and shirking in the mandates. (For a comprehensive list of protection language through 2005, see the chart in Holt and Berkman 2006, Appendix 1.) UNAMSIL’s mandate language became the template for many later missions, authorizing peacekeepers to take the necessary action [in conjunction with the Chapter VII mandate, implying the permissibility of use of force] to ensure the security and freedom of movement of its personnel and, within its capabilities and areas of deployment, to afford protection to civilians under imminent threat of physical violence, taking into account the responsibilities of the Government of Sierra Leone and ECOMOG. (UNSC 1999, 3, para. 14) Protection of civilians will be the theme of Part III. R2P and Conditional Sovereignty Part of the tension that both the Srebrenica and Rwanda inquiries identify between support for ceasefires and protection of human rights comes from the fact that if these agreements are understood as solely between sovereign states (or state-like/military-like entities), then it becomes difficult to address ongoing violence and abuses, so long as they are happening within the zone of control of one of the parties to the ceasefire. This is not a matter of having an absolutist notion of sovereignty under which states may (morally) do whatever they like to their populations. In neither the Rwandan nor the Bosnian case was international inaction typically justified on the grounds that the killings were not wrong. Rather, the problem seemed to be a more practical-moral one, that treating the primary goal as getting agreement between the states/state-like entities meant that pressuring them over their treatment of their own people was difficult. This was coupled with a view that the UN could not or should not try to address problems in way that did not primarily seek reconciliation between

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The Morality of Peacekeeping

states or state-like groups: in other words, that (quasi-)states may wrong their populations, but the moral importance of states restricts interference. In 2001, the Canadian government convened the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), a group of human rights scholars and prominent international politicians, to address questions about whether/when military intervention in defense of human rights or humanitarian principles could be justified. Their report, The Responsibility to Protect, had no legal force, but it rapidly became quite influential in thinking both about peacekeeping and about military intervention more broadly. In 2005, the core conclusions of the report were adopted by the UN General Assembly as part of the World Summit (see below), giving it some legal weight, but its informal influence goes far beyond its legal authority. The ICISS’ 2001 R2P report promised a resolution to this tension through a combination of the R2P concept and a conditional notion of sovereignty. State sovereignty, in the R2P framework, is not an ­inherently valuable thing; it is primarily valuable because sovereignty is for many states their best – and sometimes seemingly their only – line of defence . . . effective and legitimate states remain the best way to ensure that the benefits of the internationalization of trade, investment, technology and communication will be equitably shared. (International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty 2001, §§1.32, 1.34) R2P understands sovereignty as implying a “dual responsibility: ­externally – to respect the sovereignty of other states, and internally to respect the dignity and basic rights of all the people within the state” (ibid., §1.35). Sovereignty does not shield states that do not live up to those responsibilities.13 The report does insist that “sovereignty is more than just a functional principle of international relations . . . [f]or many states and peoples, it is also a recognition of their equal worth and dignity” (ibid., §1.32). But nowhere in the report is that inherent dignity allowed to trump concerns of individual human rights, so its moral import seems to be mostly exhausted by the way sovereign states contribute, ideally, to equitable distribution of globalization’s benefits. Conditional sovereignty lets us reconsider the importance of

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 41 respecting sovereignty, and by extension consent. If states or statelike groups have full moral standing only if they promote the rights and safety of the populations they claim to represent, they need not be included as full partners in any process of reconciliation/conflict ­transformation unless they meet those standards. Post-R2P UN Developments At the UN, several important documents were created in the post-R2P era that further shaped understanding of peacekeeping. In 2004, the high-level panel on threats, challenges, and change convened under the aegis of Secretary-General Kofi Annan delivered its report, A More Secure World. The report downplays the distinction between Chapter VI and Chapter VII missions – a sharp distinction made in the Srebrenica and Rwanda inquiries, that led those reports to the conclusion that peacekeeping was an inappropriate tool. In part, it does this by finessing the concept of consent in a way opened up by the conceptual linkage between sovereignty and role as a component of a protective international system made in R2P and the idea in the Brahimi report that not all political and quasi-political groups are to be given equal standing. “Consent-based” Chapter VI missions may nonetheless use force to respond to “spoiler” groups that “undermine a peace agreement [or] put civilians at risk” (Panel on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations 2000, §21; High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change 2004, §§212–13). In fact, A More Secure World starkly excludes abusive groups from any consent-based process: We must learn the lesson: peace agreements by Governments or rebels that engage in or encourage mass human rights abuses have no value and cannot be implemented. These contexts are not appropriate for consent-based peacekeeping; rather, they must be met with concerted action. In fact, the report seems to conceive of the role of (military) peacekeepers in the consolidation of peace almost entirely in terms of defeating spoilers, as repelling attack and dealing with hostile opposition are the only explicit tasks they are given in overcoming the “security dilemmas” of implementing peace agreements (High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change 2004, §222). This exclusion of abusive

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and spoiler groups seems to provide some of the grounding for the restriction of consent to the “main parties” in the capstone doctrine, an issue that I will return to in Chapter 3 (UN DPKO 2008: 31). The Secretary-General’s own report, In Larger Freedom, followed on the heels of A More Secure World. It emphasized that the role of peacekeepers is “to help countries emerge from conflict” (Annan 2005, §111). It does not discuss in detail the role of peacekeepers specifically in responding to “genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other such crimes against humanity,” instead placing those generally under the aegis of UNSC authorizations to use force, and endorsing the R2P concept that states bear primary responsibility for the well-being of their citizens (ibid., §§125–6, 135). Also in 2005, the UN World Summit took up the issue of peacekeeping’s role. Like In Larger Freedom, it placed peacekeeping in a support role, “[r]ecognizing that United Nations peacekeeping plays a vital role in helping parties to conflict end hostilities” (UNGA 2005, §92). The outcome document also endorsed the R2P concept in broad outline, calling on member states to “encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility [to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity]” but, unlike the ICISS report, reserving the legitimate authority to respond with force when necessary for the UN (ibid., §§138–9). In 2008, the capstone doctrine was made public. In 2009, SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-Moon issued a major report on implementing R2P, including discussion of the role of peacekeeping. The report echoes the R2P idea that intervening to protect human rights is a way of assisting the state, even when the state is the abuser: “Non-state actors, as well as states, can commit egregious crimes relating to the responsibility to protect. When they do, collective international military assistance may be the surest way to support the State in meeting its obligations” (Ban Ki-Moon 2009a, §40, emphasis mine). Ban’s report prominently calls out preventative deployment as a way of using peacekeepers to protect, by preventing the “escalation of armed conflict” (ibid., §42). This brings us to the current moral situation facing peacekeepers. The principle that peacekeepers have no enemies can be seen as having its roots in the original image of PKOs as merely helping to facilitate a peace process, while having no position on the social and political conflicts that led to the original conflict. Later developments have tried to preserve an element of that, while allowing

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 43 peacekeepers to “apolitically” take action against groups that spoil the peace or violate human rights. The moral difficulties arise because simply insisting that peacekeepers are acting against some group out of adherence to some general principle of human rights, instead of out of their own particular sense of the conflict, does not by some moral alchemy make them not parties to the conflict – after all, each party to the conflict can probably explain its position in terms of general principles. Despite the fact that R2P may seem aligned with newer concepts of peacekeeping that push toward dropping the “no enemies” standard in favor of straightforward alignment against spoilers, it actually provides the basis for thinking about peacekeepers as not having enemies. Core to R2P is the idea that even as outside interventions are taking coercive action, they are supporting the sovereignty-properly-understood of the host state, because the state is only properly sovereign to the extent that it is effectively protecting its people. Similarly, we can see peacekeepers as supporting a process of creating a better, more cooperative polity in which social and political conflicts are not resolved – that would violate any remaining sense of impartiality – but put into a broader context of social cooperation in which they can be resolved. Describing how to do this using judicious coercion will be the overarching theme of Part II. In the remainder of this chapter, I will simply provide a picture of what such a cooperative project might look like, and the moral principles integral to it. COOPERATION AS A CORE CONCEPT OF PEACEKEEPING

The primal scene of morality . . . is not one in which I do something to you or you do something to me, but one in which we do something together. (Korsgaard 1996: 275) Cooperation and Conditional Sovereignty If the concept of the enemy is essentially that of someone whose existence inherently threatens your own community, with whom you do not share values and cannot do other than avoid or destroy, its inverse is the concept of the fellow member of the community. With our fellows, comrades, and co-nationals, we share values, respect each other, reciprocally accommodate, and cooperate toward long-term

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goals. This is why non-enmity is important to the concept of PKOs. These do not aim at peace defined simply as an absence of warfare (though in many cases “merely” achieving that is a feat): they aim, roughly, at a situation in which the conflicts that all societies have are primarily worked through without violence. The best way to understand this is to see peaceful societies as ones in which conflict occurs against a broader background of shared values, cooperation, and mutual respect. I do not take up arms against people I do not like, because I see them as fellow human beings whose own values I place some value on (e.g. I see it as regrettable if they die or suffer violence, even if I am not directly tied to them), and who are part of some larger projects I value (e.g. she is a fellow taxpayer or citizen of my city). In this context, peacekeepers should approach everyone in the area of operations – even hostile armed factions – as at least potential members of the cooperative community they are trying to help rebuild: non-enemies who need to be brought into cooperative, mutually respectful relationships if possible. It is easy to see cooperation as a return to (or holdover from) the perspective condemned by the Srebrenica and Rwanda inquiries of focusing on the ceasefire rather than on the “quality” of the political structures supported, especially their regard for human rights. But the R2P concept preserves a role for cooperation with local (quasi-) governance structures, even if the typical focus is on the way it limits sovereignty. Protection is a responsibility, and one typically discharged most effectively (according to the R2P framework, at least) through well-functioning states. The aim of intervention in a conflict is thus best understood as being to consolidate well-functioning state structures that can protect their subjects’ rights and interests.14 It would be a mistake to see this as, in general, creating or re-creating such structures, as distinct from improving existing power structures and filling in gaps between them. In most conflicts, some state structures will persist (often in fragmentary, shadow, and/or co-opted forms) and other structures will have formed to take up state-like functions. It is not as if individuals in the conflict area do entirely without public goods for the entire course of the fighting. Even if they would prefer to start from scratch, peacekeepers will face resilient organizations of these types as they try to stabilize the peace (Englebert and Tull 2008: 125–7; Boege et al. 2009: 20–1). In reality, even PKOs with the broadest administrative mandates (transitional administrations) do as much

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 45 managing of existing power structures as creation of new ­institutions (Chesterman 2004, esp. chs 4 and 5). This reinforces the idea that peacekeepers are there to help with and support local processes, rather than to simply eliminate abusers or impose a new order. Counterintuitive as it may seem, the R2P concept implies that, when peacekeepers approach a regime engaged in abuses against its population, they are there to help not just the population but the regime: In many cases, the state will seek to acquit its responsibility in full and active partnership with representatives of the international community. Thus the “responsibility to protect” is more of a linking concept that bridges the divide between intervention and sovereignty; the language of the “right or duty to intervene” is intrinsically more confrontational. (International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty 2001, §2.29) Similar things can be said for non-state actors who are parties to a ­conflict, and may even have engaged in human rights abuses. Respect and Cooperation Too much talk of cooperation, especially with individuals or groups who have a history of human rights abuses, can seem morally obtuse. This frustration drove the Srebrenica and Rwanda reports, and stood behind the Brahimi report’s call to recognize “obvious evil.” If we are going to have a concept of cooperation that is more than appeasement, we need to find a place in it for a notion of respect. Fortunately, cooperation is a concept with resources to do this. Cooperation does involve a kind of affiliation, of taking another’s views and ends as one’s own. But it also involves having one’s own ­perspective taken seriously – cooperation is not self-abnegation. The tension between respect for human rights and cooperation is partly reduced if I am correct that “evil” is not the best analytical category for understanding abusive spoiler groups. But not entirely. Even if spoilers do not typically have mysterious, immutable, malicious motivations, I owe some account of how cooperation is not simply going to lead to parties to the cooperation compromising their claims in accord with their negotiating power – a bad prospect for respect for human

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rights, given that the armed and abusive groups tend to have more power in the negotiations. What we need is some way of explaining how cooperation and joint projects are different from mere accommodation. The core difference is that cooperation makes mutual respect central. Practices of Respect We can start by trying to flesh out what “respect for persons” means. Respect is deeply tied up with treating other human beings as responsible moral agents. When we respect someone, part of what we are valuing and honoring in them is their ability to reason, to make decisions, and to confer value on the world. On an intuitive level, this is why paternalism is as much a violation of respect as debasement is. Kant makes a discussion of friendship the culmination of the first section of his Doctrine of Virtue. In his formulation, friendship is a variety of what I mean by “cooperation;” it is a relationship in which (ideally) two people share a concern with each other’s good, and the transcendent moral good, and can freely share ideas to work toward that good. As such, it represents “the union of two persons through equal mutual love and respect.” Both love and respect are needed, as Kant puts it vividly, because “love can be regarded as attraction and respect as repulsion” (Kant 1996: 215). The tension between respect and love in cooperation is necessary and fruitful; cooperation involves sharing values, not eliminating the values of one participant and replacing them. But the tension is not simply between leaving people be and assisting them in their projects. If it were, the issue for peacekeepers facing parties to a conflict would only be how far to accommodate them. This perspective can be reinforced by a particular take on human rights. In the human rights framework, respect is often conceived of negatively. Respecting my right not to be tortured means, at the most basic level, not torturing me. But this is not all it means. If you simply stand by while someone else tortures me – especially if, like a PKO, you may have the power to step in – I can plausibly complain that you do not respect my human rights much more than the torturer does. A world in which my human right against torture is respected is one where, by and large, people do not torture me, and also one in which, if I am tortured, I have some ability to claim I have been wronged in a way others will recognize.15 Human rights rules are important because of the way they figure in practices like this. Where torture occurs, it is not because there are

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 47 abstractly evil roaming bands of torturers about. People are tortured because someone or some group hopes to accomplish their ends by doing so. Where torture does not occur, it is not because some abstract rule prevents it – rather, it is because most people’s practice does not involve torture, and some people are part of practices which empower them to prevent and punish torture, and in the context of which they understand their incentives and good. In this context, let us think about what we can or should expect peacekeepers to do about abusive groups. The obvious intuition is that peacekeepers must create peace, certainly, but they must also respond to “obvious evil” by preventing and punishing it. The first thing to say about this intuition is practical: there are many ways of preventing evils besides using military force against their potential perpetrators. It may be at least as effective to address the root causes of their abusive practices – why do they desire genocide? – as to shoot at them. Even closer to the point of impact, when addressing the trauma that is driving some abusive military unit is not an option, patrolling, CASOs, disarmament, construction of berms, warning systems, preparations for flight, and the like may be at least as effective as violence. Some of these nonviolent responses will be discussed in Chapter 5. The second is moral: if we are talking about some group that has already engaged in abuses, what we really want to do is hold the group accountable for its actions. We want peacekeepers to “say” that abusers are morally responsible for their actions. But punishment is only one way of doing that. Kant, in discussing clemency, argues that the sovereign has a right to grant clemency only for crimes against the sovereign himself – never for crimes that subjects commit against each other (Kant 1996: 109–10). We should apply the same principle to punishment as to clemency, and the same principle to PKOs as to the Kantian sovereign. Unless the crimes armed factions commit are against the PKO itself, the operation should not be sole arbiter of how those crimes should be responded to. Insisting on punishment at the hands of international forces wrongly takes war crimes and crimes against humanity as violations that it is the PKO’s role to punish, a mistake fostered by thinking of the PKO and international tribunals as unproblematically embodying the wounded “international community,” rather than as a part of that community trying to foster reconstruction in another region – a community of which the abusive groups are also a part.

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This view can be fostered by the language of R2P, but I think it is not the best understanding. The “international community” is an idealized community, of which states and international organizations are constitutive parts, working together to try to live up to the communal ideals. A PKO (or other intervention under R2P, for that matter) is a breakdown within the international community, not the international community reaching into a place outside its bounds (recall the language of assistance in R2P). The PKO is working with the locals to resolve the breakdown, and if the international community is wounded as a result of crimes, it is the international community in the persons of the locals ­subjected to abuse, not in the persons of the PKO. This does not, of course, mean leaving justice aside. Peacekeepers should not aim at a one-size-fits-all approach that favors amnesty over accountability any more than the obverse (for an example of such an approach, see Cobban 2007). While Kant is (characteristically) concerned with limiting the reach of the sovereign’s clemency, his basic insight can also be inverted: most abuses committed during the conflicts in which peacekeepers intervene are not committed against the peacekeepers. Therefore, peacekeepers should typically not insist on forms of accountability not chosen by the local population. They should defer where possible to local accountability practices. Assuming that justice cannot be done by the political structures set up with the PKO’s help represents a distressing lack of faith in the moral character of the locals. If we drop the idea that punishment is a mystical way of resetting the moral balance (and I will assume that we should), punishing shows itself as just one thing among many that we do when faced with morally responsible people. Punishment practices are a special case of social practices, a way of recognizing people’s moral agency invoked only when they misuse it.16 They are not the core method of ­recognizing either values or agency. Human rights and other moral concerns also shape a wide variety of other practices, from democratic governance and economic production to mundane human activities like falling in love, raising families, and sharing food. As Korsgaard puts it: When you hold someone responsible, you are prepared to exchange lawless individual activity for reciprocity in some or all of its forms. You are prepared to accept promises, offer confidences,

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 49 exchange vows, cooperate on a project, enter a social contract, have a conversation, make love, be friends, or get married. (Korsgaard 1996: 189) Thought of in this way, punishment reveals itself as exceptional, rather than as the core expression of moral concerns. Most of us spend the overwhelming majority of our time engaging with humans and human rights by doing things other than breaking or enforcing the rules. Rules and punishment have their place, but it is marginal. Things are not much different for groups than for individuals. A church committed to respect for human life will typically spend more time feeding the poor than denouncing murderers. Even a militant group committed to racial or tribal superiority is likely to spend more time expressing that value through preferentially consuming the goods dominance makes available (e.g. grazing their cattle on captured land) than through attacking “inferior” groups. One perspective shift we should make is to not even think of achieving a stable, safe, respectful situation as enforcing human rights plus something else. In practice, accountability is much more a matter of all those other things plus occasional rule-enforcement. This shift also helps us see deeper into what is going on when stability, safety, and respect break down. Someone who violates the rules is not sufficiently motivated to comply with them, of course – that is tautological. But when we think about how to get her to change her motivations, imposing external incentives through punishment is only one way and may very often not be the best. We should be asking whether something has gone wrong with her other interpersonal connections. People who are satisfyingly engaged in all the other practices of life – raising their families, participating in political life, eating with friends – without having to violate rights are not likely to engage in abuses just for the thrill of it.17 The recognition that something has gone wrong in violent conflict on all sides is tied to a strand of just war theory that tends to be decentered in current discussions, which focuses on the effects of war on virtue and character, rather than on the rules that delimit its legitimate use. In contemporary just war theory, “right intention” is often treated as a non-hypocrisy criterion of jus ad bellum, the subjective analogue of just cause (see e.g. Orend 2006: 46–8; Coppieters and Fotion 2008: 73–7).

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Right intention has been given a broader role in some traditions, however, particularly in Augustine. (While my discussion is based primarily on contemporary writers inspired by Augustine, these ideas have their roots in Augustine of Hippo 2007: 350–7). For Augustine, right intention was a (if not the) central concept of just war theory, rather than simply one principle among others; it described the “moral character” that animated just warriors and allowed/motivated them to live up to the more specific requirements of just war theory. As part of jus in bello, the individual just warrior needed to avoid falling into the dark emotions and urges of violence for its own sake, avoiding the love of violence, cruelty, vengefulness, “fierce and implacable enmity,” and the lust for power (Coates 2006: 215–16). This view entails the need for moral humility among soldiers, including peacekeepers. As Johnson describes, the medieval Catholic Church’s practice of penance institutionalized the idea that failures of right intention were both sinful and more or less inevitable among soldiers. Requiring all soldiers to do penance expressed the idea that even those who did not believe they had given in to anger or vainglory, or to any other sin against right intention, might have sinned unknowingly (or have been self-deceiving), and helped to begin a process of reconciliation by eroding any sense of absolute moral superiority that might have proved a temptation to domination or cruelty (Johnson 1999: 212–15). This kind of moral humility should be resurrected to undercut any impulse to say that, if peacekeepers do not treat some group as an enemy – an evil group, rather than one whose members have committed evil acts – they are failing in their moral duty to oppose “obvious evil.” Peacekeepers should recognize that those who commit abuses are suffering from the same kinds of fears and angers that face them in situations of violence, and the primary orientation – as it is at the level of states in the R2P concept – should be to find ways to foster practices that help them master such dark impulses, with punishment and direct attack only used when necessary for that goal or when there is no ­alternative means of protecting others.18 Relationships, Reciprocity, and Shared Values Without taking on the task of ending the debate about the metaphysics of human rights, what Korsgaard’s focus on practices shows is that it makes more sense to think of “holding someone responsible”

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 51 primarily in terms of our relationship to her than in terms of monitoring her adherence to a free-standing set of objective rules. And “having a r­elationship” is itself something we do, through acting jointly. In order to respect other people, we need to take their reasons as at least making a bid to be shared reasons – reasons not just for them to act but, at least potentially, reasons for us to act as well. Korsgaard takes her account to oppose Kant’s notion that respect is a matter of “repulsion,” but it can also, by merging respect with cooperative action, be seen as making respect a matter of both repulsion and attraction. When we respect others as originators of reasons, we are drawn closer by the potential to share their reasons. But there is also an element of distance in the reminder that they are originators of reasons that are not ours – they are independent sources of value that we should not seek to control. Joint action is characterized by reciprocity. Joint action does not involve reciprocity just in the sense of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours;” that would be a situation not of joint action but one where you and I have come to a modus vivendi that allows us to pursue our separate actions without mutual interference and with some degree of mutual support. Reciprocity – in Korsgaard’s sense – requires “sharing of reasons.” One way of thinking about this sharing would be to take reasons to be “out there” in metaphysical space. In this way of thinking, we share reasons in the same way that we share a physical environment. But many personal relationships are tied up with values in ways that can seem mysterious or even perverse if we insist on analyzing them purely in objective terms. On the small scale, consider my relationship to my daughter. It is surely a good thing that, say, my daughter should have a happy and satisfying life. But it is also very plausible that the resources I put into trying to bring that about would probably have a greater “rate of return,” even in terms of happy lives, were I to devote them to much poorer children. On the scale of the state, similar well-trodden problems arise: surely it is good that my state be prosperous and secure, but what could justify me making a special project of that? If happiness and prosperity are just good things out there that I may come to care about, focusing on the happiness or prosperity of particular people for anything but purely instrumental reasons can seem deeply u ­ nreasonable (Korsgaard 1996: 282–3).

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On the other hand, if we see such parochial interests as personal conferrings of value that may be shared, then they make more sense. The value of my nation’s security is created by the fact that individual people in my nation value that security, and then I stand in relationships with them that embody a shared value. I need not assert that my nation’s security is objectively more valuable than any other’s – because I am not valuing my nation’s security from an objective place, but rather from a place concretely situated in relationships.19 Korsgaard argues that values can be seen as generally arising from relationships (ibid.: 297–9). If we thought of the ban on torture as, for example, a matter of promoting the value of people not being tortured in general, then it would be acceptable to torture someone to prevent greater torture of others. While there may be theoretical virtues to such a straightforwardly consequentialist account, it does too much violence to what we expect of peacekeepers, so I will leave it aside. But if we think of reasons not to torture as only my reasons, like my reasons for writing this book, they lose much of their force. If I did not finish the book, you might think less of my dedication to my work, but it would be odd for you to punish me – unless I were in some way obliged to you to finish it in the way that I am obliged not to torture you. The value of my not torturing you is not written into the world beyond us as an instance of the general value of people not being tortured, but it is also not just a personal project of my own (in which case a consequentialist might accuse peacekeepers of having an invidious concern with “clean hands”). The value of not torturing you derives from the fact that you and I have a relationship with which torture is incompatible – whether it is the very thin relationship of author and reader that literally applies between me and you, or the more relevant and moderately thick relationship that peacekeepers have to people in their area of operations with whom they are trying to rebuild a polity. As Korsgaard sums it up, the category of personal relationships is no special category: for all human interaction is personal. It is because or to the extent that we regard one another as persons that we acknowledge the force of deontological reasons. As persons, others demand that we treat them in ways to which they can consent; as persons, we find that we must respond to that demand. But we also express our respect for one another’s humanity by sharing in each other’s ends . . . It is the status of

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 53 humanity, as the source of normative claims, that is the source of all value. (Korsgaard 1996: 299) Understanding respect as embedding shared values in relationships and cooperative, reciprocal action does not mean that we need to actually take everyone else’s reasons as our own. We may conclude that a person is acting for bad reasons – but even in that case, the badness is a shared badness.20 That is, the reasons are not bad-for-me but goodfor-you; we must both assess them from within our relationship, and within that relationship one of us can be wrong. Consider: if I respect you as a person, I certainly do not need to share your aim of torturing someone. But I also do not treat your motivation to torture as a mere brute fact about you, the way I might treat a shark’s motivation to eat me. If your reasons for torture are ones that I should not share, they are also ones that you should not act on. I respect you by trying to talk you out of it, holding you accountable if you persist, etc. They are good reasons, or bad reasons, for both of us. The way we respect others is to take their actions and their reasons into the public space of shared action. I can do this to varying degrees and in varying ways. Sometimes, I may share others’ reasons by getting out of the way. I may not contribute to their projects, but by recognizing that they have good reason to want to see their projects accomplished I recognize that I have good reason not to interfere. Sometimes, I may share others’ reasoning capacity by arguing with them, or invoking punishment/enforcement practices. Here it is important to note that, as a shared social practice, punishment is very different from exclusion from the community of reason-sharers. I reject this reason of yours (say, to torture someone) but not all your reasons (say, to not yourself be tortured). The closest contemporary punishment to true exclusion would perhaps be the death penalty. But even in these cases there are personhood-recognizing restraints in most cases. In the US, we have the death penalty, but we do not simply let anyone at all kill the person sentenced, and most of us do not think that, until she is executed, a condemned murderer can be subjected to other forms of inhumane treatment. But most of my life is taken up by sharing others’ reasons in the sense of sharing in joint projects with them. This is not a mysterious phenomenon. I act on my own reasons by doing things that make sense in the light of those reasons and the practical context. We act on our reasons in the

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same way. If you and I share an interest in raising a family, we do things that promote the family’s well-being. If we are patriotic co-nationals, we do things we believe will promote our nation’s legitimate interests. IMPLEMENTING COOPERATION

The core implication of this account is that compliance with human rights norms is better seen as a social practice than as the prerequisite for engaging in any joint practices. Failing to violate someone’s human rights is more minimal than respecting them as persons in other ways, but this does not make it either practically or conceptually prior. We do not start joint projects by first deciding to respect others’ rights and then thinking about what to do with each other – we start joint projects because we are interested in the projects, and think about rights when our immediate projects threaten to interfere with others’. Punishment and enforcement practices are even more clearly designed to deal with breakdown in social cooperation, rather than to create it. So, the schematic sequence of peacekeepers enforcing respect for human rights, then peacebuilders helping to create a community, is at least incomplete. There is no necessary path from total enforcement of human rights rules to political community. There are, of course, potential indirect paths, such as habituation to compliance. But these are uncertain and complicated – and the easier path, from community to widespread respect and the creation of enforcement/punishment/ accountability practices, is clearer. All of this is just a roundabout way of saying that the PKO’s primary focus should be on fostering cooperation between people rather than on ensuring compliance with abstract norms. Compliance with legitimate norms will result primarily from functional cooperation – coercion is there in early stages to make defection from that cooperation less attractive, and in later stages to clamp down on defectors at the margins. It is easier to find examples in which an enforcement-heavy approach was problematic than ones in which a cooperation-focused approach was successfully tried. For instance, the UN responded to escalating violence in the Ituri province of the DRC in 2003 by bringing in the EU-led Interim Emergency Multinational Force (IEMF), which conducted a very aggressive peace enforcement operation, “Operation Artemis.”21 But by focusing on attacking the ethnically-Hema militias in control of the main city of Bunia, Operation Artemis inadvertently

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 55 exposed Hema communities in Ituri to reprisals and atrocities by militias associated with the Lendu ethnic group – unfortunately, exactly as the discussion of the need to recognize that spoiler groups (and the Hema militias genuinely committed atrocities during their ascendancy) are not simplistically evil influences predicted (Sow 2003: 211). To be fair, Sow (ibid.) seems to think that Operation Artemis’ failing was in not being aggressive enough – in being limited to Bunia and too squeamish about civilian casualties. But it is not clear that the total saturation, even of Ituri, that this implies would have improved matters, as the same dynamics of exposing people “protected” by one group to predation by another could only have been solved by an unrealistically larger force. Moreover, at the time of writing, violence is resurging in Ituri, despite having dropped from most headlines about the DRC in favor of violence in the Kivus (ICG 2008; Tamm 2012a,b; Fahey 2012a,b; Radio Okapi 2013). Operation Artemis does seem to have succeeded in its narrow goals – the most powerful militias in Ituri at the time of writing seem to be the Forces de Résistance Patriotique d’Ituri (FRPI) and its affiliates, which were not the main target of operations in the early 2000s. And my point is not that military operations cannot be part of an overall strategy. But the current violence in Ituri seems to be in part a result of declaring Artemis “successful” despite the fact that neither the mission nor anyone else has fostered meaningful joint work in the province on underlying issues. And though different armed groups are prominent, they remain entrenched and increasingly violent because of a lack of viable alternative political/cooperative structures. As Fahey (2012a) says, “Although FRPI survives in part by stealing from the local population, it also has local support. Many people distrust the FARDC [Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo] which engages in theft, extortion, and violence against local populations.” There are also some promising cooperation-focused anecdotes and partial successes. For instance, a Rwandan officer deployed with AMIS told us about a time when he was able to defuse some tensions in Darfur.22 Rebel forces had abducted three men from the local ­government-aligned janjawid militia, and the janjawid were threatening to wipe out a rebel-held town. As part of a ceasefire commission also including members from the Government of Sudan (GoS) and rebel groups, he and his men (only about seventy AMIS military) were surrounded by a large force (the interview partner estimated about

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1300) of janjawid on their way to attack the town. They were able to have a GoS member of the ceasefire commission talk to the militia and get them to stand down, and then negotiate with rebels for the release of the captured men. As the officer put it, it was a “great victory” to be able to go from being about to be killed to saving a town.23 Another promising – though imperfect – example of a cooperationfocused approach is the history of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC). The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was the main armed Kosovar faction during the war, and after the NATO intervention and the deployment of KFOR peace enforcers and United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) peacekeepers, it remained as an organization that could not feasibly be defeated but could not be allowed to remain and destabilize the security situation in Kosovo (for an overview of KFOR and UNMIK, see Dziedzic 2006). The solution was to demilitarize the KLA and transform it into the KPC, with a mandate to respond to crises such as fires and natural disasters (Covey 2005: 106–7). The KPC was not a perfect solution to the problem of the KLA, but giving many members of the KLA a task for which they seemed to receive at least some genuine social esteem seemed to ultimately allow it to become a mostly constructive force in Kosovo, after a rocky start, and remove it as a violent contester of power. And while the International Crisis Group (ICG) described it as an “army in waiting,” that does not seem to be all that it was – its report goes on to discuss its stature in the community, its seemingly genuine attempts to reach out to Kosovar Serbs (despite its roots as a violent anti-Serb force), and its actions under its crisis mandate (ICG 2006a: 12–22). The eventual dissolution of the KPC in 2009 was attended by discontent and frustration, but no large-scale violence (Clewlow 2010). The problems, schematically, seem to have been in large part ones of not going far enough to create a project for the former KLA. The KPC was caught up in the general uncertainty about Kosovo’s final status, and was often not given sufficient training or equipment to actually conduct itself as an emergency force, even when its members and leadership were ­sincerely trying to pursue the mandate (ICG 2006a: 13). PEACEKEEPER VIRTUES AND CARE ETHICS

Direct application of some of the themes of this chapter at the level of peacekeepers may be awkward or difficult – peacekeepers do not

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 57 decide what accountability practices the political side of the mission will support, or which local political structures will be legitimated or de-legitimated by treaties and accords or the top leadership. The theoretical framework needs to be complemented by more direct guidance to peacekeepers. They should cultivate certain habits, frames of mind, and skills that will let them respond flexibly, but in accord with the concept of cooperation, to situations in which they must exercise their judgment. Traditional martial virtues – physical valor, loyalty to one’s fellows and one’s chain of command, honor, and the like – traditionally understood are an awkward fit for a cooperative perspective. A better fit is provided by a set of virtues associated with “care ethics” (or “the ethics of care”). There is substantial debate over whether care ethics should be seen as a virtue ethics, but it is a debate tangential to this discussion. There is value in focusing on the flexible, virtue-like elements of care ethics, but I am not here arguing that they are the core of care ethics, let alone all there is to the theory (see e.g. Slote 2001; Held 2006, ch. 4; Engster 2009: 25–36; Slote 2010: 269). Care ethics provides a congenial way of thinking about the virtues needed to pursue peacekeeping as a cooperative and reciprocity-based project, because of its focus on ­relationships and affect as central to morality. Held (2006: 10–11) helpfully lays out three positive features of care theory. First, and centrally, it is focused on the “compelling moral salience of attending to and meeting the needs of the particular others for whom we take responsibility.” While some care ethicists, like Engster, focus primarily on the “needs” part of the equation, it is important to care ethics that we do not conceive of our moral duty as simply bringing it about that people’s needs in general are satisfied (as a utilitarian theory might hold) (Engster 2009: 28–9). Care ethics focuses on the relationship that we have to particular others in need, and the moral importance of meeting those needs is in part explained by the constitutive part that meeting needs plays in creating and supporting relationships. On the other side, for care ethicists, relationships are not paradigmatically free associations between independent individuals. Rather, properly understanding relationships requires understanding the way in which we do not simply enjoy being near other people, but find ourselves enmeshed in mutually dependent ways with them. Moral problems emerge when needs – clashing needs, unmet needs, unreasonable needs, misinterpreted needs – threaten to undermine

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relationships. In this way, the “primal scene” of care ethics is the same as for Korsgaard’s version of Kantianism: how we act with each other. Second, care ethics has a strong role for the emotions and affects. Relationships are not cold, calculated affairs, but involve both rationalistic judgments and emotional responses to the other person. Held gives emotions a primarily epistemological role – emotions help us “better ascertain what morality recommends” (10). But emotions more deeply structure both the moral terrain and moral obligations of relationship. Especially from a virtue-focused perspective on care, becoming the kind of person who is capable of productively dealing with and channeling the darker emotions of resentment, anger, and fear that can plague relationships just when our moral character is needed most (not to mention the positive emotions of love and joy that sustain ­relationships) is a crucial care virtue.24 Finally, care ethics is particularistic. We are obligated to provide care to these others, here, in which we stand in special relationship.25 This obligation is not derived from more generic moral rules, but from the importance of maintaining the concrete web of human relationships and our moral-psychological orientation toward other human beings that makes those relationships possible (e.g. the ability to respond empathically to the joys and pains of others). Peacekeepers are not obliged to protect civilians because they are somehow bound to an abstract moral rule that civilians are to be protected, but because they are trying to help rebuild a particular moral-political community, and the victimization, domination, and vulnerability of civilian populations undermines the relationships needed to sustain it.26 The fact that this is a common feature of peacekeeping situations gives rise to the general rule. The three core characteristics of care ethics are all consonant with and mutually supportive of the image of peacekeeping as the kind of cooperation I have sketched above. Both frameworks focus on particularistic relationships. There is no such thing as “cooperation in the abstract.” Cooperation requires that particular individuals, in a particular context, find ways of working with each other. Treating values as inherently shared, intersubjective, in the Korsgaardian way, highlights this. While I have emphasized it less here than I will in Chapter 6, both cooperation and care also give a prominent role to emotions and affect. Since cooperation is a matter of practical activity, it must engage not

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 59 just our reason but our motivations, our minds and our bodies. And, though I would not want to restrict emotions to an epistemological role, emotions are a central part of the way we respond to and identify values.27 Care Virtues for Peacekeepers Any peacekeeping force commander should not value what many people value in a soldier, robotlike behavior, ruthlessness, offensive action! See, no. You should emphasize a thinker, people who think. The person can even look weak, but he’s a thinker. Unless people choose values that are more of thinkers than activists, peacekeeping operations will fail.28 Care ethicists place different emphases on specific virtues and dispositions. For the peacekeeping/cooperation context, three virtues are key: attentiveness, restraint, and creativity. Together, these three dispositions make a peacekeeper the sort of person who is able to respond cooperatively to others, especially in uncertain and difficult circumstances. Attentiveness makes peacekeepers open to the peculiarities of the situation and the needs of others involved. Restraint holds peacekeepers back from action destructive of cooperation, a permanent temptation for those in a difficult situation and with access to weapons. And creativity lets peacekeepers find new relationships and ways of relating outside of perhaps more obvious violent solutions. Together, while these virtues may pull against a “warrior ethos,” they are largely consonant with the “constabulary” ethos that many sociologists of the military have seen as emerging in militaries more generally. Characteristic of a constabulary military is the requirement that it concern itself with the impact of the use of force on non-military goals, rather than only being concerned with “efficient achievement of victory” (Moskos 1976: 3). For Janowitz, the originator of the term, the major pressure toward the evolution of armed forces into constabularies was the fact that the spheres of war and peace were increasingly intermingled, such that the constabulary concept “eliminates the distinction between the peacetime and wartime military establishment” (Janowitz 1971: 419). While peacekeeping does not quite “eliminate” the war/peace distinction, it does sit in the muddy transition between the two, and so it would seem particularly fertile ground for the

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development of a constabulary ethic. And, in fact, Moskos’ sociological study of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) found that most soldiers developed views more consonant with a constabulary ethic during their tour (Moskos 1976: 93–8, 104–9). Many of my interview partners expressed something like a constabulary ethic, as expressed in their accounts quoted throughout the book. This is perhaps especially unsurprising for members of militaries that commonly engage in peacekeeping (such as the Indian army) or whose primary external mission is peacekeeping (like the GAF).29 Attentiveness Attentiveness is a disposition to be genuinely open to another’s point of view on his or her own good. As Engster aptly describes it, attentiveness is “noticing when another person is in need and responding appropriately” (Engster 2009: 30). Other care ethicists make room for a similar virtue: Held emphasizes a need for “sensitivity,” and Slote calls a very similar attitude “respect” (Held 2006: 53–4; Slote 2008: 57–9). Attentive individuals cultivate a disposition not just to respond to active claims by others, but to seek out information about their needs. This is especially important for peacekeepers, who often operate in an environment where the population is traumatized by conflict and may be deeply suspicious of any intervention – especially of gun-toting members of the intervention force. Avoidance is a completely rational, and may be a deeply ingrained, strategy in many civil conflict and PKO environments (Pouligny 2006: 102–4). At the same time, a mere disposition to seek out the needs of others is not sufficient. There are at least two ways in which seeking out others’ needs, on its own, can go awry. The first is that one may genuinely intend to meet others’ needs, but end up attempting to do so in a way that is not beneficial from the recipient’s perspective. The second is that one may both have good intentions and share a view of needs with the target of benevolence, but things may go awry anyway. The most extreme case of the first failure is when what the actor perceives as “helping” is actively harmful. Slote discusses the case of the Spanish Inquisition (Slote 2010: 276–7). Even if we were to assume that there were Inquisitors who were utterly sincere about their business of saving souls, and truly believed that their behavior was to the benefit of the people they tortured and killed (because at least their immortal souls were saved), Slote points out that we would have good reason to

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 61 question whether they were truly motivated by any sort of attentiveness. Attentiveness is a truth-seeking attitude, and tied up with an empathetic openness to the other. However sincere one’s motives, ignoring the screams of the tortured is blocking out tremendously salient moral information, and bespeaks an emotional relationship with the person being tortured that is incompatible with cooperation.30 But it is possible to be “tone-deaf” to needs-as-seen-by-the-needy in less egregious ways than the Inquisitors were, such as by creating quick-impact projects that do not meet the community’s most pressing needs, reinforcing the position of elites without broad support (an issue I will return to in Chapter 9), or taking aggressive action against spoilers that displaces and endangers the community ostensibly being protected (see Chapter 8). The need-seeking aspect of attentiveness needs to be coupled with what Engster calls “responsiveness.”31 Responsiveness (for Engster) is “engaging with others to discern the precise nature of their needs and monitoring their responses to our care” (Engster 2009: 30). This captures the reciprocity that Korsgaard identifies as essential to cooperation. If we are aiming at a truly shared value, the value is not mine, nor does it exist in some heaven of ideas to which I might have privileged access (or, in the case of the Inquisitors, literal heaven). It is something that belongs to both of us, and your relationship to it is at least as important as mine. You have as much “say” over what our shared value means as I do. In this spirit, peacekeepers should not only seek out the needs of the locals, but allow them to have their say over those needs. This responsive aspect of attentiveness also helps with the second pitfall, which is well-intentioned efforts that go awry for unexpected reasons. When some attempt to meet needs fails, whether the wouldbe benefactors are willing to adjust to changing circumstances is a strong indicator of whether they are genuinely caring or engaging in more self-serving quasi-benevolence (Slote 2010: 281–2). As Blocq points out, one potential pitfall of attentiveness, as an emotionally engaged virtue rather than a passive receptivity, is that it may lead to “loss of self-control” (Blocq 2006: 209–10). Peacekeepers must be emotionally alive to the interests and desires of people in the area of operations, and so take the promotion of their human rights in an intersubjectively valid way as something that peacekeepers themselves value, but peacekeepers should not become simple partisans in the conflict (this would violate reciprocity with the people they are partisan

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against).32 The solution, Blocq rightly argues, is the development of comprehensive empathy.33 Peacekeepers should cultivate an openness to the perspectives of all parties to the conflict, even those who may initially seem evil; this need not mean endorsing their evil actions, but being aware of the reserves of anger, fear, and frustration that often drive evil acts or cause people to have divergent understandings of moral standards (as with the “protective” janjawid discussed above). One Civilian Police Officer (CIVPOL) told us that her greatest asset in the field was having worked on the vice squad in her home country, as it let her understand that the spoilers and criminals she encountered as a peacekeeper did what they did “because they could not get more.”34 Or, as a Ghanaian officer told me, “It is always a good style to say, ‘I see your point.’”35 In this case, he was talking about a confrontation with rebels in Monrovia who were attempting to order ECOMOG peacekeepers to open containers of food aid and allow the rebels to distribute them to the people. While this act would have disrupted ECOMOG’s own distribution plans (and surely not incidentally have bolstered the rebel’s image), it is hard to deny that the rebels did have a somewhat reasonable perspective in that case. “After all, the things are here, and the people are suffering in the town. I agree with you that the things – this is food, it’s rice – there’s no point locking the rice up here when the people are hungry.”36 Another thing we should specially note about Engster’s definition is that “engaging” makes attentiveness into more than the passive disposition it may seem to be. Attentiveness requires two-way communication about needs and perceptions (and let us not forget that peacekeepers have needs as well), not just receptivity. As Ruddick points out, mothers must not only consider a child’s needs, but help them learn to articulate those needs better (Ruddick 2002: 172–3). This also distinguishes attentiveness from intelligence-gathering, particularly covert intelligence-gathering.37 Such communication can be problematic in PKOs. One officer I spoke with on patrol in the small town of Kimbumba, DRC told me that it was nigh-impossible for him to communicate directly with the people in the market his unit was protecting. He gave two reasons. First, MONUC had a very limited number of translators skilled in local languages or even French. While the most commonly spoken European language in the DRC is French, the colonial language, the typical requirement for deployment to a UN PKO is fluency in one of the two

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 63 major UN languages, English or French, regardless of what is spoken in the mission area (of course, speakers of the more locally relevant language are preferred, but the UN often cannot make such a preference effective, given its high demand for personnel). There was a unit of Congolese National Police (CNP) co-deployed with MONUC, some of whose members spoke some English, but communication through that channel was limited. In addition, the officer told me that the mission leadership were discouraging too much contact with the locals, as they were afraid that any contact that seemed “too close” could either be honestly perceived as or spun into an allegation of Sexual Exploitation and/or Abuse (SEA).38 Given problems the UN has faced, the latter worry may be understandable, but such worries both display a lack of mutual trust and place barriers in the way of its creation. On a more positive note, one Rwandan officer described how he made what I am calling attentiveness and joint action central to his approach in the field.39 As a leader in AMIS, he made sure that he and his men lived among the people, and learned about and respected their culture – and pointed out that a peacekeeper was likely to run into trouble if he thought he was “better” than the locals. His threestep approach to locals was to show friendliness, seek acceptance from local leaders, and find practical activities to engage in with the locals (whether trucking in water or playing sports). A Ghanaian CIVPOL simply told us that the key virtues that he brought to the mission were that he was friendly, able to work with everyone, and able to build trust.40 Attentiveness is a crucial virtue for peacekeepers – possibly even the “master virtue,” since it helps define the contours of restraint and creativity by settling what counts as harm and need. Restraint Ruddick focuses on the completely nonviolent virtue of renunciation, but the related virtue for peacekeepers is restraint – a commitment to take suffering and risk on oneself whenever avoiding violence is possible (Ruddick 2002: 167–8). Restraint is necessary because peacekeepers will be tempted to use violence where it is morally problematic or counterproductive. Faced with a hostile or recalcitrant population, in which it is difficult to distinguish civilians from threats, and given the superiority of the military force that peacekeepers usually possess, the “easy” solution will often be to use force to eliminate perceived or anticipated threats.

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The attitude of restraint is important, in addition to learning rules of discrimination, since peacekeepers will need to use judgment applying rules in uncertain situations (where a disposition to use violence when in doubt would be dangerous), and will need to deal with psychological effects, such as fear and anger, that tend to distort applications of rules. All at least moderately disciplined militaries recognize the dangerous aspects of anger and fear, and so inculcate restraint (though not necessarily under that name), but it bears special mention in a PKO context. Note that the virtue of restraint is both relationship-based and particularistic. It is not a rule about when to use force but a habit of mind and character that orients the peacekeeper toward finding ways to maintain herself in the face of hostility from other individuals long enough to find another way to relate to them. Restraint in the use of force will be explored more completely in Chapter 5. Creativity Creativity is a virtue perhaps less familiar to the military than restraint. But it is implied by the virtues of attentiveness and restraint. Peacekeepers will often find themselves in situations where one group is vulnerable to the threat posed by another – their pressing need is for protection, in a narrow or broad sense. But, keeping in mind that peacekeepers have no enemies, and that even the militants must ultimately be part of a new political community, they are called on to exercise restraint, if they can, toward the threats. Navigating this difficult sort of situation requires a disposition to find new ways, to imagine new ways to stand in relationship with others, to reconcile shared values, and to interpret conflict. Such a virtue is implied in Ruddick’s discussion of the ways in which parents and nonviolent activists must find or create common interests, find ways of getting people to work together, and flexibly shift between nonviolent conflict tactics and peacekeeping (here meant in a lay sense) tactics (Ruddick 2002: 172–5). It also resonates with Lederach’s idea of a “moral imagination,” discussed above. Lederach makes clear the deep connection between creativity and the creation of joint projects by elaborating that moral imagination is “the capacity to imagine and generate constructive responses and initiatives which, while rooted in the day-to-day challenges of violence, transcend and ultimately break the grips of those destructive patterns and cycles” (Lederach 2005: 29). When our projects push us toward conflict

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 65 with other people, creativity is needed to develop new reciprocal relationships in which our new, joint practice can be non-­destructive and mutually satisfying. This may require rethinking the way we pursue our current practice-embedded values, or even the development or “discovery” of novel values we had not previously considered. While this “imagination” may sound entirely too squishy for m ­ ilitary peacekeepers, it is crucial, and it is not ignored by peacekeepers ­themselves. One interview partner flatly told me, “If you don’t [build relationships with armed factions] you are in serious trouble.”41 Peacekeepers may not have enemies, but their clients are often homicidal, and the desire to respond to violence with violence is deep-seated. Yoder called it a “primeval destructive reflex” and recognized the role of something like the virtue I have called “creativity” in breaking that reflex. Because the temptation to respond to violence is ­deep-seated in the human affective makeup, it cannot simply be denied or repressed with bans. The frustration of resisting the emotional call to violence just because one is restricted from using it risks eventually becoming overwhelming. Yoder called for people who would resist the use of violence (he himself was a pacifist) to “pos[e] the foundations for a nonretributive society upon ways of processing the deep demand of blood for blood,” rather than seeking to make people ashamed of feeling that demand. And his notion that the most pitiable victim of  violence is the perpetrator, while perhaps hard to swallow in the case of some of the atrocities committed in peacekeepers’ areas of operations, points the way to creativity as a key virtue: the perpetrator of violence is to be pitied because he or she is lashing out in a situation where no other way of satisfying the deep emotional call to violence seems possible (Yoder 2009: 32–3). For peacekeepers, such emotions may be understandably and powerfully drawn forth when armed groups attack them, or do violence to civilians. Even more dangerous to peacekeepers’ restraint may be the whole situation they find themselves in – socially isolated, far from their families and many other sources of social support, vulnerable themselves to violence, and facing a population among whom many people are resentful and resistant. As Ruddick points out (speaking of mothers, but calling attention to similar features of the situation), being frustrated and isolated and facing someone who is both recalcitrant and unable to match the level of force you can bring to bear is a great temptation to violence (Ruddick 2002: 166).

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Helping peacekeepers cultivate creativity will help them avoid being such pitiable perpetrators. People resort to violence when their emotional resources are exhausted, and when they believe they have no other effective or appropriate options. Peacekeepers (or other warfighters) facing a recalcitrant or hostile population, even if committed to restraint, will best be able to avoid violence if they have cultivated a creative mindset that allows them to find other ways of meeting challenges. Military peacekeepers are defined in part by their ability to use violence, but they also have other means at their disposal, such as intimidation, interposition, and mediation/dialogue. They may be able to call on the abilities of other PKO elements, deploying public relations and sometimes economic incentives or humanitarian assistance. Care ethics’ particularism comes into play especially in selecting those options – in a general discussion like this book, all I may be able to say is “Try to imagine different ways you might deal with recalcitrant, hostile, or dangerous forces.” But in the field, the job for peacekeeper creativity is to look for ways to deflect and defuse particular situations of violence and potential violence. As one of my interview partners put it, it’s always good to break those barriers, go beyond what we see – and it works. It takes an effort, though, and it takes innovation. It’s not written anywhere that you should organize a dinner. Nobody will write that for you. Maybe you spend a few bucks, and it helps. And I, from practical experience, am saying it works.42 The moral issues surrounding the resort to force and the role of ­creativity in staving it off will be more fully explored in Chapter 5. CONCLUSION

Peacekeepers have no enemies. This is not just a terminological nicety, or a way of designating a now-defunct type of military operation born out of Cold War constraints and UN improvisation. Peacekeeping is a morally and strategically appropriate response to conflicts where parties have some sincere interest in a peace process, but are divided by mistrust, anger, fear, hatred, and temptation to advantage. This basic principle gives rise to an image of the peacekeeper’s task that makes cooperation and reciprocity central. Peacekeepers try to

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 67 make it possible for people in the area of operations to begin to engage in joint projects, so that they can build the relationships and shared values that ground a stable political community. To do this, on a personal level, peacekeepers should cultivate caring virtues. Peacekeepers who are attentive, restrained, and creative will be best able to respond appropriately to the complexity of trying to cooperate with people in a difficult situation. With those basic ideas in hand, let us see what light they can shed on issues of consent, impartiality, and force/violence. Notes   1. Interview 3.   2. If anything, the coercive collectivity must be stronger in the case of naked soldiers for us to agree with Walzer that they are morally liable to attack. In his response to McMahan, he leans heavily on the practical difficulty of distinguishing conscripts from volunteers in the context of open combat. But naked soldiers are ex hypothesi individuals who there is no pressing need to kill, and who are not found among the chaos of battle but in ­distinctively non-battle situations.   3. Young (1997) makes a similar point about sub-national communities: we misunderstand “identity politics” and will be tempted to think of it as a clash between entrenched, immovable interests and identities only if we presume that all identities are rigid and clearly demarcated, and membership is exclusive. She recommends thinking of individuals as situated in a “field” of different identities – closer to some, further from others – that may be helpful for peacekeepers’ conceptions of the population in their area of operations as well.  4. The moral question of how risk should be distributed in the area of ­operation of a PKO is the theme of Chapter 7.   5. This is a requirement of impartiality, the subject of Chapter 4.   6. Stedman also draws attention to the fact that the number of spoilers affects peace strategies, but that will not be my focus here.   7. Interview 4.  8. Philosophers should note that this is not related to the “capabilities approach” advanced by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum in any interesting way.  9. There are interesting parallels here in approaches to criminal violence. To get a handle on gang violence in Boston, for instance, police and their partners not only made clear to gang members that they would be targeted by law enforcement if they used violence, but that they could

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safely refrain from violence since the police would treat anyone who took advantage of their laying down weapons to harm members of the gang “like hurting a cop” (Kennedy 2011: 64–5). 10. This is not an idle worry; Simon (2007) has described in detail the corrosive effects of what he calls a “waste management” approach to crime, where criminals are taken to be people to be isolated from society, much like Schmittian enemies. 11. Hammarskjöld (1958, §179). The inclusion of a right to resist attempts to dislodge peacekeepers from positions means that this is not a strict selfdefense norm, but is still more restrictive than the “defense of mandate” understanding in current UN doctrine, discussed in Chapter 6. 12. Panel on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (2000, §12). 13. I will focus, as most discussion does, on the internal responsibilities. The idea of the external responsibility is the very traditional principle that states can be attacked in self-defense. 14. These comments may seem appropriate only to intrastate conflict, and in fact much of the theoretical development has taken place in the context of such conflict, which is now the most common context for PKOs. But even PKOs that stand between two states need to restabilize communities, not just end fighting. When states go to war, it endangers citizens of both states, and peacekeepers need to not only end the fighting but create a new situation, at least along the border, that allows for a stable political détente. Keep in mind that, from the R2P perspective, states are “federal” structures within the broader international community – when states go to war, that is a dysfunction in the larger unit of which the states form a part. On this model, an interstate war is not that different from an intrastate war that pits two geographically discrete factions within a single state against each other; I take the fact that the R2P concept of sovereignty “scales” in this way to be an attractive feature of the theory. 15. I will return to this “positive” aspect of protection in Chapter 7. 16. Punishment, properly speaking, is about recognizing agency – mere behavior modification is not punishment. 17. This is not to say that people cannot massacre their enemies by day and return to family life in the evening – stories of such seeming callousness are fairly common, unfortunately. But in such cases the pro-social practices are likely connected to the antisocial ones in the perpetrators’ mind (e.g. “I must kill these people because the insurgents they shelter threaten my way of life”). Most people, if you could give them their way of life without the killing, would probably stop killing. For more on the psychological effects of violence, even on the purveyors of violence, see Chapter 6. 18. See also the discussion of “comprehensive empathy” below, and Chapter 6 on psychological effects and drivers of violence.

A Normative Framework for Peacekeeping 69 19. This, however, is not carte blanche for chauvinism. Some ways of favoring my nation’s security over others may be perfectly respectable, while others are wrong not because I value things wrongly (I precisely do not need to say, “The lives of my co-nationals are more valuable than the lives of yours,” but just “I am going to focus my limited efforts on these projects, which have more to do with the lives of my own co-nationals”), but because they violate the respect I owe others. I can morally teach my daughter about math before teaching all the neighborhood children, but I could not burn some other child’s math books to give my daughter an advantage on an exam. 20. There are terminological niceties about whether reasons on which we should not act are bad reasons, or not reasons at all, but merely things that we may have thought were reasons. I hope to get away with using the terms in a slightly less rigorous sense; it seems to make sense to say that some people have reasons for action that are bad ones as a way of characterizing, for example, the situation of a torturer whose desire to torture is not inexplicable (she hopes that her victim will end peaceful dissent against the government) but is nonetheless one on which she should not act. 21. For an overview of the IEMF, see e.g. United Nations Peacekeeping Best Practices Unit (2004). For an account of the conflict in Ituri in general, see Mealer (2009, chs. 1–3). On the background to the IEMF intervention, see e.g. ICG (2003). 22. Interview 5. 23. This is also a good example of “protecting-with,” as discussed in Chapter 7. 24. This is a big part of Ruddick’s discussion (2002: 166–73) of how maternal practice is a resource for nonviolence precisely because mothers are so often tempted and able to use violence against their children. I will return to the role of emotion and affect in moral thinking about peacekeeping in Chapter 6. 25. This has caused issues for care ethicists concerned with global obligations to distant others. For extended discussions, see e.g. Robinson (1999, 2011) and Slote (2010: 271–86). 26. See also Chapter 7. 27. I can give nothing like an adequate defense of this epistemic role here. For a comprehensive such account, see Nussbaum (2001). Some ethicists, including Baier (1991) and Slote (2008), go even further, making having proper sentiments constitutive of what it is to be moral (i.e. arguing that being moral is just having the morally proper sentiments). 28. Interview 3. This interview partner went on to argue that many failures in African peacekeeping were the result of European educational systems foisted on African nations that emphasized rote learning.

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29. It was conversations with members of such militaries that prompted me to use caring virtues as an analytic framework for peacekeeping in the first place. 30. The borders here are complicated. Of course, attentiveness and care are compatible with the infliction of pain – Ruddick (2002: 166–8) discusses the ambivalence of corporal punishment of children. This is precisely why a virtue-based account is illuminating; precise rules cannot be written, but there is a wide “grey area” in which our best bet is to trust the feelings of agents who have cultivated a sophisticated moral sense. 31. He considers this a separate virtue, but I take this to be just a difference of jargon and emphasis. 32. There is an analogue of this point in Chapter 4, regarding bringing all parties into impartiality-preserving consultations. 33. This is tied to Augustinian humility, above. 34. Interview 6. 35. Interview 3. 36. The interview partner also demonstrated some creativity – see below – in defending the aid containers with bureaucracy, rather than force. He told the rebel making the demands that he would need to speak with his own superiors and would get back to him, and the rebels were organized enough to be ensnared by the delaying tactics until ECOMOG could start delivering the food. 37. The moral limits of intelligence in PKOs is an important topic that I will not get into in this book. For one of the few direct moral discussions of peacekeeping intelligence, see Gendron (2009). 38. Interview 7. Note that I was unable to confirm that any such general directions about SEA were given to MONUC (or other mission) personnel, and several officers denied that any such direction had been given. However, one Rwandan AMIS officer (Interview 5) did say that he worried about men under his command giving in to “temptation” and so restricted their contact with locals and (e.g.) required his men to march in strict formation when accompanying women as part of firewood patrols. 39. Interview 5. 40. Interview 8. 41. Interview 3. 42. Interview 4. For the stories of his dinners, see Chapters 5 and 9.

Chapter 3 CONSENT

INTRODUCTION

The first of the “holy trinity” principles to consider is consent. Roughly speaking, respect for consent means that the PKO should not operate in an area where the political community does not accept its presence. This is tied to the idea that peacekeepers have no enemies; the PKO is intended as a way of assisting a political community (or two or more that have been in conflict) in getting back on its feet after being riven by violence and conflict, not as a way of forcing change on or destroying a community. Even “robust” action taken against sub-state spoiler groups is to be seen against a broader background of assistance, rather than opposition, to the community. As we saw in Chapter 2, a focus on consent has been seen as an impediment to the protection of civilians and respect for human rights. It is also sometimes seen as being associated with a bad old model of absolute sovereignty, where a state may do as it likes to the people inside its borders, and as being incompatible with the conditional sovereignty embodied in R2P. After all, if the PKO needs permission for all of its actions, it presumably will not get it from abusive groups, and hence will not be able to thwart their actions. Rejecting consent because of concerns that it can stand in the way of protection and human rights is throwing out the good with the bad. A concern for consent is a concern for the moral importance of self-­determination and freedom, even aside from any legal or practical concerns. Peacekeepers are unlikely to be powerful enough to be globally tyrannical any time soon, but they can be locally oppressive and problematic, and we should not take that possibility lightly. The other difficulty with consent is that a straightforward version 73

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of it, where there are a small number of agents whose permission must be secured – and whose consent, when secured, is relatively ­unproblematic – may have been appropriate for some early peacekeeping missions where consent only needed to mean consent of state parties to a war, but does not reflect the circumstances of many contemporary PKOs. Contemporary PKOs more often face consent that is “variable,” “multilayered,” and “malleable.”1 That is, parties may change their minds about whether they accept peacekeepers, and how “deep” that acceptance will be, over the course of a mission; parties may be internally fragmented, meaning that consent secured from a leader may not entail consent from followers; and consent is not settled once and for all at the outset of a mission, but what peacekeepers do during it can affect its presence and quality. In this chapter, I will outline a concept of consent that can deal better with the fragmented situations into which peacekeepers deploy, without encouraging them to be either unreasonably deferential or unreasonably controlling. The concept I will elaborate is not new, but draws heavily on civic republican theory for established democracies; but it has not as often been applied to situations where the existence of a stable and in-control state cannot be assumed. Despite this, I think it applies well. The core idea is that any consent peacekeepers enjoy should be regarded as a provisional judgment of the community, subject to challenge and revision in scope and in detail by members of the community who were not organized and able to participate in whatever process led to the initial grant (e.g. a peace process). Consent is not a single act, but an ongoing relationship that becomes fuller and more complete the more people in the society can regard themselves as having meaningful influence on it. It is peacekeepers’ responsibility to help develop that kind of inclusivity, and hence take a hand in creating their own consent. CONSENT AS A JUS IN BELLO CONCERN

At first glance, consent may seem like an element of jus ad bellum for peacekeeping, and hence “above the pay grade” of even officers within the mission. The phrasing of the principle of consent in the UNEF I summary study, in which the “holy trinity” was first laid out, seemingly supports

Consent 75 this interpretation. As Hammarskjöld put it there, “it follows from international law and the Charter that the United Nations cannot undertake to implement [PKOs] by stationing units on the territory of a Member State without the consent of the Government concerned” (Hammarskjöld 1958, §155). The most obvious Charter principles supporting this are Article 2(1), which states that “[t]he Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members,” and Article 2(4), which prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” (Charter of the United Nations 1945). The image that this conjures up is a very traditional one where state sovereignty allows the government to be a gatekeeper at the border, making consent an issue between the UN leadership and the state in which the PKO is deployed, but something that the PKO need not worry about in the field – either they are permitted, in which case they are free to pursue whatever is in the mandate the host state has agreed to, or they should leave. The details are ­otherwise immaterial. But this very traditional picture was already problematic in UNEF I; peacekeeping has been more “malleable” from the outset than it implies. Hammarskjöld worried, in setting up the mission, that consent created a kind of conflict-of-interests problem with respect to the territorial government. In UNEF I, Egypt was one of the parties to the conflict that the PKO was deployed to help resolve. So, if consent were treated entirely traditionally, UNEF I would be subject to “unilateral actions” by Egypt that could seriously undermine its mission and put it in a “questionable position” (Hammarskjöld 1958, §156). The study does not elaborate further, but even if Egypt only wielded the threat of expelling the mission (the concern about being in a questionable position with respect to troop-contributing nations implies that there may have been a concern about Egypt detaining or prosecuting members of the mission as well), it could use this power to interfere with the mission’s effectiveness, by threatening expulsion if it did not act as Egypt thought it should. And in many circumstances this would also be a threat to impartiality (especially in later missions in which one party to the conflict might be a sovereign state but other parties sub-state or non-state entities). The solution used in UNEF I was consultation (as discussed in Chapter 4), a recognition that consent is not a matter of a single contracting moment. The need to understand consent in terms of a relationship to be

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cultivated, rather than a hurdle to be crossed, has been maintained in contemporary UN doctrine. As the capstone doctrine puts it: In the implementation of its mandate, a United Nations peacekeeping operation must work continuously to ensure that it does not lose the consent of the main parties, while ensuring that the peace process moves forward. This requires that all peacekeeping personnel have a thorough understanding of the history and prevailing customs and culture in the mission area, as well as the capacity to assess the evolving interests and motivation of the parties. (UN DPKO 2008: 32) The doctrine goes on to note the importance of trust between the parties for the maintenance of consent, and identifies actions that restrict the PKO’s freedom of action as “de facto withdrawal of consent” (emphasis in original). The consent that these remarks describe is an evolving relationship. And it is not an all-or-nothing one, where consent gives the PKO full freedom to pursue its mandate, whatever that may be, and lack thereof de-legitimates its entire presence. Though “consent” is taken as a bedrock of PKOs, as the concept is used it makes room for incomplete consent, contested consent, and continued peacekeeper action in the face of deteriorating consent. The rest of this chapter will address what principles of consent peacekeepers should apply, but what is clear is that building, maintaining, and navigating consent is very much an issue for peacekeepers in the field. CONSENT IS NOT JUST A PRACTICAL PRINCIPLE

Contemporary discussions of consent recognize its fragmented and malleable nature, making it a matter of continuing relevance to peacekeepers in the field, but they can also make it sound like a primarily practical concern. The capstone doctrine emphasizes the importance of consent to the PKO’s “political and physical” freedom of action, a description repeated verbatim in the United Nations Infantry Battalion Manual (UNIBAM) (UN DPKO 2008: 32; DPKO/DFS 2012a: 13). Interpreting consent as a practical principle misses the moral mark. Ability to interfere with the operations of a PKO does not necessarily mean moral legitimacy. A predatory gang could mightily interfere with

Consent 77 a PKO’s operations. And many organizations – the gamut of peaceful “civil society” groups – clearly have some moral standing but may not have much power to interfere with the PKO’s operations. It would be odd at least to claim that a military group who bent to the whims of a criminal gang, and yet sneered at the concerns of the elders of the church to which a significant number of locals belonged, enjoyed “consent” in a morally relevant sense. One thing that the practical approach gets right is the idea that consent is not just a matter of consulting with the chief formal representatives of a group. It is quite natural to regard a group that persists in interfering with a PKO as having withdrawn its consent, regardless of what its leaders might publicly avow. And it seems reasonable to think of consent in matters of degrees – we could try to split hairs and determine how much interference amounts to a “de facto withdrawal” of consent, but the exercise is unlikely to be fruitful. It makes more sense to think of some groups as more or less consenting to the presence of the mission, with their acceptance going up and down with events and tensions. This also opens the door to thinking of consent from the other side as something that can develop and mature – groups that may not have consented to the presence of the PKO at the start may, through their actions, come to show consent. Like de facto withdrawal, this may sometimes be a de facto grant of consent, as groups drop their hostility and work with the PKO, perhaps even while still professing their opposition. This reinforces the idea that consent is not just a condition of entry, satisfied (or not) at the phase of a conflict and intervention when political leaders are making decisions relevant to jus ad bellum; it is a concern that is carried into the conduct of the PKO. CONSENT AS A MORAL CONCEPT

Let us leave aside any notions of sovereignty as expressing a divine mandate or other authoritarian theories. Also, though I have more affection for them personally, let us leave aside anarchist theories of political morality. There is a long tradition of discussion of what makes a state legitimate that would take us too far afield from peacekeeping. So let us assume two things. Let us assume, first, that peacekeeping is taking place within an international system that, at least for the foreseeable future, is based around states. As a result, peacekeepers will look to states and state-like structures as major loci of consent

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and legitimacy, and the ultimate goal of a PKO will involve some form of reconstituted state. Second, we can assume that states are morally legitimate (i.e. at minimum, it is immoral to undermine their political and territorial integrity, and their citizens have a general but not absolute moral obligation to obey their laws), when they are legitimate, because they are in some meaningful sense organs of self-rule by their citizens. Of course, no state will perfectly live up to this, but to the extent that states enjoy even imperfect moral legitimacy, I will assume that it is based in some way on the value of self-determination. Unsurprisingly, this image of what makes the state legitimate coheres well with Chapter 2’s discussion of peacekeeping as a project designed to facilitate the creation of the state as a large-scale joint project. But I think it also sits squarely within mainstream traditions of political philosophy, and should look familiar and fairly uncontroversial to, for example, social contract theorists and civic republicans. The moral point of requiring consent to the peacekeeping mission is that consent by the state or the “main parties” should reflect consent by the population. And the consent of the population subject to the PKO is needed to legitimate the coercive aspects of the mission. This creates an immediate problem. In the context of a stable, wellfunctioning, democratic (or at least consultative) state, we can say with a straight face that when the state takes action it acts as an agent or representative or reflection of “the people.” States are inevitably imperfect in this respect, many dramatically so. Not so in the situations peacekeepers face. There is no organization whose actions can be imputed to “the people,” and so it is not clear that there is any way that the people can consent to, and hence legitimate, the PKO’s presence. Creating the conditions under which its presence can be legitimated is the major in bello concern peacekeepers should have with consent. THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE

It is tempting to think of “the will of the people,” or “what the people want,” as something that exists in some freestanding metaphysical sense, and of the procedures and institutions of democracies or other governmental forms simply as ways of revealing it. On this view, nondemocratic systems can be in accord with the will of the people just as well as democratic ones can be – so long as the Queen does what the people want, it is as legitimate as if the Prime Minister does it. If

Consent 79 democratic systems have an advantage, it is just because they are for some reason more reliably in accord with the popular will. Unfortunately, there are well-known problems with this analysis (for a fairly comprehensive overview, see Riker 1988). In short, there is no reliably unproblematic way to convert individual preferences over a range of options into a collective preference. Famously, Arrow’s General Possibility Theorem (sometimes called the Arrow Impossibility Theorem) established that no social choice function exists that translates individual rankings of at least three alternatives into a group ranking of the alternatives that simultaneously satisfies a number of plausible desiderata on a social choice, such as that no one person’s preferences should rule, and that if everyone prefers one option to another the group should be taken to prefer that option (ibid.: 115–19).2 A similar result emerges if we try to treat the decision to consent as not the creation of a preference ranking, but the making of a collective judgment. Any procedure for creating collective judgments, bound by certain reasonable constraints (such as that the collectivizing function cannot be “Whatever the individual judgments are, the group judgment will always be X”), will be subject to the “doctrinal paradox” (sometimes the discursive paradox) – no procedure can assure that rational individual judgments will give rise to a rational group j­udgment (List and Pettit 2002). These formal results create a serious issue – there is no way to compare the outcome of some procedure to “the will of the people.” We can compare procedures to each other and say that this one is more inclusive, that one more efficient, and so forth. For the situation of PKO consent, the key upshot is that the people in the area of operations cannot consent to the presence or actions of the PKO in the absence of a procedure that is legitimate for reasons other than that it expresses the will of the people. And, we should recall, some form of being able to respect the will of the people is the moral core of caring about consent in the first place. A More Sober Look at the “Will of the People” We can find a more coherent and operationalizable version of the moral intuition that a PKO is only legitimate if it enjoys the consent of the population among whom it is intervening by setting our sights a bit lower. Rather than the utopian vision of an entire polity acting as one,

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we can look at how sub-groups come together to act in the interest of something resembling a common good, and what seems to make them valued and accepted by the wider population. Pettit suggests dropping the notion of action by the popular will, and instead focusing on action in pursuit of the common good, where such action is understood as action supported by values that enjoy ­communal endorsement (Pettit 2004a: 58–60). Values that are supported by the community are those that are “publicly avowable.” That is, they are the values that the community’s social practices of deliberation on collective action allow to pass muster (Pettit 2004b: 162–4). The fund of arguments that will pass muster in this way, on Pettit’s account, is intensely practical. While Pettit identifies certain stylized forms of argument that are likely to be accepted, particularly appeals to the general interests of the community as a community, and claims that some decision would harm a sub-group to the point that its continued participation in the community would be unreasonable, the exact parameters of acceptable and unacceptable reasons are left as a matter of the group’s evolving practice, in particular practices that bring the largest number of voices effectively into the public conversation (ibid.: 166–8; more on this below). On Pettit’s account, and as implied by my own account in Chapter 2, shared values, and hence the “common good,” make sense only among groups that share a practice (in particular, a practice of deciding how to make collective decisions). This puts peacekeepers in an awkward position, at least on initial entry. The straightforward moral intuition is that their presence is not legitimate unless consented to by the whole population – only a statist bias makes it at all plausible that a state whose legitimacy is not accepted by most people in the area, even if coupled with “main parties” who also lack such legitimacy, could legitimate the PKO’s use of force and violence among the very population that rejects it. But consent by the whole population is precisely what peacekeepers cannot have at the outset, not just because it is difficult to poll the whole population, but because no relevant consentgiving agent exists – there is no social practice that could authorize the PKO while acting for the common good, because there is no common good. Pettit avoids this problem by simply being statist. He assumes that our political theory is concerned with justifying the coercive actions of a state that enjoys more or less unequivocal control over an area, and

Consent 81 that we can identify a single societal deliberative practice that identifies which values are to be used by decision-makers in that state when exercising its control (“Republican theory has no truck with this sort of conceit [that we should take seriously the question of whether there ought to be a state], taking the state or something like the state . . . as an inevitable presence in social life.” Pettit 2005: 196). These assumptions are arguable even for stable states, but are clearly not satisified in the PKO context. A PKO faces neither a single “people” nor a mass of atomized individuals, but a patchwork of formal organizations and informal groupings supporting diverse but interacting deliberative processes. In such a situation, the guiding metaphor for the PKO should be building rather than securing consent. Aspirational Unity The first element in this approach is to view the population in the area of operations as a unified whole, but only in potential. The aim point for the PKO should be that in the end, a political community is created that is cohesive enough to support some kind of coherent deliberative practice that can make legitimate decisions about large-scale collective action. This does not mean trying to create a system in which everyone participates all the time, such as a direct democracy or a plebiscitary system. Realistically, any system that a PKO fosters and endorses is going to have liberal-democratic procedures as a central practice, such as periodic elections. But these are not the whole story. A system that has elections can be deeply flawed in its ability to pursue the common good, and the ability of a system to do anything like pursue a common good will rely on many practices and institutions besides those of electoral democracy. In particular, any feasible system will require different parts of complex judgments to be made by different sub-units of the system. This is implicit in the concept, in UN doctrine, of “partial consent.” Partial consent is not a concept easily applied to the case of consent between individual human beings, from which international relations and international law models of consent take their model. In the case of individuals we can make sense of gradations in consent – morally/intuitively we may want to distinguish between grudging acquiescence, cool acceptance, and enthusiastic embrace. But offering

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a degree of consent is different from consenting in part and refusing in part (what could we mean by saying that my left arm consents but not my right?). Such considerations might underwrite an impulse to look for the “head” of a corporate agent, and identify the corporate agent’s consent with that privileged individual or body’s consent.3 Statism is one obvious way of doing this, for a peacekeeping mission – if the territorial state consents, even if it is not in de facto control of all of the state, then “consent” has occurred. Taking this as the baseline leads to the need for a concept of “partial consent,” but can also make it look odd. If state consent is the core of consent, then why are not any groups that oppose or obstruct the PKO simply “spoilers” with no more political standing than criminals? Or, if we want something more like “the people” consenting, how do we know when enough consent is given to the PKO for it to “count”? The problem is trying to identify “consent” with an act of any particular part of the system, rather than with the system as a whole. Any judgment or action of a corporate agent like a “people” or “political community” is a corporate action. Consider a simple(ish) case, like a marriage. When my wife and I were married, the action was a complex one, extended at least to embrace my wife and myself.4 It would be nonsense to ask, “Which one of you did the marrying?” Marriage is inherently a joint project. Similarly, a nation or a sub-state group can go to war, but it is nonsensical to look for the “war-making part.” War is a feature of the overall action and organization of the political group. Recognition that consent does not take place at a single moment or between fixed and univocal parties immediately helps clear away some unhelpful ways of looking at consent. Gow and Dandeker (1995: 171) claim that a focus on consent is “simplistic and misguided.” But they understand consent as a simple question of whether or not a party will allow (give permission) for the peacekeepers to act, and contrast this with a more complex concept of “legitimacy” which involves the principles on which the “compact” between peacekeepers and others in the area of operations is based, the effectiveness of the PKO in carrying out the tasks others expect of it, and other factors that promote “acceptance” of the mission (ibid.: 173). Mersiades follows them in assuming that legitimacy is a matter of forming social contracts, and that the problem for peacekeepers is that they are entering into contracts with multiple actors (Mersiades 2005: 206–8). This leaves him with

Consent 83 an anemic concept of legitimacy focused on the costs and benefits to parties of upholding explicit agreements (ibid.: 209). There is an important truth in these accounts, which is that the peacekeepers’ relationship with elements of the population must be built over time, and has much to do with how well the peacekeepers do things that people expect of them. But focusing on contracts puts the cart before the horse – it is telling that Mersiades speaks easily of “the population” or “the people” making contracts, because the problem is that without “legitimacy” in the sense of systems that delegate individuals to speak on behalf of a coordinated body, there cannot really be any “contracts.” Recognizing that legitimacy must be built on joint action before it is built on contracts lets us construct an account of consent that honors the non-enmity principle without falling into the kind of inaction that Gow and Dandeker rightly decry. Consent should not allow peacekeepers carte blanche to defeat and destroy spoiler groups, but encourage them to try to understand their reasons for action and find ways to promote relationships with them (and between spoilers and other social factions); but it also does not completely bar the PKO from taking action that some person or group does not agree to, any more than police are restrained by the fact that a criminal does not want to go to prison. The key is to see any individual action as embedded within an emerging system of judgments that peacekeepers hope to extend through the whole population. Judgments by groups, and actions based on those judgments, are made through a process of distributed deliberation and coordination. Individual sub-groups must be able to see themselves as engaged in some coherent sub-project. In the case of going to war, for example, there will be political leaders who vote on the decision to make war, military officers who plan the campaign, merchants or procurers who purchase weapons, and so forth. And those sub-groups must see themselves as meaningfully connected to other sub-groups, such that they can both do their part relatively autonomously and understand their part as part of a more comprehensive action. Richardson has most thoroughly worked out the concept of distributed deliberation, and identified most of the general problems that beset simple hierarchical attempts to handle it (Richardson 2002). No realistic agent or group could specify how some group action is to be implemented down to the last detail – that would be akin to expecting a general to micro-manage a war down to the movement of each

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individual soldier. The most plausible image is of the agent (possibly a group agent) at the top of the hierarchy setting very general goals that are then “simply” implemented by sub-units. But as Richardson points out, such implementation is far from simple (Richardson 2002, chs 8–9). When unforeseen decisions arise (and they will, since no individual or generalist group can plan for everything – hence the need for distribution), they will at least sometimes involve more than simply applying the general guidance from the top to a particular situation. What counts as proper implementation may involve a value judgment about what an open-textured directive ought to mean. Attempts to “naturalize” this problem by making what people value descriptive data for an algorithmic process, like cost–benefit analysis, are ultimately “stupid,” to use Richardson’s technical language (ibid.: 121–2). That is, they do not allow enough flexibility in revising ends and valuations as new information comes to light and as the deliberative process proceeds. Cost–benefit analysis (or other forms of standard preference-ranking approaches) takes preferences and options as fixed, and the problem for analysis is to select the best one. But they cannot do otherwise, since preferences are taken as brute facts about people, not parts of a deliberative process. Richardson criticizes cost–benefit analysis for not allowing for important features of practical reasoning, like generating new solutions and finding ways of resolving conflicts rather than determining who should win out – in my jargon, for not allowing space for the virtue of creativity (Richardson 2002: 127–9). Richardson’s preferred model is “specification.” Sub-polity groups need to interpret the directives they receive from higher up in the light of shared values, not just set procedures. They do this by taking the directives they receive from other sub-polity groups as starting points for their own practical deliberations, building on that in the same way that an individual builds on an initial idea about what to do (and in well-functioning distributed systems, they are engaged in processes by which they receive additional input – Pettit’s “contestation” – and provide interim outputs to other parts of the system all along the way, so that there can be a reciprocal and mutually adjusting process). In contemporary militaries, for example, this model is enshrined in the doctrine of “commander’s intent.” Understanding commander’s intent means not just following orders and applying them to particular circumstances, but adapting orders to changing conditions and even ignoring or disobeying them when they become

Consent 85 inapplicable or counterproductive (“the commander’s intent spurs individual ­initiative . . . Commander’s intent, coupled with mission, directs subordinates toward mission accomplishment, especially when current orders no longer fit the situation and subordinates must decide how to deviate from them,” Operations 2008, §§5–55, 5–57; see also Levine, forthcoming). This brings us back to Pettit’s shared-value model. We have a basis for interpreting sub-groups as playing parts in a distributed system of deliberation and action so long as two conditions are met. The actions of each sub-group must be intelligible as arising from a process of interpreting and building on the action of other sub-groups, even if significant reinterpretation happens in this process. Conceptually, what makes their action intelligible as interpretation is that there are shared values across the sub-groups. Members of sub-groups may dispute with each other about whether everyone is adhering to the shared values correctly and sincerely, but the framework of shared value is what makes those disputes themselves intelligible. Richardson articulates this theory in the context of a very particular concern, which is how the actions of bureaucratic democracies can be justified given that members of the bureaucracy must make valuejudgments rather than simply transmitting the will of the people from elections and referendums through bureaucratic agencies. But his theory of distributed deliberation generalizes nicely. We can think of specification and interpretation not only in a “one-way” context where very general directives are handed downward to specialized agencies that then fill in their details, but also in a “two-way” context where general principles and programs are handed off between groups with various scopes and levels of power, and are interpreted and reinterpreted as they circulate in the system. This is an advantage for the peacekeeping context, where no hierarchy (in the area of operations, one hopes the PKO has one) – ­bureaucratic or otherwise – is in place. Hierarchy is important for a naïve picture of a democratic political community where democratic legitimacy is conferred by elections that select the top officials. But it is less important for a model of legitimacy like Richardson’s, where it is the operation of shared values among various groups that legitimates the distributed decision. In this way, a distributed model is better suited for understanding a political community made up of multiple, often antagonistic, factions simultaneously aspiring to be a coherent polity.

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The understanding of what goes on at the “interface” between different organized sub-units of the polity as specification, in Richardson’s sense, of broader concepts, principles, and judgments requires that the process be intelligible as truth-seeking in some way. Consider, for instance, CIVPOL and local police who are sharing duties to monitor displaced person camps and surrounding areas.5 Even if both the CIVPOL and the government police can agree that they are sharing some very general goal, such as “policing” or “preventing crime,” if they share no structure of values beyond that they are likely to run into intractable (or at least difficult-to-tract) disputes. For example, one interview partner who had served with the AMIS police told me a story that “affected” him deeply.6 He had been deployed to an Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in which AMIS police were coordinating local police. A person came to the AMIS CIVPOL headquarters, seeking refuge – he was being pursued by a group of people accusing him of stealing cattle (a fairly common crime in the area), and was in fear for his life. He did not want to be handed over to local police, some of whom were among the people demanding his surrender. The AMIS police tried to negotiate, to no avail, and even sneak him out of their headquarters in disguise. Unfortunately, in the end, they decided that they could not protect him at the headquarters from the increasingly violent group outside, and handed him over – my interview partner believed to his death. In such a situation, there is a clear failure in terms of a meeting of minds between the two sides. The problem was probably not that the local police simply did not care about law, order, or protection. In fact, this interview partner, along with most former members of the AMIS police I spoke with, were (somewhat to my surprise) fairly positive in their overall assessment of both government and rebel-affiliated police in Darfur. In this case, there is no immediate reason to think that their stated reason for wanting AMIS to hand over the suspected thief was insincere. The problem is: is dealing out rough justice to thieves a reasonable specification of “policing”? It is not clearly unreasonable – most people would probably say that (other things being equal) it would be reasonable for the police to apprehend thieves. And, in a situation in which livestock are crucial for subsistence farming and survival, as they are for many people in Darfur, we might even be understanding of the

Consent 87 view that harsh treatment or death are appropriate punishments. That is, while most readers of this book probably would not agree with the death penalty for cattle rustling, it does not seem like the sort of thing only an evil person would support. Of course, if this individual were killed, it would be an extrajudicial execution, and criticizable on that front; my point is not that the movement police did the right thing in supporting the mob, but rather the much weaker point that they could at least make an intelligible argument that they were doing the right thing. Without some shared values, there was no possibility of a coming to terms between the AMIS police and the locals. To the extent that we can even make their encounter mutually intelligible, it is because their values are not entirely unshared – we can understand the motivations of both sides, and we can imagine (if the moment had been cooler) the AMIS police impressing upon the locals the importance of proper judicial process, even if the individual in question was a thief. In a nutshell, for distributed deliberation to make sense as more than just a number of independent groups occasionally using the same terms and reacting to each other, we need to be able to interpret them as engaged in, as they make decisions, a common project of asking “What should we do?” To make sense of this, we need to imagine them in a context in which that question has an answer, and so the inquiry is truth-seeking. When one part of the complex and federated “we” specifies joint judgments or intentions in some way, this needs to be seen not just as making a choice, but as (at least an essay at) discovering some detail of how what we have decided works out in a particular aspect. This does not mean that some people in the group cannot disagree with what the sub-group has decided, but that their disagreement is shaped by being a dispute about some fact of the matter, not just a shouting match. And such disputes should issue in “deep compromise” – not just the outcome of a bargaining process where we each agree to serve our interests in part and acquiesce in part, but the outcome of a normatively fruitful process in which we accept the outcome in part because we shift our conception of our values and ends in a c­ ompromise fashion (Richardson 2002: 147). In my schematic police case, this would be the difference between two kinds of compromise that might have taken place. AMIS police might have gotten the crowd to let them keep custody of the suspected thief since he was already in their headquarters, but agreed not to let

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anyone else take refuge there without first checking with the movement police; this would be a “shallow” (and obviously problematic) compromise. Alternatively, AMIS police might have conceded that the suspected thief was unlikely to be appropriately punished if he was a thief and was handed over to the GoS – but gotten the movement police to agree to some form of mediation between the man and the people allegedly harmed by his theft. This would have been a “deep compromise” so long as the movement police could come to see the value of such a process over rough justice, and the AMIS police could see the reasonableness of anger at thieves.7 There are two important elements to note about how such deep compromises can be forged. First, truth-seeking inquiry needs to be subject to some process-independent standards. That is, in the kinds of cases that concern us, whether some judgment or action on behalf of a sub-unit is to be seen as a reasonable specification of “what we should do” cannot depend only on what that sub-unit decides (by whatever decision procedure it uses). To make sense of the sub-unit being right, we need to be able to make sense of it being wrong. Second, these standards need not be an explicit part of the deliberation/argument they can be background commitments that ­ shape the structure of inquiry. In particular, they need not be taken as fixed. We cannot get truth-oriented inquiry started unless we are guided in the background by some idea of what makes for a good decision. But this does not mean that we cannot make some of our background assumptions explicit in deliberation and thereby modify, reject, specify, or ­reaffirm them (Richardson 2002: 137–8). In the police example, the very fact that the movement police consider themselves “police” in an intelligible way means that they accept certain commitments to respect for law, protection of populations, etc. They may accept these in ways that others would find distorted – for example, caring about protecting only members of their political faction – but if their commitments are so far from these as to not even be understandable variations on them, we would have to concede that they are not police at all (and, as noted above, that does not seem to have been the case in Darfur). It would be hard to have a conversation about “what police should do” in the absence of such commitments. But the police do not need to hold their police-ness in abeyance as if the conversation were “If we are police, this is what we should do.” And it is possible for them to have a conversation that turns on “Let us

Consent 89 consider whether we should protect everyone or limit our protection to other members of our extended kin group,” that could turn out to change their views on that topic. Combining the Richardson and Pettit accounts provides an attractive way of conceptualizing building the necessary unity for consent out of a fractured post-conflict situation. There is no conceptual difficulty or impossibility result associated with members of a group sharing values, and judgments being “group judgments” in the sense that they are based on those shared values. In terms of the Richardson model, so long as we have shared values we can make sense of the judgments that some sub-group’s decision procedures issue in as being right or wrong by the lights of the question “What should we do?” The values are implicit in many practices, including but going beyond practices of explicitly arguing about values. The basic approach can then be: the government, if it still exists in any fashion, is an important sub-unit of the whole population for deliberation purposes. If it consents to the presence of the peacekeepers, this can reasonably be seen as a sort of suggested answer to the question “Should we – the whole political/social community – consent to the presence of peacekeepers?” The next step for peacekeepers, then, is to find ways to bring more social sub-units into the conversation about what the community should do. Narrowly, this follows from the moral importance of selfdetermination that underlies the moral import of consent in the first place. To respect self-determination, given their coercive aspects, PKOs should aim at an answer to the question “Should the peacekeepers be here?” that is maximally inclusive – and take seriously the moral pressure to leave if the answer looks like a dug-in “no.” Broadly, this is a matter of building a stable and secure political community, which is what peacekeeping is all about. This model of consent is consonant with the “relational contract” understanding of consent that Johnstone has proposed for UN peacekeepers. “Transactional” contracts are one-off agreements of the sort that I rejected as an analysis of peacekeeping consent at the beginning of the chapter. “Relational” contracts are ones in which what is important is the establishment of an ongoing relationship, and cannot be reduced to a list of well-specified obligations in advance (Johnstone 2011: 172–3). Consent to a peacekeeping operation is more like a relational contract than a transactional one, in that it sets up a relationship

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intended to (re)constitute a polity, a network of political relationships. It provides a framework for that reconstruction rather than a set of specific actions to be undertaken. As Johnstone points out, in cases where peacekeeping makes sense, even hostile parties have made some sort of commitment to building a new relationship; moreover, any explicit agreements about the peace or consent to the PKO are just as useful as “living documents” that can inform disputes about how that relationship is developing as they are as standards against which actions can be checked. In the Richardson terminology, the provision of particular peace agreements and the like can be seen as some of the general norms that are inevitably interpreted and specified in implementation by the various parties. Inclusion and Exclusion: The “Main Parties” As noted above, current UN doctrine requires consent from the “main parties.” This standard, in light of the analysis of consent I am offering here, is problematic – but not entirely off-base. The danger in the main parties standard comes from the fact that the theory I have outlined makes consent most morally respectable when the deliberation is distributed across a maximally inclusive process. The basic problem is that imposing a decision, especially one that brings potential coercion, like the presence of a PKO, is morally questionable if the people subject to the coercion do not at least share its values. As Johnstone notes, explicit peace agreements (and the Status-of-forces Agreements (SOFAs) and Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) that surround PKOs) “implicate stakeholders other than the immediate parties” (Johnstone 2011: 173). Essentially, this is what Pettit identifies as the “false positive danger” (Pettit 2004b: 167–9). A system returns a false positive with respect to the common good if it misidentifies some private or sectional good for the common good (ibid.: 166). If the PKO consults only with the parties to an explicit peace agreement, or only with the factions well-armed enough to cause security problems, it risks misidentifying the values that those parties share with values that are common among the whole population. And, morally speaking, it is clear that the ideal is “a social compact with the population as a whole” (Johnstone 2011: 176). PKOs may, as a practical matter, or as a matter of embracing the lesser evil, sometimes need to respect the values of powerful elites while ignoring

Consent 91 those of the broader population. They may also have good reason to accept a “good enough” compact with elites if that is likely to leave in place a polity that is secure and well-ordered enough to eventually become more internally unified and better express truly shared values – peacekeepers are not going to create perfect democratic (or other) political communities on their own, and must leave much of that work to the communities themselves. But I cannot see any argument that they should take the values of the elites rather than widely shared ones as the ones they desire to empower in a first-best fashion. Pettit’s solution is to provide for “contestatory” institutions and procedures (Pettit 2004b: 168; for a more extended treatment, but not in this specific context, see also Pettit 1997: 186–200). Above, I argued that peacekeepers should regard consent from any particular institution or group – in particular, whatever may remain of the state ­apparatus – as something like a proposal that the presence of the PKO serves the common good. The question is then how they should assess this “proposal.” One answer would be to say that the peacekeepers themselves should determine whether their presence, and whether any particular action of theirs, is in the common interest of the population. This would undercut self-determination again and anyway impose an unreasonable epistemic burden on the peacekeepers. A better answer is to check with other members of the population. Contestatory procedures allow members of the population to challenge decisions by sub-groups that claim to promote the common good, and dispute their conception of that good. Some of the most obvious contestatory institutions are democratic procedures, such as elections. If we think of elections as ways in which the people express their preferences about which candidates or policies they “will,” we risk running into variations of the Arrow and doctrinal paradoxes. But if we think of them as contestations, similar problems do not arise. A single national election is a blunt instrument of contestation, but it can at least express the view that, whatever the understanding of shared values the losing party or parties has or have, it is not broadly accepted. And that can spur the losing factions to engage with the populace, trying to build up a new winning coalition, by taking their perspectives into account. The next section will discuss in more detail how military peacekeepers should form part of the contestatory structure. But before that, we

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should deal with the question of whether anyone should be excluded, and if so who. The doctrinal requirement of consent by the “main parties” implies that some should be. One way to read this is as a weak, practical limit. It is impossible for peacekeepers to get everyone to agree to their presence. In this sense, the limit is probably unobjectionable, but it also makes no deep moral point – it would be ideal, on this understanding, for the PKO to get everyone’s consent. Or more precisely, on the distributed model of judgments (including consent) I have been outlining, it would be ideal if the PKO were accepted by a process of judgment that issued from the relevant sub-unit(s) of a distributed social decision-making structure in which anyone inclined to contest it was able to find a stable and acceptable compromise. The only reason not to make this a criterion of a PKO’s adequacy is that it is impossible – it implies nothing about whether this should be the PKO’s ideal goal. But since the “non-main” parties are often “spoilers,” we should consider whether the doctrine could or should be given a stronger reading. The clear implication is that the issue is not just that the PKO cannot reach out to every faction in the society, but that it need not or even should not allow some to influence the developing political community.8 Pettit focuses on the inclusion/exclusion of reasons rather than groups, and he makes the cut between reasons precisely in terms of ensuring that included reasons do not exclude groups. A reasonable group will allow to pass only reasons that they can understand as being connected to the common good, or that reasonably protect a relatively marginal group from having what it values trodden upon (Pettit 2004b: 162). Since internal violence indicates a rather serious disagreement about the common good, and is paradigmatically used to dominate and marginalize an opponent group, it is quite reasonable to assume that no group would allow a sectional interest to “bootstrap” arguments that are otherwise rejected in deliberative forums by adding “Do this or we will kill you/members of your group” to the acceptable types of reasons. Note, however, that ruling out the threat of violence as an acceptable reasoning strategy is not the same as ruling out concerns of groups that use violence. The two issues are orthogonal – a peaceful group may be committed to values that can only be defended by reasons that are accepted in no public deliberative practice, and a violent group may

Consent 93 simultaneously present publicly avowable reasons for its positions (this is the point, after all, of having a political arm). This is conceptually true, but risks overstating the disconnect. In the normal politics of an established and stable state (or other political community), it may be entirely reasonable to have a rule for public deliberation about the good that bars people associated with any group that egregiously violates norms of good conduct from further participation (at least until some rehabilitation criteria are met). These restrictions could take the form of formal rules – any group that publicly identified itself as affiliated with al-Qaeda in the US would be arrested rather than allowed to engage in debate – or informal ones – it is legal to publicly identify as a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the US, but you are unlikely to gain an even-handed mainstream hearing of your views, even particular views unrelated to your racism. In the environment that peacekeepers face, however, things may be more complicated. The PKO certainly has the power to shape the scope of actors who matter for consent – so long as the practical standard of acquiescence of the most powerful armed parties is met, there will be little other groups can do to force peacekeepers out. And groups that are excluded from the structures that peacekeepers are building to solidify consent to their presence are likely to be excluded from other community-building and state-building activities in which the PKO engages, making them less likely to have an effective, non-marginalized presence in a renewed state after the peacekeepers leave. So it is of moral importance to ask who they should exclude. A seemingly obvious answer would be “those who have used violence.” This cannot be right – it would exclude nearly all important parties to the conflict. Peacekeepers are there because political violence has been rampant. And this directly conflicts with the “main parties” principle, as how one gets to be a “main party” is very often by being willing and able to use violence. Better, but still imperfect, would be to exclude parties who showed a continued willingness to use violence against the peacekeepers themselves. The practical problem with this standard is that it is fairly typical for “main parties” to also be involved with violence against the PKO, either directly or through proxy groups. Morally, it is a problematically circular criterion when we are discussing consent. Excluding a group from the political and social processes of building broad-based consent because it does not consent to the PKO presence – and expresses that

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lack of consent through violent resistance – makes the consent criterion meaningless, or at least purely pragmatic. Simply taking the “main parties” standard at face value, however, swings the pendulum too far in the other direction. Most nonviolent groups will not meet this standard, despite the fact that in many situations nonviolent groups will represent the interests of important social constituencies. Nonviolent groups (and individuals) are likely to acquiesce in the presence of the PKO, especially if it is clear they have no say either way, but we should not simply presume they consent – especially when it is not clear what it means for them to consent, outside the context of some distributed procedure that involves them. Fortunately, peacekeepers need not look only to procedural questions, like the use or non-use of violence, because they do not operate in a moral vacuum. As Johnstone points out, the relational contract that peacekeepers are trying to forge with the local population is shaped by the high-level commitment of the peacekeepers to basic human rights norms (and, I would add, the norm of securing peaceful political ­relations, to deflect the “scourge of war”) (Johnstone 2011: 174). These norms provide boundary criteria for the political community peacekeepers morally care about. It would be too quick to simply say that peacekeepers should exclude any groups that do not comply with human rights norms. Read strictly, this would bring them back to the problem of excluding almost everyone. In addition, groups and individuals may have a variety of reasons for failing to comply with human rights norms – including a perception that the violation was necessary to respond to some great pressure (such as an existential threat to a community), weakness of will (which loses some of its air of apology if we think of leaders of weaker groups who may be driven in part by fear or anger, rather than making calculated choices to abuse human rights), or a different interpretation of what the norm demands.9 A better criterion is respect for human rights norms (including the norm of seeking peace). What I mean here by respect for the norm is a willingness to take it as normatively relevant, even in the absence of compliance. Someone who sees a norm as superseded in this case, but generally binding, respects the norm. So does someone who sees herself as culpable for a failure to comply, or who disagrees about the content of the norm. In general, this respect for human rights norms will be a background structure of the continued political accommodations that are

Consent 95 made as the PKO progresses. Groups that violate human rights norms will end up in conflict with peacekeepers and other factions in a way that interferes with political progress (even if it does not end it), while general compliance with human rights norms will facilitate political progress. Peace is the most fundamental structuring background condition – the most fundamental breach of any meaningful consent would be if a significant number of social groups no longer act as if peace is important and can at least sometimes trump their desire to get their way. On occasion, human rights norms may become grist for explicit deliberation (just as in Richardson’s model, democratic norms can be explicitly assessed, and in Pettit’s the structures of contestation can be contested). In this case, they can serve as vague and opentextured norms that can be specified through a process of distributed deliberation. Let me note two things in concluding the discussion of how the PKO should structure inclusion and exclusion as it tries to shepherd the process of creating the very sort of community that could full-bloodedly consent to its presence. The main parties standard is at best a pragmatic guide. From a moral standpoint, it is not very helpful. What should guide peacekeepers instead is a willingness to engage individuals and factions who show some respect for peace and human rights, even if very imperfect and in the breach, and try to draw them closer into a distributed deliberative process guided by those broad values. They should also demonstrate creativity and moral imagination in approaching groups that might be willing to show such respect if approached with an open hand. How powerful the faction is is less important than how well it can fit into an inclusive process (and how much more inclusive the process becomes through that inclusion – groups that are part of distributed political systems with a wide membership are more desirable partners than groups that do not engage with others in that way). Second, the fact that peacekeepers will need to help guide the expansion of the deliberative community – just to create a corporate body that can consent! – and help establish and maintain processes of contestation to that end shows that peacekeepers should not regard themselves as external guides of the distributed deliberation. So long as they remain, they are part of it. The part that military peacekeepers should play is the subject of the next section.

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The Morality of Peacekeeping PEACEKEEPERS AS PART OF A SYSTEM OF DISTRIBUTED DELIBERATION

The exclusion of groups beyond the “main parties” is not only a theoretical concern. A Rwandan officer involved in training African Union/ United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) peacekeepers pointed out that the fact that the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) had included only the GoS and one rebel group (Minni Minawi’s faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA)) meant that the requirement to uphold the DPA set up a compact only between the UN, the GoS, and the SLA/Minni that excluded other factions. But, he argued, there was still a need to establish relationships with “non-signatories,” and UNAMID was lucky wherever the non-signatories were willing to cooperate.10 One consequence of the discussion so far is that, as I noted, we cannot conceive of peacekeepers as separate from the system of distributed deliberation that they are trying to help stand up, in part so that the relationship of consent that they have with the population in their area of operations can be broadened and deepened. If this sounds a bit like the peacekeepers having their thumb on the scale of consent, of course that is because they do, but not in a way that should concern us morally. Consider by way of (deeply imperfect) analogy, the case of marriage, which both Johnstone and Richardson use as a prime example of the kind of social structure their theories are intended to illuminate (Richardson 2002: 140; Johnstone 2011: 172). The decision to get married is a judgment that two people make jointly.11 It then becomes a relationship that both people maintain and develop, at least if it is going to survive. But both before the decision is made, and so long as the relationship persists, at least one member of the pair is actively promoting it. It is clearly unobjectionable for (at least) one person in a couple deciding to get married to desire to get married, even though she is “pushing” a decision that she will have a hand in making – in fact, it would be bizarre if that were not the case. And there is no problem even with the relationship starting with only one person desiring it, and trying to persuade the other to join her (on pain of courtship and dating being immoral in themselves). Such a relationship, where a party is both a partisan of a particular vision of the relationship and one of the people who gets to “vote” on that vision, only becomes objectionable if the other is being “dragged along,” or if the

Consent 97 party is using bullying, intimidation, or other tactics that are unfair by the lights of the concept of the relationship. But this is just the familiar point that distributed deliberation should aim at the common good, and judging on shared values requires that only acceptable reasons be used. I should not use “I can physically overpower you, that’s why,” as a reason for my wife to stay married to me, and peacekeepers should not use “If you do not consent to our presence, we will shoot you” as a reason for people to consent. The question, then, is what they should do. A PKO as a whole brings a large number of capabilities – in the case of transitional administrations, enough to be a (somewhat limited) substitute for the state as a whole. Here, I will focus on what the military peacekeepers can and should do. A major role for military peacekeepers is to protect channels for contestation. In order for the judgments and actions of organized subunits through which “the society” takes action and makes judgments, and which will eventually form the basis for a rehabilitated state, to meaningfully count as embodying self-determination for the society as a whole, people who are not currently able to make their voices heard if they disagree with the values espoused by those groups must be empowered. To the extent that significant social groups do not regard the organized units that act in their name with at least acquiescence, we can talk only provisionally about consent (or any other social judgment).12 Creation/rehabilitation of contestation institutions that do not exist or are poorly functioning will largely be a matter for the non-military elements of a PKO. But one barrier to participation in whatever contestatory institutions exist is sheer physical safety. In the abstract, we can talk of contestation through public deliberation, but in the PKO context we should not forget that public deliberation requires being able to make one’s way safely to public spaces and speak without undue fear of harm. Contestation will provide a particularly dangerous sort of exposure in many cases. In the first place, it specifically requires that people interact across group boundaries. If there is ever going to be a truly collective process of judgment, the pressing need will be to create ways for groups that are at odds in social conflicts to come to recognize shared values. This requires that they be able to deliberate with each other – and the range of deliberation is not usually much greater than

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the range of a weapon.13 And, given the argument in Chapter 2 and the appeal to Richardson’s implicit/background practices, they will even more fundamentally need to be drawn into joint practical projects. Creating this safety will often require the presence of armed peacekeepers. The military component can do much to help create social consent by serving as a guarantor of safety in intergroup contacts. Ultimately, this means understanding “protection” in a way that emphasizes safe connection rather than stable segregation – a topic I will return to in depth in Chapters 7 and 9 under the heading “protecting-with.” Focusing more narrowly on consent, we should not discount the consent-inducing effects of the direct physical safety benefit that peacekeepers provide. In all the abstract discussion, it can be easy to miss the fact that a major way the situation into which peacekeepers deploy likely violates most of the population’s sense of shared value is that it regularly exposes them to arbitrary violence.14 If peacekeepers are seen to be effectively protecting people from violence as they live their lives, this will not just tend to make them more positively inclined to the PKO, but will also serve as a way of building a functional deliberative system since it forces violent groups to seek their ends in ways that are more in line with the structuring human rights norms, as well as a simple value that most people can be assumed to endorse – the value of respecting their own life. In other words, if a militia cannot kill people to get its way, it will be forced to find another way, likely to be more acceptable. Creativity will be necessary. Because consent is a relational concept, peacekeepers cannot simply take their relationship to the population to stand as sorted once the UN has signed a SOFA with the host government(s). Peacekeepers, even military components, will need to be on the lookout for ways to better integrate with the local population. If they are resisted by locals, or find themselves at odds, their first impulse should be to find ways to accommodate and integrate with local values better, so that everyone can look at the interaction and regard it as embodying a consensual relationship, rather than to judge those who they find themselves at odds with. This kind of creativity blends into the attentive creativity required by impartiality, discussed in Chapter 4. Restraint combines with attentiveness and creativity when we return to the question of “permission.” Recall that one concern about consent

Consent 99 is that it will require the PKO to get permission to act from abusive groups, which will not be forthcoming if they aim to stop abuses. The concept of consent outlined here should already blunt this worry. What is important is the consent of the entire system of distributed deliberation, not of any one sub-unit. To the extent that the group opposing the peacekeepers does not stand in any meaningful deliberative relationships to anyone else, the situation is no more problematic than police attempting to thwart a crime. The aim should always be bringing the abusive group into healthier relationships with the rest of the body politic, but given that consent is always partial and provisional, that aim is compatible with not acquiescing in what some particular party wants at any given moment. Peacekeepers should not exclude “spoiler” groups from the scope of people and groups that ultimately need to be brought into the fold, and should seek other ways than direct confrontation – however justified, confrontation is likely to increase opposition and set back this process at least in the short-term using all of their attentiveness, creativity, and restraint. But there is no question of asking permission for individual acts of protection or opposition that can be understood as based on better provisional judgments of the whole peacekeeper + population system. CONCLUSION

Securing initial consent from whatever organized political bodies exist in a potential area of operations is certainly important for any PKO. Practically, an opposed entry is going to be impossible for all but the most robust of peace enforcement operations. And, morally, it is questionable whether any PKO could exist if its very presence is fundamentally opposed by armed elements – this would almost certainly force the PKO and the elements that reject its presence into an existential opposition (at least on the part of the local resisters, who may not be in a position to leave). But the meaning of consent is not exhausted by its application at the point of entry. Consent is better regarded as an ongoing and developing relationship. The best moderate conception of what it would mean for a population or political community as a whole to give consent, to judge a PKO as appropriate and welcome, involves that judgment being made by some procedure – typically by some empowered sub-group – that is broadly accepted within a well-ordered system of

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distributed deliberation. The PKO itself will be part of any such system, and needs to bring it about in part by providing safe opportunities for people to contest the judgments of various sub-groups, including the PKO. Through contestation, values and principles are worked out in a way that everyone can recognize as shared and legitimate, even when disputes remain. And the distinction between “main parties” and everyone else is dangerous – the relevant line for inclusion/­exclusion should be willingness to engage in serious deliberation against a background of peace and human rights (even if peacekeepers must sometimes nudge that willingness along by shutting down abusive lines of action). Any consent that peacekeepers enjoy before their task is done is inevitably provisional in nature – what people consent to may shift as things progress, and a fully functional distributed system that could give consent in the ideal form will not exist so long as peacekeepers are still needed. On this view, “partial consent” is not a breakdown, but the pervasive nature of consent.15 Nonetheless, as in any relationship, morality requires that peacekeepers look for that provisional ­willingness to enter into a relationship and cultivate it continuously. Notes  1. Bellamy and Williams (2010: 282). Bellamy and Williams discuss these nuances of consent under the heading of “peace support operations,” a category that straddles the line between peacekeeping and peace enforcement that I specified in Chapter 1. But their remarks actually apply to nearly all contemporary – and, I suspect, more historical than is sometimes credited – peacekeeping operations, even those that they would not consider peace support.   2. The full list of fairness constraints in Arrow’s proof are universal admissibility of individual orderings, monotonicity, nonimposition, unanimity/Pareto optimality, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and nondictatorship.  3. This could be a way of solving the Arrow paradox via violating non-­ dictatorship or the List/Pettit impossibility result via violating anonymity.  4. We should probably include many more actors, such as our rabbi, the court clerk who issued our marriage license, and the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia where it was issued – after all, it would not make sense to say we were married except against various background institutions of which marriage is a part.

Consent 101   5. As was the case in Darfur, at least in principle, between AMIS police, the GoS police, and rebel police, under the 2006 Abuja agreement (Darfur Peace Agreement 2006, §§234, 264, 268–9, 271–4).   6. Interview 9.  7. It is also, of course, simply a hypothetical example; I am not saying it would have worked or even have been appropriate in this situation.   8. For more on spoilers and the robust approach in the DRC, see Chapter 8.  9. The question of who should have the authoritative determination of a norm/standard’s meaning will be central to Chapter 4, on impartiality. 10. Interview 10. 11. Both Johnstone and Richardson – and I, following them – are clearly thinking of companionate marriages in the modern Western mold, which are now a widespread institution, but of course not the only form of ­marriage that has existed over time or across cultures. 12. Distributed deliberation certainly does not require unanimity – in a healthy system, I may disagree with some collective decision, but recognize it as fair and be willing to go along anyway. If some sub-groups are not even willing to recognize a decision as fair and legitimate, there is a deeper problem. Pettit (1997: 198–200) discusses a series of escalating ways in which unsatisfied groups may be reasonably dealt with, ranging from simple acknowledgment of dissent through some degree of internal autonomy and in extreme cases recognition that they cannot be made part of the community on a mutually agreeable basis, and should be allowed to secede or otherwise isolate themselves. Creativity (discussed below) should mitigate these dangers, but they cannot be eliminated. A consequence of my account of consent is that there may be some areas into which peacekeepers deploy that simply cannot be made into reasonable political communities, and that partition of some sort is always on the table as a last resort – the alternative of insisting that some government must be allowed to rule over people who cannot be reconciled with it is simply tyranny. But these issues are largely going to be “above the pay grade” of the military component. Military peacekeepers are tasked primarily with not taking action that would divide people any further than they need to be divided. 13. Of course, we can deliberate over the phone, Internet, etc. But a society in which all interaction between groups that disagreed with each other needed to be kept at technological arm’s length would clearly not be one that stably shared values. 14. On the arbitrariness of violence and “needless” risk, see also Chapter 7. 15. The element of resistance, even violent resistance, involved in situations where the PKO is challenged by force is more properly understood as a matter of impartiality or use of force, the subject of the next few chapters.

Chapter 4 IMPARTIALITY

INTRODUCTION

The concept of impartiality may in some ways be the most changed of the “holy trinity” principles. Consent is rendered compatible with peacekeepers taking action against the will of parties to the conflict only if we can find some explanation of how that action represents fidelity to some higher concept – in the previous chapter’s terms, some common valuation – and not merely the peacekeepers becoming a party themselves. And impartiality is deeply tied to issues of use of force for similar reasons; if peacekeepers have no enemies, a concept of impartiality is needed to explain why force is being used against this group, despite the fact that peacekeepers are not trying to destroy the group for being what it is. It might seem that impartiality is beyond the concerns of all but the highest-ranking peacekeepers in the field. It is not their job to determine the scope of the mission, but just to follow their mandate, ConOps, and rules of engagement. But there are two reasons why this picture does not work. First, it is too simplistic to think of an organization like a PKO as embodying a strict separation between leaders who decide and grunts who merely implement. Lower levels of the PKO will have to make value judgments in implementing the mandate, and their own understanding of the holy trinity will be key to that. Second, mandates and even concepts of operations and ROEs are often vague or contested – ideally they would not be, or no more so than the limits of guidance enforce, but we do not want to leave actual peacekeepers in the lurch, conceptually, in the name of an ideal chain of command. Let us start with the roots of the impartiality concept at the UN. While mightily strained in ONUC, the conventional wisdom is that 102

Impartiality 103 “traditional” peacekeeping relied on a very conservative understanding of impartiality that forbade taking direct action against any party, no matter how abusive to people or the peace. The principle, as Hammarskjöld put it in the UNEF I summary study, precludes the deployment of United Nations elements in situations of an essentially internal nature. As a matter of course, the United Nations personnel cannot be permitted in any sense to be a party to internal conflicts. Their role must be limited to external aspects of the political situation as, for example, infiltration or other activities affecting international boundaries. Even in the case of UNEF, where the United Nations has itself taken a stand on decisive elements in the situation which gave rise to the creation of the Force, it was explicitly stated that the Force should not be used to enforce any specific political solution of pending problems or to influence the political balance decisive to such a solution. (Hammarskjöld 1958, §§166–7) This is easily read as an interpretation of impartiality as meaning strict neutrality. But it is difficult to reconcile with two features endemic to contemporary peacekeeping. First, most peacekeeping forces now are deployed into internal conflicts, rather than international ones. It is less clear what an “external” aspect of the situation is, given that subnational groups typically do not have generally recognized territorial boundaries. Second, a conservative understanding of impartiality as neutrality seems incompatible with a focus on the protection of civilians and upholding of human rights standards that many now consider central to peacekeeping. As was discussed in Chapter 2, a conservative understanding of impartiality, that did not allow peacekeepers to take direct action against parties to the conflict even to stop them from committing abuses against civilians, was a key focus of blame in the Rwanda and Srebrenica reports. Yet at the same time, it is not possible to separate stopping rights abuses from “influencing the political balance.” If peacekeepers fight off members of an armed faction who are attacking civilians, that faction’s armed strength, that it can use to bolster its ­bargaining position in the peace process, is also degraded.1 Even Hammarskjöld conceded that the principles he outlined did not apply to missions authorized under Chapter VII, as most contemporary

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peacekeeping missions now are, at least in part (Hammarskjöld 1958, §167). Note that there is some dispute about how restrictive the UNSC’s Chapter VII powers were intended to be. The Charter restricts Chapter VII to matters of international peace and security, which on a literal reading might seem to exclude incidents such as genocides that take place entirely within a nation’s borders. General practice is to read the scope of Chapter VII powers broadly, however, and allow that a situation is an international peace and security threat if the UNSC deems it so (see e.g. the discussion in Matheson 2006, ch. 2). And the conservative understanding of impartiality may seem like an artifact of an earlier time, before the concept of conditional sovereignty embodied in R2P had taken root. The contemporary consensus has moved toward a concept of impartiality that is not tied to neutrality between the parties, but rather a matter of even-handedly applying objective standards of action. As the current UN doctrine puts it: United Nations peacekeeping operations must implement their mandate without favour or prejudice to any party . . . United Nations peacekeepers should be impartial in their dealings with the parties to the conflict, but not neutral in the execution of their mandate. The need for even-handedness toward the parties should not become an excuse for inaction in the face of behavior that clearly works against the peace process. Just as a good referee is impartial, but will penalize infractions, so a peacekeeping operation should not condone actions by the parties that violate the undertakings of the peace process or the international norms and principles that a United Nations peacekeeping operation upholds. (UN DPKO 2008: 33) This definition has a few potential problems, however. First, it actually appeals to at least two different principles: the “undertakings of the peace process” and “international norms and principles.” To push the referee analogy perhaps a bit too far, this is similar to asking a referee to enforce the rules of the game, and also good sportsmanship. In many, if not most, cases we might hope that these standards will point in the same direction, but they may not. What if, for example, some player commits an act that is technically an infraction of the rules but was clearly accidental? What if the teams are so clearly mismatched that

Impartiality 105 putting them on a “level playing field” is patently unfair (some games, like golf, have explicit rules for “handicapping” players, and others, like chess, enforce fair matches by adjusting the points one gets in overall rankings for defeating opponents of vastly different skill – but many games do not). If I am playing chess with my young daughter, it would be extremely unsporting for me to insist on strict fidelity to the official rules. The problems become even more apparent if we bend the analogy in a way that is more like the situation of peacekeeping operations. A referee asked to apply vague rules, or to ensure that one team won while playing by the rules (as can be implied by situations in which governments or “main parties” are set against “spoilers”), or to apply a set of rules clearly put together with the strengths of one team in mind (peace agreements are bargains, not idealized fair dispensations, especially to parties not present at the negotiating table), would find himself in a very difficult situation. Second, this formulation does not entirely solve the problem of separating standards-enforcement from taking sides in the conflict. Ultimately, we may be willing to say that, while punishing a party for a violation may change the balance of power, if they did not want to have the balance changed they should not have violated the rule. But we should not be too quick to embrace the principle that parties who violate standards bring their loss of position in the political situation on their own heads. One problem is that it is very difficult for peacekeepers to apply standards in a perfectly even-handed manner, at least given the current way PKOs are conceptualized. The core of this problem is the tendency to separate “main parties” from “spoilers,” and brings us back to the need to take the “no enemies” principle seriously. If peacekeepers are acting in support of a government, even a government created by the peace process, that continues to engage in violations, they will not be able to be properly even-handed – it is not even-handed to treat rights abuses by one side as a reason to use force and rights abuses by the other as establishing a need for better training.2 For better or worse, such situations are very common for PKOs, especially those that continue to be deployed after elections have been held. In addition, in keeping with the framework from Chapter 2, peacekeepers should be morally wary of principles that put them in the position of judging which parties to the conflict are to be included in the

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building of political community and which are to be considered beyond the pale. This is an especially pressing issue for military peacekeepers, for whom impartiality is deeply entangled with the question of the use of force.3 In order to give more appropriate guidance to peacekeepers in the field, as well as simply to clarify impartiality for its own sake, this chapter will begin by teasing apart the various definitions of “impartiality” that are used by practitioners and analysts. One critical thing that can be added to discussions of impartiality on this point is a recognition that concepts of impartiality do not vary along a single dimension of standards from hands-off neutrality to robust but even-handed enforcement. Crossing this is another dimension of variation, having to do with the authority to interpret the standards, a process dimension. On that basis, we can proceed to ask what meaning “impartiality” should have. Given the space of options for understanding “impartiality,” the best option is to construe it as a matter of pursuing the peace process above all, in collaboration with all stakeholders (as far as is feasible).4 Explicating and arguing for this position is the task of this chapter. CONCEPTUAL DIMENSIONS OF IMPARTIALITY AND NEUTRALITY

Central to the concept of impartiality is some kind of even-­handedness. Beyond that, concepts of impartiality can vary along at least two ­dimensions: standards and process. The question of standards is the question of what rules peacekeepers should be even-handedly observing and/or enforcing. Responding to violations in an even-handed manner requires that there be some standard to which peacekeepers are comparing parties’ actions. The question of process is the question of how putative violations of rules are to be judged and appropriate response determined. Even if the standards seem very clear, how they play out in practice will depend, importantly, on who has the authority to determine their application. Standards The neutrality/impartiality rule cited from the UNEF I summary study above originated in negotiations carried out in 1956 between

Impartiality 107 Hammarskjöld and Nasser. The compromise concept that emerged was ambivalent. On the one hand, Hammarskjöld committed peacekeepers to not altering the distribution of power or prejudicing the interests of either party. On the other, he maintained that the UN should be able to act on its understanding of the Charter principles – essentially the same tension still embodied in impartiality discussions. Practically, the tension was generally resolved in favor of the more passive, do-not-influence-the-situation neutrality in Cold War-era missions. “Neutrality” and “impartiality” tended to be used interchangeably until post-Cold War operations began to put neutral peacekeepers in tight spots (Donald 2003: 421–30. The fact that the terms were often used interchangeably does not mean that all Cold War UN PKOs were in fact “neutral” – ONUC, as ever, being a prominent exception to a generally neutral trend.). Neutrality, understood as not taking action against any side’s interests, coheres nicely with an image of peacekeepers as there not to solve problems, but merely to observe and keep a lid on violence (primarily through presence and good offices) while problems are solved through negotiation. But the post-Cold War period has seen increasing pressure for peacekeepers to take more robust action to resolve conflicts, including perhaps using force to enforce their mandate. As a result, a notion of “impartiality” that favors principle over noninterference has gained favor. Despite emerging consensus on a rejection of neutrality, there are at least six different possible ways to think about the standard to which non-neutral impartiality binds peacekeepers.5 Neither public statements nor interview partners share a single unequivocal understanding of “impartiality.”6 Even though these concepts of impartiality are often compatible, and even more often show up in combination when people state the meaning of impartiality, they reveal diversity in what peacekeepers think is important, and in their order of priorities. Failure to make expectations about impartiality clear, especially as they relate to use of force, can cause direct operational problems for missions. Concept 1: Impartiality Is Following the Mandate This may be the most straightforward understanding of an “impartial” standard. Peacekeepers are given an explicit mission, and may pursue

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it, even when that differentially affects parties. On this view, they may not follow their consciences beyond the mandate. Like the UN doctrine, official and semi-official statements of UN policy often combine a call to adhere to the mandate with several other (independent, if not actively competing) considerations. For instance, in 2000, the Brahimi report stated: Impartiality for such operations must therefore mean adherence to the principles of the Charter and to the objectives of a mandate that is rooted in those Charter principles. Such impartiality is not the same as neutrality or equal treatment of all parties in all cases for all time, which can amount to a policy of appeasement. In some cases, local parties consist not of moral equals but of obvious aggressors and victims, and peacekeepers may not only be operationally justified in using force but morally compelled to do so. (Panel on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations 2000, §50) Also in 2000, Deputy Secretary-General Fréchette made the distinction this way: Impartiality is not the same as neutrality. Of course, United Nations forces must apply impartially the mandate given them by the Security Council. But that is not at all the same as being neutral between parties that obey that mandate and those that resist it, or between those who respect international humanitarian and human rights law, and those who grossly violate it. (Fréchette 2000) Several interview partners also understood impartiality as a matter of adherence to the mandate, though they often pointed out that the mandate was sometimes in conflict with their personal conscience.7 One partner was especially adamant on this point: I’ve heard brigade commanders saying, “But the mandate this and that.” He’s not the authority to say something about the mandate. The authority is the Security Council via the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the Special Representative, and he should go to the ConOps and to the rules of engagement, and not begin to say, “But you know, I need to be impartial.”

Impartiality 109 No no, this should not be the issue. At the highest political level, I agree, because neutrality and impartiality should have some meaning, but not on the ground. The base should be the mandate.8 Members of the GAF who had served with UN missions, in a group interview, emphasized that their role had often been to observe and report, and that they could do little more than ask the mission leadership to intervene at a political level if civilians were threatened. As one put it, citing both military weakness and limited mandate, attacks on civilians were “affecting,” but there was little to be done.9 Holding to the mandate even against personal conscience was seen by one officer with service in Darfur as a way of demonstrating professionalism, avoiding conflict with factions that could undermine the mission, and protecting personnel from legal problems.10 Not all peacekeepers saw sticking to the mandate as a formula for avoiding conflict with parties. Another peacekeeper (recently returned from service with the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) at the time of the interview) who focused on impartiality as sticking to the mandate emphasized that this should be done “whichever group that caused friction with.” This same interviewee acknowledged that sometimes a mandate or orders were “fragmented” or vague, but that in such cases recourse should be had to superior officers, not to one’s own understanding of things.11 But it is not a foregone conclusion that all peacekeepers in the field should do is follow their mandate. For one thing, despite one interview partner’s rejection of mandate interpretation in the field, it may be necessary, and if there is nothing to say about the mandate than to follow it, there will be no basis for interpretation (see also the discussion of process below). For another, mandates may not be morally adequate. Peacekeepers may view themselves as beholden to a higher cause than their explicit orders, and obligated to follow it (we will see below that this is, in fact, the attitude of at least some peacekeepers). Peacekeepers who believe their obligation is to adhere to the mandate come what may may disagree with this position, but holding that the mandate is always morally overriding is a specific position that can be disputed, not a trivial truth. As it turns out, many interview partners did not seem to think that adhering to the mandate and orders was their overriding moral

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duty. As one pithily put it, “Going by the book is good, but making ­exceptions is perfect.”12 Concept 2: Impartiality Is Upholding/Enforcing International Law or the UN Charter Alongside her references to the mandate, Fréchette referred to the principles of international humanitarian and human rights law; the Doctrine refers slightly more vaguely to international norms; and the Brahimi report appeals to the principles of the UN Charter. In principle, international law generally and the UN Charter specifically are two different standards – international law includes a great deal beyond the Charter – but they are often treated as basically interchangeable. As with some other standards, in an ideal world mandates and ROE would already reflect international law. But there are two possible reasons for treating fidelity to international law directly as the standard for impartiality. First, in the event that a mandate is inconsistent with international law, we might hold that general principles of international law trump the specifics of the mandate (in the way, for instance, that in US law constitutional provisions override inconsistent federal laws). This view, or something like it, was expressed by one Ghanaian officer, who was vehement on the subject of UNAMIR’s failures: General Dallaire says he wants instructions. According to me, and according to our teachings, you are to act! Don’t tell me you are asking Kofi Annan and he hasn’t replied. It’s stupid. Act. The UN has sent you and what else do you need? UN frowns on that. So act within what UN doesn’t like! . . . So, any excuse of inaction, or action saying that you do not know what to do, and blaming instructions is – to me, is punishable. You should be punished for that. We have subscribed to the international humanitarian law. We have signed. So how can your forces be in the field and you have forgotten that?13 Second, where the mandate is vague or difficult to apply, peacekeepers might make reference to general principles of international law for additional guidance. Under this understanding, while international law would typically be a secondary source for guidance to the mandate, the reason would be the general assumption that the mandate is already a

Impartiality 111 particularized application of international law, and gains its legitimacy from that basis in general norms. Concept 3: Impartiality Is Upholding/Enforcing the Terms of the Peace Agreement Given that the point of peacekeeping is to keep a peace, another way to think of impartiality is as taking action to deter/punish any violations of the peace agreement that was agreed to by the main parties.14 Support for agreements is often incorporated into the mandate, but we might also understand the overall goal of peacekeepers as being there to support a peace agreement, even when that may go beyond the explicit mandate. Somewhat to my surprise, no interview partners focused on the peace agreement when they discussed impartiality, and it is not a common theme in the literature on peacekeeping. One possible example of this focus may be Romeo Dallaire, the Force Commander of UNAMIR, who regarded supporting the Arusha Accords as authorizing him to create a weapons-secure area in Kigali, including aggressively confiscating weapons (Barnett 2002: 67). Arguably, this action would have been permitted by the standards of supporting the peace ­agreement, but was not ultimately authorized in the mandate. However, some interview partners made distinctions between how parties should be treated that reflected a focus on the formal authorities set up by a peace agreement. In particular, we heard some views that, while impartiality in general was important, peacekeepers had a duty to support the government over remaining rebel groups.15 As one peacekeeper put it, “there can be only one army.”16 At the same time, other interviewees mentioned national forces as a special problem for impartiality, since the mission was mandated to support national forces which themselves violated human rights (and impartiality, implicitly, demanded that all rights violations be treated equally).17 Concept 4: Impartiality Is Favoring Victims Over Aggressors One interesting standard that can be found both in the Brahimi report and in some of our interview partners’ statements is a narrow focus on impartiality specifically as it relates to civilians, or violence. The latter is related to, but distinct from, a focus on impartiality as it relates to the PKO’s use of force.

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This may initially seem like an issue tangential to impartiality, which is conceptually about the use of standards and not about their content. But it makes sense if we keep in mind that, in practice, concerns about impartiality are sharpest when connected to concerns about the use of force; and that one of the uses of force that is likely to be prominent in many peacekeepers’ minds is protection of civilians (especially members of MONUC, who at the time of the interviews had recently had their mandate revised to emphasize protection of civilians). (On MONUC’s protection priority, see UNSC 2008.) As noted above, the Brahimi report appeals to the moral non-­ equivalence between aggressors and victims in its definition of impartiality. We found some similar sentiments in the field. One member of MONUC told us that impartiality meant that his first priority was to protect civilians, since “civilians are neutral.”18 Another member of the MONUC military component (the same one who stated that “there can only be one army”) expressed a similar view, but seemed to take his task as preventing violence in general (“as long as nobody is being hurt, I am neutral. If people are being hurt, I am not neutral”), adding that impartiality could not mean standing by while parties killed each other, so that this was not a reference only to preventing harm to civilians.19 A Rwandan officer told us that impartiality was the protection of the people.20 This understanding of impartiality is interesting, and may reflect what is most salient for many peacekeepers about the concept, but it is not clear whether it can be formulated in a way that is both distinctive and plausible. If “aggressor” simply means “someone who is using force to achieve his or her goals,” then it is not plausible that peacekeepers should always oppose “aggressors.” On the other hand, if we understand the distinction in moralized or legalized terms, where “aggressor” means something like “someone who is using illicit force to achieve his or her goals,” then we seem to be back with either a legal or a moral standard. Concept 5: Impartiality is Upholding/Enforcing Moral Standards While appeals to morality are often tied up with invocation of “the principles of the Charter” or international human rights law, they have a distinct force. This is probably inevitable – the Charter principles and human rights law were adopted at least in part on the basis of moral aims. And, for instance, the anger of the Ghanaian officer I quoted

Impartiality 113 above on the subject of UNAMIR (he literally rose from his seat as he said that) does not seem to be based entirely on a concern that Dallaire may have violated the letter of Canada’s human rights treaties. But some appeals to morality are quite direct. After the paragraph cited above, the Brahimi report went on to claim that “[g]enocide in Rwanda went as far as it did in part because the international community failed to use or to reinforce the operation then on the ground in that country to oppose obvious evil” (Panel on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations 2000, §50). The report’s statement does not directly claim that UNAMIR would have been morally justified in going beyond the terms of its mandate (it can be read as claiming that the mandate was immoral, but that UNAMIR had its hands tied by it). But it is hard to read the report’s discussion as supporting a view that it would have been a violation of impartiality or peacekeeping principle had UNAMIR done so. For interview partners – even those who did not feel justified in “making exceptions” – mandates that prevented them from acting against their moral assessment of the situation were sometimes a source of frustration. One went so far as to say that AMIS did not have a “real mandate,” in part because he was required to go to the GoS with information about potential attacks, despite the fact that the government was involved with some attacks, and he worried about ­revealing his civilian sources to them.21 Others described impartiality essentially in terms of what they took to be its moral core, rather than in terms of law or mandate. Interestingly, in several cases this moral core did not have to do with the use of force, despite the prominence of the issue in overall discussions of impartiality. One military leader with whom we spoke explained his understanding of impartiality as being, first, about reporting the truth and being unwilling to hide any crimes, even if committed by the national army (that MONUC was supporting). He discussed punishment only later, as something of an afterthought.22 Perhaps less surprisingly, a focus away from the use of force showed up among non-military staff with whom we spoke, but their views on the core of impartiality are interesting for military peacekeepers as well. Similarly to the MONUC officer, a MONUC Demobilization, Disarmament, Repatriation, Resettlement, and Reintegration (DDRRR) staff member described impartiality in terms of being as honest as possible with the individuals the mission was trying to demobilize.23

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And, a member of the political staff of UNMIS based at UN headquarters described his approach as being “modeled on the Red Cross,” involving discussing human rights violations with parties privately but even-handedly publicizing those that could not be addressed adequately.24 Concept 6: Impartiality Is Supporting the Peace Process Finally, we can move away from explicit mandates and peace agreements, but instead of escalating to “higher” rules like international law, take a more functional approach – making the peace process the standard rather than a peace agreement. One interview partner, a Rwandan officer, said that impartiality consisted in creating an “atmosphere” of mediation, and that it required talking to all parties, explaining why the PKO was there, showing that you respected their interests, and communicating about how to bring about peace and settle issues.25 The peace process is also appealed to in the doctrine statement, and it is implicit in interviewees’ concerns to de-escalate conflict and not become an enemy to any parties.26 Peace agreements may be deeply imperfect, as they represent the outcome of a particular negotiation process at a particular time between particular parties, and will bear the marks of the existing balance of power. They may be deeply inequitable, provide cover for rearmament, freeze out certain parties who may then return as spoilers, or provide incentive for parties to become spoilers if their assessment of the situation changes. Focusing on the peace process allows peacekeepers to be more flexible and strategic in the face of changing situations on the ground, at the cost of stripping them of much of the cover that pursuit of an explicit agreement provides. The standard of upholding the peace process may also shade into other standards, such as moral ones if peacekeepers take themselves to be pursuing “positive peace,” which includes some measure of good governance and respect for human rights, rather than merely “negative peace,” that is, the absence of large-scale violence. Process Standards are impotent without some process for applying them, and decisions about process can often overwhelm decisions about

Impartiality 115 standards in terms of practical import. Whether peacekeepers take themselves to be upholding legal standards or the moral values that lie behind those standards may not matter as much as the fact that it is peacekeepers with particular political pressures and institutional culture who are deciding who has violated the rules. The basic problem is that different people may – even if we assume they are judging in good faith – d ­ isagree about what the standards require in context. Some of the standards I have laid out in the previous sections have worse problems on this count than others. We might all agree that peacekeepers ought to obey universal morality, but are unlikely to agree about what that means in detail. Similar problems beset a focus on the peace process (since different parties may have different visions of the end-state) and moralized understandings of the aggressor/victim distinction. If we appeal to the mission mandate, a peace agreement, international law, or the UN Charter, there is the advantage of being able to point to a document. But the basic problem of interpretation is that documents which set out rules and standards are rarely if ever absolutely clear and unequivocal. The wording may simply be vague or unclear. As one peacekeeper put it, the UN is very ambiguous in its resolutions for peacekeeping, the resolutions are never straight to the point . . . if you insert troops into a mission and the troops know that they are going to fight belligerents, then you go prepared for a firefight . . . but when you send troops where the situation is still not very clear, most of the time you find their responses are fifty–fifty . . . If troops are clear in their minds as to what they are going to do there, then they get into that theater and do what they are supposed to do.27 Or, different rules of a system may conflict, with no clear procedure in the rules for resolving that conflict. Rules may need to be extended “in spirit” to cases not explicitly covered. Rules may make sense in an unspoken/implicit social context that not everyone who is subject to the rules always understands in the same way. Or, the authoritative document may use language that inherently invites value judgment, such as “reasonable.” In peacekeeping, vagueness and judgment-prone language tend to be the most prominent issues. Vagueness is a common tool for creating

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peace agreements and UNSC resolutions, since it avoids definitively answering hard questions. This often works to get the document adopted – but it leaves peacekeepers trying to follow it with unclear guidance. The problem of judgment-prone language arises, for example, with respect to mandates that require missions to protect civilians within the mission’s “capacity.” “Capacity” looks different if you are wondering what a unit could certainly do without taking any casualties, what it might be able to do if willing to suffer heavy casualties, or something in between.28 Yet trying to be more specific in mandate language might undermine the legitimate exercise of judgment by field commanders. These problems of interpretation are well-known in the context of legal systems, and the most common practical solution is to give some institution final interpretive authority. This is a power to close the conversation, not to define the right answer. In the US, I may think that the Supreme Court has made a mistake about the way the law should be interpreted – but our system is set up such that police, lower courts, and other agents of the law are expected to follow the Court’s interpretation even when they think a mistake has been made. The larger point is that, even if we settle the question of by what standard peacekeepers should define their neutrality, the question of who should make decisions about how standards are to be interpreted when interested parties disagree remains. There are three major options. The options are largely defined in terms of how disputes about the application of the relevant norms should be resolved (which may include disputes about which standards apply). When things are going well, peacekeepers are unlikely to need to consult their understanding of impartiality. But when there are groups engaging in actions that seem like cases in which peacekeeper action is needed, a dispute about the relevant standards is likely to be standing in the background. Recalling the framework from Chapter 2 and the discussion of consent in Chapter 3, it is unlikely that some group will breach the peace or abuse individuals’ rights while fully accepting what they are doing is wrong – more probably, they will (perhaps self-servingly, perhaps sincerely) interpret the relevant standards in a way that justifies their actions, and will be inclined to see obstruction or punishment by the peacekeepers as unwarranted.

Impartiality 117 Option 1: Impartiality Requires No Action on Controversy Peacekeepers could refrain from taking action when there is a dispute about what they should do. Regardless of the standard used, this would amount to a neutral, rather than an impartial, stance. If parties are willing to act in bad faith, they could stop peacekeeper action merely by inventing grounds on which to disagree. Even if we assume parties are acting in good faith, robust peacekeeper action would only be needed when parties were not already in agreement, effectively rendering them neutral exactly when there is a conflict. This need not rob a standard of all its meaning. If parties to the conflict were at least somewhat sincere, the standard they accepted might shape their actions. This is a potentially powerful effect, especially if peacekeepers were able to honestly publicize the actions of parties (as implied in several practitioners’ understandings of impartiality cited above), forcing them potentially to publicly defend their actions. But taking the position that no one has the authority to interpret standards definitively would not help with the concerns over situations like Rwanda and Srebrenica that drove dissatisfaction with neutralist understandings of impartiality. Option 2: Impartiality Establishes Peacekeepers as Authoritative Arbiters At the other extreme, peacekeepers could themselves claim the mantle of authoritative interpreters. Peacekeepers might be answerable to their own consciences, or to the UNSC or national leadership, for their adherence to and interpretation of the relevant standards, but in the field they would both be bound by the standards and be the arbiters of what that binding meant. I suspect most defenders of robust understandings of impartiality envision standards of impartiality as internalized rules that peacekeepers will follow according to their own judgment. Peacekeepers probably ought to try to explain how their actions are impartial if they are in question, but ultimately impartiality is to be wielded as a standard of conduct by the peacekeepers, to shape peacekeepers’ own judgment, and perhaps should be enforced against them by internal disciplinary units. But on this sort of account, peacekeepers are not accountable in any substantive way for their interpretation of impartiality to anyone outside the mission.

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Option 3: Impartiality Requires Mediation A third approach would be to institutionalize mediation in the case of disputes about the application of standards, whether between parties or between parties and the peacekeepers. For instance, where parties were about to engage in armed conflict, peacekeepers might have the capacity and mandate to call those parties to the table to negotiate. Or, if peacekeepers were considering punitive or preventive action against some group, they might meet with the group to discuss what action was being contemplated and why before acting. This version of impartiality has some support in the UNEF I study. Hammarskjöld is discussing only the possibility that the UN might decide to withdraw UNEF I or the Egyptian government might unilaterally withdraw consent to its presence. But in the event of such a dispute, he suggests that, were the other side to find that such action was contrary to a good-faith interpretation of the purposes of the operation, an exchange of views would be called for towards harmonizing the positions . . . it does mean a mutual recognition of the fact that the operation, being based on collaboration between the Host Government and the United Nations, should be carried on in the forms natural to such a collaboration . . . (Hammarskjöld 1958, §158) This version also showed up in some interviews. One Rwandan officer told us that impartiality was about talking to and working with all groups.29 On this perspective, authoritative interpretation would be neither impossible nor the province of the peacekeepers alone. The standards would be intersubjective in the sense of the Chapter 2 framework, something that is held in common between peacekeepers and parties to the conflict, and gaining their shape from their reciprocal relationship. There are some important details about this approach that would need to be worked out. First, should any consultations over peacekeeper actions be ad hoc, or should there be a standing “contact group” of stakeholders? Ad hoc arrangements have the advantage of being able to bring in any stakeholders to a particular problem that may arise, which may be difficult to predict in advance, and may be better able to

Impartiality 119 accommodate social groups that lack formal organization (e.g. women, children). On the other hand, standing arrangements allow for more advance notice, more ability to sense oncoming trouble, and more opportunities to build trust outside moments of crisis. Semi-formal contact groups including NGOs, peacekeepers, and local parties have shown some success, for instance during the first UNOSOM mission in Somalia (Durch 1996: 324). Second, since mediation is not instantaneous, this approach would need to be supplemented by one or both of the other approaches. In short, peacekeepers need to know what to do while mediation is under way. Finally, regardless of with whom the interpretive buck stops, it is important not to jump straight to enforcement, and to assume that every delay or failure in mediation must be the result of bad faith. Armed groups may simply be bad at negotiating, or at pursuing their goals nonviolently, and need training and/or material assistance (think of how much paper and computer time academics consume “just talking”). A focus on mediation as the core process of impartiality is as much about foregrounding the importance of providing support for the ability of stakeholders to negotiate as it is about pushing back the point of enforcement. This is an area in which bad lessons may be learned from many Western legal systems, which tend to focus more on formal protections and process than on supporting the ability of everyone to access and operate the system effectively (for an alternative perspective on legal systems friendly to the idea of including all parties in the processes by which standards are interpreted and applied, see Golub 2006). EVALUATING THE SPACE OF OPTIONS

Choosing a Standard Though I have identified six possible standards, it easier to discuss them as falling into three categories: written rules, unwritten rules, and functional standards. Each has things to be said for and against. But in the end, it would be best for peacekeepers to regard impartiality as a functional standard; that is, as a focus on doing what is needed to advance the peace process and taking action for or against any party with that end in view.

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Written Rules Written rules include mission mandates, provisions of peace agreements/ceasefires, international laws, and UN Charter rules. These standards have two advantages. First, they are often the product of an explicit act of granting consent, by at least many parties to the conflict, giving them an initial advantage in terms of legitimacy. Second, while they do not settle questions of application on their own, they certainly help by giving all parties an explicit text as a starting point. This is not inconsiderable. In Chapter 2’s terms, it helps give shape to a common project if everyone understands themselves as being oriented toward a single text and links it in to relatively uncontroversial projects of reading and textual interpretation that are likely to be widely understood and shared. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee either that any such rules will reflect the legitimate interests of all stakeholders or that enforcing them will advance the cause of peace. Written rules, like those in mandates, may represent political compromises that fall well short of justice. And the agreements behind them represent only the interests of the parties who were actually able to participate in their drafting. This may exclude marginalized groups such as women and the poor, who have legitimate interests in the outcome of the PKO, but are often excluded from ­drafting processes for peace agreements. Unwritten Rules Unwritten rules include deontological versions of universal morality (including non-legal understandings of human rights), moralized versions of the aggressor/victim distinction, and possibly UN Charter “principles” if these are understood as distinct from explicit provisions of the Charter. They share the inflexibility of written rules, and lack the advantage of being explicit – since they are unwritten, parties may disagree about their meaning, and hence they are less effective at constraining and shaping disputes. They make up for this by a stronger claim to being right. Genuine moral rules claim higher authority than other considerations and include all legitimate stakeholder interests by definition. Enforcing them may not promote peace, but defenders could argue that this would only prevent unjust peace from being achieved.

Impartiality 121 Functional Standards The peace process, along with consequentialist understandings of morality, are functional standards. They have to do not with following rules at all, but with pursuing certain ends and values. Functional standards have the advantage and disadvantage of maximal flexibility in pursuit of their goal, since the goal is the only standard to be respected. The advantage is that the goal is more likely to be reached.30 The disadvantage is that, similar to unwritten rules standards, functional standards provide less guidance for disputes than written rules. They may provide somewhat more guidance than unwritten rules, so long as relevant parties at least agree on what is to be pursued, and in a peacekeeping context we should be able to assume that all parties have come to a point where they are aiming at an end to the conflict (on some terms). In addition, functional standards encode values, and so are subject to many of the same vices and virtues as unwritten moral rules. To take a position on what “peace” means, whether mere absence of violence or some more substantive “positive peace” – is to take a moral position on what ought to be the outcome of the conflict and intervention. (For an extended discussion, see Coady 2008, ch. 12.) If this moral position is correct, it has a strong claim on the ability to supersede negotiated agreements and formal mandates. On the other hand, the correctness of any moral stance is likely to be hotly contested, and may itself be a source of conflict that makes the PKO seem like an interested party, and so undermine the appearance of impartiality. Despite these concerns, the peace process is the best impartiality standard. Peacekeepers are charged with laying the foundations for peace and their impartiality should reflect that. The Peace Process vs. Written Rules A focus on the peace process is superior to a focus on written rules. Any discussion of the best understanding of the impartiality standard should be guided by the framework laid out in Chapter 2. The peacekeeper’s job is to help a political community reconstitute itself, and as part of that – at least on the Kant-via-Korsgaard approach recommended here – the values that structure relationships in the community should arise from a process of reciprocity and joint projects. As a result, any rules that are laid down before the process of peacekeeping begins, whether in international law or in the peace agreement, are

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suspect if taken as anything but provisional principles (on the model of provisional consent discussed in Chapter 3). To this generic problem with fixed rules, we can add typical defects of the rules likely to be salient for peacekeepers. Written rules in peacekeeping are the outcomes of negotiations between parties who may not have the legitimate interests of all stakeholders in the conflict at heart. International laws and mandates reflect state compromise. A peace agreement needs to give armed factions incentives to end their conflict; groups that are not able to use force and/or are not organized are less likely to see their interests protected. These stakeholders who are left out may include women, ethnocultural minorities, the poor, and locally legitimate social structures not organized for violence. The fact that they are not included in the agreement does not mean that they do not have morally legitimate interests, and the advantages of clarity provided by written agreements should be overridden by these moral concerns. Furthermore, their exclusion undermines another potential advantage of explicit agreements, in that there was no moment of consent for excluded groups. Aside from legitimacy, including as many stakeholders as possible in the peace process seems to yield practical benefits. For example, one report credits female participants in Sierra Leone’s Lomé peace process with including language protecting women and girls in the peace agreement. They also argue that a public shaming of the rebel leader by a group of elderly religious women was a major catalyst for mass protests that ultimately brought about his arrest and the collapse of the rebel movement, which had been a spoiler in the peace process (Mazurana, Carlson, and Anderlini 2004: 21–2). Similarly, Elmi and Barise argue that the Somali peace process in 2006 suffered from the fact that merchants and members of many Islamic courts and local security forces were excluded from the formal peace negotiations, and hence need to be brought into the process (Elmi and Barise 2006: 46). Focusing on the evolving peace process allows groups like these, who may have been sidelined initially, to be brought into the political process of peace as peacekeepers make it safe for them to be brought in, and does not place undue barriers in the way of reinterpreting agreements in line with their interests. In terms of the caring virtues, focusing on the peace process gives greater room for the exercise of attentiveness and creativity.

Impartiality 123 Mandates deserve special mention. Telling peacekeepers that they are subject to a higher principle of impartiality, like the peace process, that can conflict with the explicit mandate may seem dangerous. While the mandate is crafted to fit the conflict, it still suffers from the problem that its creation does not involve many relevant stakeholders. Many mandates are probably written in good faith and with an attempt to protect the interests of everyone involved in the conflict, subject to the constraints of UNSC (or the relevant governing body’s) politics and the concerns of funders and troop contributors (major caveats), but this is no substitute for a process that can be directly accessed by people involved in the conflict. Nonetheless, concerns that encouraging peacekeepers to ignore the mandate is problematic can only be mitigated, not eliminated. First, as a general principle, impartiality is not only applicable to peacekeepers in the field. It should also constrain mandates, limiting conflicts. Second, there is a difference between going beyond the explicit mandate and contradicting the mandate; peacekeepers are more likely to be called to do the former. General principles like impartiality are most important where a mandate or orders are unclear in application, and peacekeepers need guidance in using their judgment. Third, some conflict may occur, but this is no more damning than, for example, the fact that soldiers in the US military swear their primary oath to uphold the Constitution of the US. In some cases, soldiers may be given orders that they believe violate their Constitutional obligations. The first option in cases of apparent conflict is to assume that the conflict is only apparent or seek clarification, but some cases of genuine conflict may remain. The fact that educating peacekeepers with general ethical standards of the profession may occasionally cause them to question directives that do not live up to those standards cannot be a fatal objection. Peace Process vs. Unwritten Rules A focus on the peace process is also superior to a focus on unwritten rules. If the big problem with written rules is that their origin in compromise undermines their claims to legitimacy, unwritten rules seem to fix that. The advantage lies not in the fact that they are unwritten, but in the nature of the suggested rules. Universal morality and the basic principles of international law purport to represent higher standards that transcend the petty details of human agreements.

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Unfortunately, what these rules gain in legitimacy they lose in the concrete ability to solve disputes and confusion. The impartiality concept is intended to give peacekeepers guidance for decisionmaking. The content of highly abstract ideals and principles is deeply contested and difficult to determine. By contrast, a focus on the peace process is relatively concrete, even if not as explicit as written rules. In addition, understood as a cooperative project, peace can be seen as the basis for “filling in” and pursuing many other moral goods in an appropriate manner. Peace can be seen as primarily a matter of the existence of reciprocal projects, since – as discussed in Chapter 2 – reciprocity is a matter of sharing values and not attempting to dominate through violence or other coercive means. Peace provides a much better platform, in almost all cases, from which to pursue other goods. And non-coercive, reciprocal joint action is not just a practically more congenial environment, it is the conceptual primal scene for the emergence of joint values. One reason to intervene in cases of human rights abuses is that they can fuel further conflict, so a focus on peace will not always recommend different action from that recommended by a human-rights-focused impartiality. But peacekeepers should bear in mind that their role is to help usher in a stable situation in which human rights can effectively be protected on a regular basis, not just to stop many individual violations. Choosing a Process Interpretive authority should not rest entirely with the mission – some form of institutionalized mediation process with stakeholders best expresses the moral core of impartiality. Fundamentally, this is about the no enemies standard, and keeping an eye on building a community as a joint project. PKOs best express their position not as parties to the conflict, but as facilitators of an end to that conflict, by assuming that any standards-violation may in fact reflect an underlying reasonable dissatisfaction. Providing a venue in which parties can explain their actions means they stand a better chance of transforming the drivers of conflict. The reasons to favor standing forums for consultation with stakeholders rather than ad hoc consultations with whoever seems to be most affected by a particular action or incident are twofold. First, it allows consultation and communication to be more proactive. If

Impartiality 125 consultation is ad hoc, consultations are likely to be initiated only when problems have already begun to emerge, which may be too late to be most helpful. Second, it allows the operation of the PKO’s impartiality to serve the consent-based goal of building distributed deliberative structures as outlined in Chapter 3. Standing contact groups and forums for stakeholders to meet to discuss the PKO’s activities and aims can also serve as initial contacts for other deliberations, and serve as elements in the consent relationship with the PKO. That said, the PKO will be most in line with the aim of creating peace through joint projects and legitimacy through a relationship of consent if it is constantly looking for ways of making whatever consultative structures it has more inclusive. The main moral barrier to engaging in negotiations with all sides seems to be a lack of “comprehensive empathy” (see attentiveness, in Chapter 2). While it may seem ludicrous to look for the legitimate motivation behind some undisciplined soldier looting in the aftermath of conflict, we should keep in mind that this is often a bit of an exaggerated stereotype, and that the bigger issue for a PKO is that soldier’s leadership, who are probably encouraging/allowing such violations to occur for reasons that can be addressed. One MONUC civilian staff member thought that it was right not to talk to groups connected with the FDLR “on principled grounds,” but that that scruple should “weigh less heavy than the overall peace process and the overall well-being of the population.”31 If anything, the assumption that principle speaks against engagement here is a moral obstacle that could be dispensed with. On the other side, negotiations/discussions also provide a venue in which the PKO can explain its actions. Just because the PKO sees its actions – especially aggressive ones – as impartial and justified does not mean that everyone else sees them that way. This is not just a matter of maintaining both the actuality and the appearance of impartiality (though it is a matter of that). Given that peace is a value-laden concept, it is a matter of making the values involved in the peace project genuinely reciprocal with the people in the area of operations – the peacekeepers are part of the project, not judges blessed with omniscience who stand over it. By way of an example of possible miscommunication, one interviewee, a Rwandan officer who had served in AMIS, discussed the need to approach rebel forces and explain why the mission was living only

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alongside government forces in his area of operations.32 The force had reason to deploy only alongside GoS police, in part – in the interview partner’s view, at least – precisely because of the concerns that rebels had about the government police. It was trying to address these by working with and mentoring the government police (itself a stance consonant with taking a hopeful, constructive approach to the GoS police abuses). When the miscommunication was understood, the officer called one of his counterparts in the police division to discuss approaching the rebels to explain the position that AMIS police were in – quite possibly averting at least some escalation of tension between the PKO and local forces that might otherwise have erupted into violence. This possibility may have been missed had the peacekeepers taken a hardline rule-based stance on impartiality and their own authority, that would have risked making any attacks on AMIS police by rebels look simply like unmotivated aggression or disrespect for the status of the AU. Another officer told us that IDPs in Darfur thought that UNAMID was against them because the peacekeepers would discuss problems with the GoS or rebel groups that threatened them, while for the peacekeepers it was a matter of the PKO not being able to simply be “on the side of the IDPs.”33 He talked about explaining to the IDPs that their concerns were being heard, but that the PKO was also there to help build their trust with their government. This does not mean that there is no room for peacekeepers to hold to their standards about what peace should entail. As was discussed in Chapter 3, the process of building the political community is a process of building a distributed deliberative system that can act on values. The nature of those values is constrained from the start by the provisional acts of consent that bring the peacekeepers into the area of operations and the broader (but not fully specified) human rights norms that they bring with them as agents of the “international community.” The space for peacekeeper judgment is reflected in two ways. First, to the extent that peacekeepers can legitimately claim provisional consent, they can take action when consultation is not possible, either because the damage from what they see as a violation is likely to be immediate, severe, and irreversible or because some party is unwilling to engage after sincere efforts to communicate have been made. The provisional consent peacekeepers enjoy buys a presumption that their views and decisions are not to be ignored by parties or individuals in the area of operations.

Impartiality 127 The most important virtue for impartiality is not, on this model, clear-sighted judgment about evil, but attentiveness and attentive communication. Ideally, this will suffice to head off most violations of the peace process. When it does not, we are into the realm of restraint and possible use of force, which are the themes of Chapter 5. Second, we should be wary of what picture of PKOs we are building into the impartiality standard. While criticism of PKOs often focuses on failure to stop acute human rights violations, the primary goal of the mission should be to facilitate peace between the formerly warring factions. Reserving the right to punish transgressors in line with the mission’s own understanding of things is not necessarily the best way to do this – whether we are talking about transgressions against peace agreements or more fundamental human rights. When Consultation Fails One major loose end has to do with the problem I raised earlier about “backup process.” What is the PKO to do if there is no time for discussions, or if discussions stall or are fruitless? To prevent abuse of the negotiation process through delaying tactics, there would need to be some provision for peacekeepers making decisions on their own judgment. There need not be a single solution for all cases. First, the general rationale of this approach would justify potentially harsher dealings with groups that violated the standards as understood by the PKO or the contact group, and were unwilling to even enter discussions with the PKO about those violations. Different rules might apply to the enforcement of “procedural” as opposed to “substantive” rules. While every effort should be made to reach out to them, and to address whatever reasons they have for non-participation rather than simply punishing them for it, it would be reasonable to treat those who voluntarily exclude themselves as forfeiting some right to have their interests respected in many cases. Failure to heed a call to negotiate with the mission could result in a “default judgment,” where peacekeepers then go on to act without regard to the no-show’s interests. Second, where serious evils are truly imminent, peacekeepers may reserve the right to intercede. Where civilians are under clear and immediate threat from open violence, peacekeepers might act first, with a process of “appeal” open later. But in such cases, peacekeeper action should be as narrowly focused on stopping the current problem

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as possible – not on capturing, pursuing, or punishing the parties at hand. Even with provisions for peacekeepers to act if consultation cannot take place, a negotiation option need not collapse into the peacekeepers arrogating all authority to themselves. In cases where prompt, but not immediate, action is called for, there may well be time for peacekeepers to do nothing besides talking to the parties, as long as they are using this time to seriously negotiate. The bulk of rights abuses in peacekeeping areas of operations are not sudden rights abuses that happen out of nowhere and for no reason – and the underlying reasons should be addressed through a negotiated process, rather than by peacekeeper fiat. Ultimately, impartiality will not remove the need to use force – which is the subject of the next two chapters. Is This Impartiality or Neutrality? One aspect of my proposed understanding of impartiality is that it does not empower peacekeepers to do what is right in all circumstances. Being only one voice in a negotiated process for responding to possible violations of the peace process means that sometimes peacekeepers’ view of that process may differ from local views, and peacekeepers will not punish or prevent things with which they disagree. This is not as radical a neutrality as the old standard of not taking action against any parties, but it is also not as radically empowering a stance as some of the understandings of impartiality with which I opened the chapter. This is a feature rather than a bug. We do not need to be moral relativists to embrace a certain humility about moral judgments, in the Augustinian spirit discussed in Chapter 2. Peacekeepers may be acting entirely in good faith, but if there is a reasonably fair mediation process in place, it should give us pause if their views about what is right for the stakeholders differ from the outcome of that process – it is entirely plausible that some complexity of the situation may have been missed. And, in the long run, giving as much control as possible to stakeholders over what “peace” should look like, while providing the resources to back up a vision created in the relatively benign context of a wellmanaged negotiation rather than war, is the most plausible way to promote a lasting peace.

Impartiality 129 CONCLUSION

This chapter has tried to set out a coherent framework for “placing” different concepts of “impartiality” and illuminating the different things that can be meant and have been meant by practitioners and analysts who use the word. It is no great revelation that the meaning of “impartiality” is murky, but having a framework for discussion should at least allow clearer analysis of what is at stake, why different individuals may have different views, and what the implications of holding a particular view are. The process side of impartiality has been neglected relative to  the standards aspect, and in fact the implicit assumption that the process should be “peacekeepers decide” is mistaken. Clarifying the conceptual space of impartiality will hopefully help guide continuing conversation about peacekeepers’ duties, even if the picture I have painted of where they should situate themselves is unattractive. That picture is that peacekeepers ought to understand impartiality as judging actions by reference to their impact on the peace process, conceptually requiring engagement and discussion with as many stakeholders as possible, and ranging over all operational dimensions of the mission. We should pay heed to the fact that, despite the ascendance of a very “robust” understanding of impartiality, especially in secondary literature, practitioners in this project’s interviews were quick to emphasize the centrality of negotiation and interaction with the local population. No matter how morally pure peacekeepers may be, a true stance of impartiality, where they are serving the moral goals of the population rather than their own moral views, demands stakeholder engagement as a constituent part, not just as a welcome or ­instrumentally valuable addition. Notes   1. This is true even leaving aside groups that may use their ability to attack civilians and otherwise commit human rights abuses as a piece of leverage in itself.   2. This is an issue that I will return to below, and will be part of the discussion of MONUC’s actions in the DRC in Chapter 8 as well.  3. See Chapter 5 for a more extended discussion of use of force by peacekeepers.

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  4. In the version of this argument published as Levine (2011), I also argued that all the resources of a PKO, including humanitarian assistance, should be put in the service of trying to get compliance with the peace process. In this book, I am focusing more narrowly on military peacekeepers, which moots part of this conversation. But I also now am no longer convinced that it is morally acceptable to intentionally withhold purely humanitarian assistance to advance a peace process.  5. Seven, if we count international law and the UN Charter as separate standards.   6. Note that there was no consensus usage of “neutrality” and “impartiality” among interview partners. Some used the terms interchangeably, others did not, and the use of “neutrality” was not always tied to a view that favored “neutrality” in the conservative sense outlined above.   7. It should be pointed out that individuals who pointed to that tension typically had served in missions where it was at least their understanding that the mandate did not permit them to use force for the protection of civilians. The implication of their comments was that, had they been part of a force that they understood as having a clear mandate to protect civilians, the tension would have been lessened or eliminated.   8. Interview 11.   9. Interview 1. 10. Interview 12. 11. Interview 13. 12. Interview 14. 13. Interview 3. 14. For simplicity’s sake, I am using “peace agreement” in a non-technical sense, to cover ceasefires and other accords that may not rise to the level of formal peace agreements. 15. Note that, in context, these peacekeepers were talking about governments that had been put in power through UN-backed elections. 16. Interview 15. 17. Interview 16. 18. Interview 7. This may reflect a problematic view of civilians as not involved in political controversies. See Chapter 9. 19. Interview 15. 20. Interview 17. 21. Interview 5. 22. Interview 15. 23. Interview 19. 24. Interview 20. 25. Interview 21. 26. Some further discussion of this can be found in the next chapter.

Impartiality 131 27. Interview 22. 28. Interview participants varied in the amount of risk they thought it was appropriate to take on, either personally or on behalf of individuals under their command, in pursuit of peacekeeping objectives, with some explicitly emphasizing willingness to “stretch” as a virtue (Interview 18) and others expressing frustration that outside observers criticized peacekeepers for not doing things that were not clearly within their capacity (Interview 20). For more on the vagueness of the definition of “area of operations” and “capacity,” see Holt and Smith (2008: 10). 29. Interview 23. 30. Generally speaking. There may be some goals that can only be reached by not aiming at them, like happiness (someone who spends each day worrying about how to become happy is unlikely to succeed). But there is no particular reason to believe that peace has this character. 31. Interview 16. He also told us that, unofficially, he knew that some members of the mission were talking to people associated with the FDLR and its allies. 32. Interview 5. 33. Interview 23.

Chapter 5 MINIMUM USE OF FORCE (A): RESORT TO FORCE

INTRODUCTION

The use of force by peacekeepers is one of the most fraught topics, both practically and morally, in the analysis of peacekeeping. Practically, the capacity for military force is one of the sharpest gaps in capacity peacekeepers experience. In one group interview, a Ghanaian officer lamented that, when it came to physical protection, there was often nothing he and his fellow peacekeepers could do besides “be affected” and appeal to the conscience of the armed factions (in Lebanon, in this case), because they were physically overmatched by the other actors in the theater.1 Morally, the use of force is tied up tightly with the other moral concerns of peacekeepers. Consent to humanitarian access is an issue, but not the one that most people are concerned with when they worry about lack of consent. Impartiality, as discussed last chapter, is centrally a question of the impartial use of force and coercion. Protection of civilians, the theme of Part III, most often leads into conversations about whether/how civilians can be protected through the use of force. And the use of force is made deeply problematic by the “no enemies” standard for peacekeepers – using violence against someone who is not your enemy may seem straightforwardly oxymoronic. There are two fundamental questions about the use of force that this chapter will deal with, both of them concerning when it is appropriate to resort to force – violence, to speak bluntly – rather than pursue the PKO’s goals through nonviolent and non-threatening means. First, while peacekeepers are bound by the jus in bello principle of discrimination, common to all soldiers, not to directly target civilians with violence, they often engage in operations where noncombatants 132

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 133 are directly or indirectly threatened with force. For instance, CASOs and curfews are common peacekeeping tools, but require that people be threatened with force for violating the cordon or the curfew, and effectively be defined as having a status where they are liable to attack if they do violate the rules, even if they do not otherwise meet standards for combatancy. Such tactics threaten to violate at least the spirit of discrimination, and stand in need of moral justification. I will argue that ultimately they are justifiable, when they are, only if they expand possibilities for people to engage in social coordination that can yield fuller and deeper consent, as outlined in Chapter 3. Second, the no enemies principle problematizes the use of force against “spoilers” and other groups that use violence themselves to attack civilians or otherwise breach the peace. While it may be easy to simply conclude that such groups are, after all, to be treated as enemies, there is a better option available. Peacekeeping should resurrect Hammarskjöld’s original “non-initiation” understanding of the minimum use of force standard, and peacekeepers should focus on the nonviolent ways in which they can advance the cause of peace, using force only in a minimized and graduated manner when directly obstructed. This use of force will adequately express non-enmity and make space for a faith that even violent groups can react non-destructively to the PKO’s presence and actions, ultimately allowing them to be integrated into a new political community. Before turning to those questions, however, a brief review of the evolution of use of force norms in UN and selected non-UN peacekeeping will help contextualize the discussion. And then, in the next chapter, we will turn to questions about how peacekeepers should conduct themselves when, despite being restrained, attentive, and creative, they must resort to violence. THE EVOLUTION OF USE OF FORCE IN UN PKOS

Proper Resort to Force While the UN is not the only peacekeeper, as in other areas, the development of use of force thinking for UN missions has set the agenda for most other discussions of use of force in PKOs. And, within UN PKOs, the norms regarding use of force have evolved significantly over the years.

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From the beginning, it has been recognized that UN peacekeepers have a right to self-defense. Some peacekeepers have interpreted the right exceptionally narrowly; for example, a Stimson Center report quotes a member of the Uruguayan battalion deployed as part of MONUC in 2003 saying that even if a member of a militia had pulled the pin from a grenade, he could not shoot until the grenade was thrown, and even then only at the grenade, not its thrower (Holt and Berkman 2006: 94–5, quoting Raghavan 2003). But the UN principle has never been this restrictive.2 In the UNEF I summary study, Hammarskjöld was concerned that “a wide interpretation of the right of self-defence might well blur the distinction between [peacekeeping operations] and combat operations” (Hammarskjöld 1958, §179; the remainder of this paragraph references the same section). But even he did not narrow it to a “shoot at the grenade only” level. Hammarskjöld’s line was “initiative in the use of armed force.” Peacekeepers could respond if attacked, or if anyone tried to use force to make them relinquish their positions. The principle outlined here does not specify what level of force could be used in response to an attack, nor does it provide much direct guidance to peacekeepers engaged in actions such as riot suppression, a major issue in UNEF I (for one such use of force to suppress rioting, see Findlay 2002: 30). Later, UNFICYP’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) defined “unarmed force” as “employment of all means other than weapons to impose the UN’s will,” such as “barricades, manhandling, the use of engineering equipment to remove obstacles and the use of tear-gas grenades” (ibid.: 94). Read together with the principle from the UNEF I summary study, this might be read as authorizing “initiative” in the use of such non-lethal tactics; but the UNEF I standard was to be superseded in any event. In 1973, after very high levels of force were used in ONUC, with questionable legitimacy, Secretary-General Waldheim proposed that the Second United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF II) interpret “selfdefence” to mean “resistance to attempts by forceful means to prevent it from discharging its duties under the mandate of the Security Council.” This interpretation does not seem to have been universally shared by peacekeeping contingents, perhaps because, as Findlay notes, it took place in the context of a mission that did not use force aggressively (Report of the Secretary-General on the Implementation of Security Council Resolution 340 (1973) 1973, §4(d); Findlay 2002: 100). While this

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 135 standard, interpreted very narrowly, may not quite give peacekeepers “initiative” in the use of force – we can imagine a UN force mandated to disarm armed groups reaching out to take some weapons and only firing if their hands are slapped away – it is often read as essentially shifting all restrictions on the use of force from the peacekeepers in the field to the mandate, giving them the right and even obligation to use as much force as they may be authorized to use by the Security Council and as may be needed to pursue the mandate. For instance, one member of the DPKO with whom I spoke (Interview 11) discussed the case of a MONUC division commander, who apparently disagreed with the ROE, and was disinclined to use force aggressively in defense of MONUC’s mandate. According to my interlocutor, the commander’s “so-called” interpretation of the mandate was a way of avoiding doing any offensive operations and he should never have remained in command.” In my interlocutor’s view, no considerations are appropriate to the use of force except the mandate and the ROE derived from that mandate (see also Tsagourias 2006: 474; Yamashita 2008: 621–2). On this sort of maximalist view, defense of mandate places no particular inherent restrictions on UN peacekeeper use of force, even if that means undertaking “offensive operations,” or “taking the initiative.” The seeds of a more assertive policy on use of force were sown even in the early days of UN PKOs, and a more robust interpretation seems to have won out in contemporary thinking; the views of my DPKO interlocutor seem to be common, especially among the leadership and outside analysts. (This, of course, elides a huge amount of complexity in the evolution of use of force norms. For a comprehensive history, see Findlay 2002.) The early 1990s saw a greater willingness to use force aggressively, infamously in Somalia, and then after the perceived failures in Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia, a general drawing-in of UN peacekeeping. Support for a very “robust” posture in peacekeeping has recently seemed to gain more currency, in part influenced by the growing acceptance of the R2P concept. In contemporary discussions in particular, robust use of force to protect civilians has gained prominence, relative to the discussions of forcible disarmament and area control that loomed large in discussions over earlier missions with aggressive postures, such as ONUC and the Second United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM II). The current (as of time of writing) official principle contained in the

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UN capstone doctrine is “non-use of force except in self-defense and defense of the mandate” (UN DPKO 2008: 34. The discussion below follows that at pp. 34–5.). The explanation specifically empowers PKOs to use force “proactively” in defense of the mandate, which seems to put paid to Hammarskjöld’s injunction not to take the initiative. On the face of it, this might seem to imply a “maximalist” line on defense of mandate. The “non-use of force” applies only outside of mandated activities – but, of course it would. No military operation should use force except as needed and reasonable for pursuit of its proper mission – this is both a bedrock principle of military professionalism and an expression of the just war theory principle of proportionality. But the discussion in the capstone doctrine at least gestures in a direction more bounded than the maximalist principle of “non-use of force except in defense of the mandate, essentially unlimited force in defense of the mandate.” First, consonant with the principle that peacekeepers have no enemies, the principle seems to be that force can be used to interfere with acts of groups, but not to defeat or destroy groups themselves (at least, that cannot be the intention of the use). A PKO under this standard can be proactive, in striking first to drive an armed group out of a protected area (for example), but would not be justified in planning how to disrupt its overall structure and kill its leaders. Second, peacekeepers are still enjoined to use “minimum force necessary,” and “be mindful of the need for an early de-escalation of violence.” Of course, how much force is “necessary” is a value judgment. The UN does not have a (publicly available) general doctrine that lays out appropriate levels of force for different tasks, but individual missions’ ROE have included provisions for graduated escalation ­ of force. For instance, in UNEF I, troops were instructed to disperse crowds by beginning with warnings, escalating to the use of tear gas, and only then resorting to firing (typically aiming low so as to incapacitate rather than kill). UNPROFOR’s ROE required verbal warnings, charge of weapons, and warning shots before opening fire except in cases of immediate self-defense, and ceasing fire once hostile actors had ceased fire. The First United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM I) required shouted warnings in English and Somali before opening fire. MONUC was required to negotiate, use “unarmed force,” charge weapons, fire warning shots, and issue a final verbal warning before opening fire in earnest (Findlay 2002: 32, 419 (reproducing

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 137 UNPROFOR’s ROE), 423 (reproducing UNOSOM’s ROE); Cammaert 2007). In addition, the ROE cited (and no doubt most others for PKOs and PSOs) emphasize that even when force is used, it should be “minimum force.” The “minimum” here is clearly not the restricted scope of force involved with self-defense vs. defense of mission, but a minimum level per incident, aimed at allowing for (relatively) easy de-escalation. Protection of Civilians On a different level, there has been evolution in the type of tasks in pursuit of which, as part of the mandate, the Security Council finds it appropriate to authorize force. The most important development on this front is the establishment of a norm that PKOs are to be authorized to use force to protect civilians (beyond civilian mission personnel).3 The role of “traditional” PKOs on this count was often ambivalent. Especially PKOs deployed to interpose themselves between belligerents were often not directly clearly mandated to protect civilians from attacks and human rights abuses, even though they may have been expected to do so by locals and outside observers, and that may have been a hoped-for indirect result (Holt and Berkman 2006: 3). The first UN PKO mandate to contain explicit language calling for the protection of civilians was for UNAMSIL, authorizing the mission under Chapter VII to “within its capabilities and areas of deployment . . . afford protection to civilians under imminent threat of physical violence, taking into account the responsibilities of the Government of Sierra Leone and ECOMOG” (UNSC 1999, §14). Since then, such language has become typical for UN PKOs, including the caveats that protection is offered against imminent threats and is conditional on the capacity of the mission, and that the territorial government is both expected to take primary responsibility for the safety of civilians and is to be deferred to in this capacity by the mission (the presence of ECOMOG was UNAMSIL-specific, of course) (see e.g. Holt and Berkman 2006: 86–91, esp. the chart on p. 87). From the perspective of the individual peacekeeper, the rise of protection of civilians in UN PKO mandates might seem irrelevant – especially under a defense of mandate standard for the use of force, it should not matter whether the mandate includes protection of civilians,

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invasion, or making peanut butter sandwiches. But, peacekeepers will be called upon to make judgment calls in the field regarding how to interpret their mandates (and, I will argue below, her conception of her purpose should affect actions ancillary to the use of force). This is especially true when, as is common for PKOs, ROE are vague or poorly understood, and peacekeepers find themselves needing to fill in the details. NON-UN USE OF FORCE NORMS

Beyond the UN, most organizations that engage in PKOs do not have codified and generalized doctrine on the use of force. Thinking on the use of force seems to be heavily influenced by developments in UN peacekeeping – unsurprisingly, since there is often close connection and cross-pollination both between the regional organizations and the UN directly, and via the cluster of international NGOs with interests in the use of force and peacekeeping. To take peacekeeping in Africa as a focal example, the Constitutive Act of the AU gives the AU the right to “intervene in a Member State pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity” (Article 4(h)), a power very similar to the UNSC’s power to coercively intervene to maintain international peace and security under Chapter VII (African Union 2000). The degree to which force has been authorized and used by African peacekeeping missions has varied. To give a sense of the variation, we may compare two African PKOs – ECOMOG in Liberia in the 1990s and AMIS in the Darfur region of the Sudan from 2004 to 2007. ECOMOG in Liberia ECOMOG’s intervention in Liberia preceded the transformation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) (which did not permit any intervention into member states, even under the organization’s aegis) into the AU in 2000. Its approach is often taken to be a forerunner of more “robust” African peacekeeping attempts, such as the AU’s intervention language and the design of the African Standby Force (ASF). ECOMOG landed in Monrovia, Liberia in August 1990 and immediately faced heavy opposition, especially from the NFPL faction

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 139 (Aboagye 1999, 82; Olonisakin 2000: 105). Its initial mandate was fairly open-ended, authorizing “military operations for the purpose of Monitoring the ceasefire, and restoring law and order to create the necessary conditions for free and fair elections to be held in Liberia” (Aboagye 1999: 336, reproducing Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) decision A/DEC.1/8/90). Later that year, as ECOMOG faced heavy resistance, the mandate was revised, authorizing the mission to “enforce a cease-fire, clear the Liberian capital of all threats of attack, and establish and maintain an effective buffer” between the force and militant groups (Olonisakin 2000: 106). From the start, when it had to enter the port of Monrovia while striking at NFPL artillery with naval batteries, ECOMOG had an aggressive enough approach to the use of force that it was arguably not peacekeeping at all, but rather peace enforcement, or in some awkward space between the two (Howe 1996: 151; Olonisakin 2000: 161–5). This trend accelerated after September 1990 when the Liberian president was captured from ECOMOG headquarters by members of the INFPL, and later executed. As part of the fallout, the Ghanaian General Quainoo was replaced with the Nigerian General J. N. “I Don’t Give a Damn” Dogonyaro, who proceeded to live up to his nickname by launching an aggressive blockade and bombardment to push back the NFPL and expand ECOMOG’s zone of control (Aboagye 1999: 89–90). ECOMOG arguably crossed the line into enmity, as it ended up in a “de facto alliance” with the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL, still officially the state military) – ironically, at the same time that it was seen by many as favoring Taylor by not pursuing the NFPL aggressively enough (ibid.: 86, 157–8). While it did not ultimately defeat the NFPL (Taylor went on to win national elections in 1997 that, unfortunately, did not prevent a return to war in 1999), ECOMOG’s tenure was characterized by full-on military operations. While it would engage in duties more characteristic of peacekeeping after enforcement operations, such as interposing itself between warring parties, it was clearly willing to return to the use of aggressive levels of force without much concern for the line of enmity (Olonisakin 2000: 152). AMIS in Sudan AMIS’ final mandate before being “re-hatted” as UNAMID (African Union 2004, §6) did not explicitly address the use of force, but

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mandated the operation to undertake several tasks that could involve coercion, including: ●● ●● ●●

protect civilians4 protect humanitarian operations deter “uncontroled” [sic] armed groups from attacking civilians

By contrast, several tasks were explicitly hedged with the language that AMIS was to “monitor and verify” the accomplishment of goals only (such as disarmament of GoS-allied militias), implying that force was not to be used in their pursuit. AMIS’ ROE may never have been fully finalized. A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report from 2006 referred to a set of draft ROE from 2005 that HRW still believed to be in effect for the mission (Human Rights Watch 2006: 26–7). Those ROE clearly authorized the use of deadly force in defense of AU personnel, while non-deadly force could be used to protect AU buildings and equipment, prevent the escape of detainees, and ensure freedom of movement. The rules for implementing the protection-ofcivilians task are more ambiguous – AMIS may use non-deadly force to protect civilians, and can detain (but with no note about the acceptable level of force in such detentions) and take into custody those who are about to commit hostile acts, and disarm individuals designated by the force commander. The AMIS ROE also show a concern for graduated use of force similar to UN approaches. AMIS is required to issue warnings before using force, use only proportional force, and avoid collateral damage. In practice, AMIS was much more restrained in the use of force than ECOMOG, to the point that it was criticized for being too passive, especially in the face of attacks on civilians. An AU assessment mission concluded that its mandate was sufficiently robust, but that not all commanders were interpreting it “flexibly” or “robustly” enough (Hussein 2012: 8). While AMIS’ mandate included protection-of-­civilians language, some AMIS units interpreted the language of “imminent threat” very literally, rather than in the broader way it is used in, for example, current UN doctrine, leading them only to react to attacks on civilians happening right in front of them, rather than taking proactive steps to protect civilians with force (Chin and Morgenstein 2005: 5). AMIS’ inability or unwillingness to respond with strong military force

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 141 to attacks on civilians, or even on the force itself, was cited as a reason why it lost credibility and ability to influence the situation (see e.g. ICG 2006b: 15). In the field, AMIS’ behavior may have been a mixture of genuine weakness and sincere interpretation of its purpose. AMIS was, at least in part, doomed by the fact that it was conceived and designed originally as a force to oversee the DPA, that was largely a dead letter before the mission arrived in the theatre. One interview partner, a Rwandan who had served in AMIS, was critical of some of the other national contingents for surrendering too quickly and for interpreting the restrictions on use of force in the mandate as if they required acquiescence in any show of force by the government or rebels.5 But at the same time, he was insistent that the point of demonstrating a capability to use force was to give yourself credibility for nonforceful means of resolving disputes, like persuasion, mediation, and development of relationships with individuals at all levels of the fighting groups. He told a story of his unit being ambushed by rebels while on patrol, and was evidently proud of the fact that precisely because the Rwandan units had a reputation for being willing and able to use force, they were able to negotiate their way out of the situation without a shot being fired. Perhaps most interestingly, he seemed sympathetic to militia groups that ambushed AMIS peacekeepers, explaining that the ambushes were “out of necessity,” since the rebels were poorly outfitted and could not hold ground, and citing this sympathetic view as a reason why he felt it was imperative for peacekeepers to respond with minimal or no force if possible. TWO QUESTIONS ABOUT THE USE OF FORCE

Let us take as a normative given that the use of force in defense of the mandate is appropriate, as has been reaffirmed by the current UN doctrine. Even if we do so, at least two questions about the appropriate scope for use of force remain unanswered, and I suspect that the continued disconnect between the way use of force norms are understood by leadership and analysts and by troops in the field are at least in part related to this remaining lack of clarity. First, there is the – I think under-appreciated in the whole of thinking on the ethics of war and conflict, not just in peacekeeping – ­question of what the principles for the use of threats of violence and

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non-lethal force against civilians/noncombatants should be. Such threat and coercion is endemic to what peacekeepers do – it is part of CASOs, curfews, checkpoints, crowd control and riot suppression, and the like. Peacekeepers should not, of course, directly target civilians with violence. But it is not a matter of moral indifference if, for example, peacekeepers tell civilians they must remain inside after a certain hour or risk being treated as combatants. In the next section, I will argue that uses of coercion and threat against civilians must be guided by an aim of expanding the legitimacy of such uses in a more police-like (but not entirely police-like) direction by making inclusive political processes safer. Second, there is a question about “narrow proportionality” – the amount of force that can be used against combatants – connected to the idea that peacekeepers have no enemies (the term is from McMahan 2009: 20–1). One interpretation of non-use of force except in defense of the mandate is that, when the mandate is being pursued, the only limits on the use of force are prudence and avoidance of unnecessary harm to civilians – a “maximum allowable force” standard. And the decline of “minimum use of force” in favor of the new standard seems to indicate that this is the intended interpretation. I will argue that the particular nature of peacekeeping, especially fidelity to the no enemies principle, requires instead an adherence to something like Hammarskjöld’s ­original non-initiation understanding of minimum use of force. When Force is Used Against Civilians PKOs, like any other military operation, should take themselves as being bound by the principle of discrimination not to intentionally target civilians with violence. But, in their nature, they may not be able to avoid targeting civilians with other types of force, or creating situations in which their own actions seem to define individuals out of pure noncombatant status, which gets morally murky. As Walzer points out, the paradigm of war in the traditional just war theory may be naval warfare on the high seas, which is “just what we intuitively want war to be,” because it is “especially pure, a combat between combatants, with no one else involved” (Walzer 2006a: 147; even purer is Lem’s (1994) vision of robots fighting wars on the moon and only reporting the results to Earth). Wars rarely reach that level of

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 143 purity, but their failure to do so, we might think, is purely contingent, a regrettable fact of our messy world. PKOs are different – the image of a PKO engaging with combatants in a way completely removed from the noncombatant population is incoherent. Both peacekeepers and factions that create difficulties for the peace are fundamentally engaged in manipulating the behavior of the noncombatant population. PKOs are not just contingently, but conceptually, conducted among the people. Even where a PKO is deployed to monitor the line of demarcation between organized hostile forces, most border zones are not depopulated. In addition to creating a buffer in places where people live, such peacekeepers are operating in a situation where the political border between two populated areas must be politically strengthened, preventing them from treating it as an area where only combatants matter. In addition to the constraints of operating militarily among ­civilians, in some cases peacekeepers may use force to influence the civilian population directly (though typically not lethal force). To see this clearly, it may be helpful to briefly consider the related case of counterinsurgency.6 Counterinsurgents face many issues similar to those faced by peacekeepers, and in counterinsurgency the problems surrounding the use of force against noncombatant populations are painfully clear. The British counterinsurgency in Malaya, which gave us the phrase “winning hearts and minds,” nonetheless combined an attempt to appeal to and provide benefits to the population with fairly harsh coercive techniques. The British created “new villages” to which Malays in insurgent-dominated areas were coercively relocated. In these villages, the British could better exercise control, and they ultimately focused on providing improved services to the villages, that would make life there (after the “initial disturbance of moving”) more attractive than under insurgent control (Stubbs 2008: 122–4). Merely rounding up the population into the villages did not work well – it was only after the British started providing safety and the benefits of governance to villages, and began offering independence (one of the insurgents’ main stated goals) that they began to turn the war around. But this was not just a matter of persuasion – had the British not created the new villages, where they could exercise increased control, anything they tried to build would have been targeted by insurgents. And, it is unlikely that people would have moved into the new villages

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without coercion. Whatever its virtues, the British strategy was not bloodless or “nice,” and some of its aftereffects are still felt in Malaysia today. Peacekeepers, particularly UN peacekeepers, eschew the heavyhanded population control measures used in Malaya, and focus on protecting civilians in place.7 But this does not leave their hands entirely clean of coercion against civilians. PKOs dealing with “spoiler” groups may need to engage in counterinsurgency-like operations to separate such groups from civilians – either civilian supporters or civilians they may strategically terrorize. This may involve forcing civilians to leave an area or remain, engaging in coercive searches, etc. PKOs may also be called upon to provide police-like services, and need to use coercive tactics like roadblocks or curfews to keep the peace.8 Two examples of coercion against noncombatants common in PKOs are the uses of CASOs and of curfews. CASOs have been explicitly authorized for MONUC/MONUSCO, and have been used in other missions (such as UNPROFOR), and the UN’s handbook on multidimensional peacekeeping considers them generally to be part of the military’s task of “providing a secure environment” (Findlay 2002, 419, 422 (reproducing UNPROFOR’s ROE); UN DPKO, Peacekeeping Best Practices Section 2003: 60; UNSC 2008: 4). In a CASO, military or police personnel secure a perimeter around the area to be searched (such as a village, or a few blocks in a larger city), the “cordon.” Sometimes, two cordons are established – one ensuring that no one enters and the other facing inward to ensure that no one leaves. Once secured, a different group then conducts the search (for samples of CASO guidelines, see Findlay 2002: 422; Fastabend, McGhee, and Hanlon 2003: IV-22–IV-25; Jensen et al. 2007, §2.2: 48–55; UN DPKO/DFS 2012b, §2.6). The cordon itself is coercive; since the point of the search is often to find individuals who may appear to be noncombatants but in fact are militants (or at least willing to smuggle arms or other contraband past the cordon on behalf of militants), noncombatants are not generally permitted to cross the cordon. For example, in early 2012, a FARDC cordon and search operation prevented individuals from crossing the cordon around the city of Uvira for three hours (Radio Okapi 2012a). More invasive control of civilians may also be part of a CASO. The US PSO manual suggests that the “best method for controlling the populace during a search” is to require all heads of households to stand in front of their homes while the search is conducted, and to accompany

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 145 troops entering the home; requiring everyone in the area to assemble in a central location, or stay in their homes throughout the search, are alternative methods of population control (Fastabend, McGhee, and Hanlon 2003: IV-24). Guidelines for CASOs are often not explicit about the level of force to be used against individuals who attempt to disrupt the operation. The UNIBAM states that “[d]uring searches force is not used except in self-defence and protection of own troops/property and civilians, and therefore, ROE and mandate are to be complied with,” and that the force should “take necessary steps to arrest, neutralize or contain individuals, groups or organizations who may try to encourage a negative reaction among the local population” (UN DPKO/DFS 2012b, §§2.6.1, 2.6.3).9 The US PSO manual, similarly, refers back to general guidance, counseling the members of the military cordon to “[k]now and strictly enforce the ROE” and “[k]eep the use of force to a minimum” (Fastabend, McGhee, and Hanlon 2003: IV-24). However, it is clear that militaries should not always expect compliance, either because individuals in the area are attempting to assist combatants, or simply because they resent the presence of the CASO. The Nordic Coordinated Arrangement for Military Peace Support (NORDCAPS) guidance for PKOs warns that “normally” the threat to units engaged in a CASO will be “a general lack of the will to cooperate which may escalate into riots,” and that a “common threat will . . . be attempts to leave the area and smuggle illegal objects out of the area” (Jensen et al. 2007: 49). While some CASOs may escalate to riots or even military confrontations with armed groups caught in the search area, even if they do not they are clearly coercive tactics against the noncombatants there. Curfews are another way in which PKOs may direct coercion against noncombatants.10 They have been used in a number of PKOs, such as by the UN in the DRC and East Timor, and by the AU in Somalia.11 They are also included as a military tactic in some PKO and PSO manuals (see e.g. Fastabend, McGhee, and Hanlon 2003: IV-33–IV-36; Jensen et al. 2007: 68). As with CASOs, curfew guidance tends to focus on the use of nonlethal means to deter, prevent, and respond to curfew violations. The US PSO manual states that soldiers should “[n]ormally arrest, search, and hand [curfew breakers] over to the civil police” (Fastabend, McGhee, and Hanlon 2003: IV-35). But just as in the case of CASOs, the fact that the response to curfew violations is typically nonviolent should not be

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seen as indicating its being typically non-coercive – the “normally” indicates that US soldiers in a PKO or PSO are not expected to simply let an individual who resists arrest for curfew violations walk away. In particular, the UNIBAM lists battalion assets capable of the use of force as one of the requirements for impositions of curfews (a subset, in its rubric, of crowd control) (UN DPKO/DFS 2012b: 231). To CASOs and curfews we might add other coercive actions that PKOs may take with regard to noncombatant populations, such as roadblocks, checkpoints, crowd control, and even seemingly trivial matters like enforcing right of way for peacekeeper vehicles. These tactics raise many of the same issues. The Problem with Directing Non-lethal Force/Coercion Against Civilians The ICC’s statute defines “[i]ntentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities,” as a war crime (Rome Statute 1998, §8.2.b.i). This legal standard echoes the jus in bello principle of “discrimination” (or distinction), that “soldiers charged with the deployment of armed force may not do so indiscriminately; rather they must exert every reasonable effort to discriminate between legitimate and illegitimate targets . . . A legitimate target in wartime is anyone or anything engaged in harming”(Orend 2006: 106–7, emphasis in original. Orend’s formulation is fairly standard, see e.g. a similar formulation in Walzer 2006b: 151). Most observers would probably be inclined to define “targeting with force” in such a way as to render CASOs, curfews, and the like permissible (at least so long as they are carried out in a humane and professional manner). In such operations, violence is not directed at noncombatants (and their point is not even to direct violence at combatants). But these operations at least skate up to the line of violating the spirit of the rule. If armed peacekeepers manning a cordon tell civilians to turn back, the threat is that they may use force if the civilians do not comply. Even if peacekeepers never need to make good on the threat, this is clearly the sort of behavior that stands in need of justification because it in a weaker way violates the civilian’s general right not to be subject to armed force. This brings us to the second aspect of the problem. In addition to the direct coercion of noncombatants involved in imposing a curfew or

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 147 conducting a cordon and search operation, coercive tactics used against the civilian population may create tricky situations where previously non-hostile individuals become defined/definable as “threats” in part because of the PKO’s activities. The threat of dissatisfaction and rioting that NORDCAPS identifies as a danger of CASOs is one case in point – individuals who would clearly be considered noncombatants for the traditional jus in bello principle of discrimination may be angered by the PKO’s coercive operations, and, when they resist it, find themselves becoming “threats” in response to which greater levels of force are used. This can expose noncombatants to risk, either through inducing them to hostile action or creating situations where lethal (even if in many cases understandable) mistakes occur (such as a man killed for failing to stop at a US Marine checkpoint during the early days of the US-led PSO preceding the Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en Haïti (MINUSTAH), see Jacobs 2004). If it seems odd to raise an issue about people who genuinely become threatening to peacekeepers, consider it this way: the spirit of the discrimination principle is that noncombatants ought not be dragged into the war. They should enjoy as much safety as can be provided them. So, to the extent that peacekeepers use coercive tactics that create resistance among noncombatants, it is at least morally disingenuous to take no responsibility for the threat created, and treat the situation as if the individuals were like any other combatant. And, in fact, PKO and PSO guidance typically does not treat them that way. Turn to the section of the NORDCAPS manual on crowd control when faced with a group of people who became irate at a CASO, and you will find, in bold capital letters, “DON’T USE MORE FORCE THAN NECESSARY” (Jensen et al. 2007: 68). The principle, after all, surely cannot be: “Peacekeepers may set entirely arbitrary rules for what civilians may or may not do; if civilians violate those rules, they may be stopped, with violence if necessary.” There must be some rules about which threats peacekeepers can legitimately make. Civilian-hood cannot be subject to such arbitrary loss, nor can “mere” coercive threats be taken as morally irrelevant. Considerations for Appropriate Use of Force/Coercion Against Civilians Were peacekeepers police, questions of use of force against noncombatants would be relatively straightforward, or at least well-discussed.

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The power of police to use force against the population is more or less just the question of whether and when the state can use coercion. Kleinig (1996: 98), for instance, reasonably seeks to justify the use of force by police on a similar social contract basis to the generic justification of the state’s coercive powers. But, as discussed at length in Chapter 3, a social contract is exactly what peacekeepers cannot appeal to in justifying their activities – they are deployed precisely because a social contract is lacking. If we shift ground, as Kleinig later does (in discussing the specific issue of deadly force by police), to a hypothetical contract (what people would consent to), based on the assumption that reasonable people will consent to measures needed to advance the common good, we will not find much help for the peacekeeper (ibid.: 108–11). Were we to accept that peacekeepers could use force against anyone, so long as the greater good would be served thereby, we would have proved too much, and completely eliminated any sense of discrimination. I will not give a full argument for the intuition that this would be unacceptable here (to do so would be, essentially, to argue for the whole just war theory), but it would be both morally and practically worrisome to think of peacekeepers as having such freedom in the use of force. Peacekeepers would lose their status as guarantors of a peace process aimed at building social consent, and instead become armed social engineers constrained only by the most efficient way of achieving their desired end state.12 The other problem with applying Kleinig’s justification for police coercion to the peacekeeping case is that, despite his favored account of police as “social peacekeepers” rather than just enforcers of the law, his discussion of how to justify police coercion focuses almost entirely on how to justify coercion against lawbreakers. He makes brief mention of the use of tear gas and other non-lethal weapons in the context of riot suppression, but even members of an unruly crowd, though we may not want to call them “criminals,” are already engaged in a breach of the peace (Kleinig 1996: 106). For peacekeepers engaged in activities like curfew enforcement, the moral problem is precisely that coercive threats (at least) will be used against many people who are breaking no law or rule.13 Kleinig’s account is one of the most complete justifications of police violence, which highlights the fact that the deep disanalogies between policing and peacekeeping mean it will serve no more adequately as a moral model than warfare.

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 149 There is, however, a grain of truth for peacekeepers in the idea that what could justify police-like coercion used by peacekeepers against the noncombatant population is that it makes everyone better off. A consequentialist approach to this question only breaks the intuitions associated with just war theory on some definitions of “good consequences.” But there is at least one concept of good consequences that does not have seriously problematic implications. If the problem is that, unlike in the case of police, peacekeepers cannot appeal to a notion of social consent, then we can harken back to the analysis of consent. The solution may be to use coercion to build consent. This sounds more wrong than it is. The general point is that, when using coercion against the civilian population, peacekeepers should have the goal that, at the end of their operation, the civilians they interacted with are better able to participate in social systems of deliberation and judgment – that the “consent” that can be given for an operation will be less provisional and more authentic as a result of this operation, even if coercion is involved. There are at least two easy cases. If the civilian population in an area is extremely hostile to the peacekeepers even initiating their operation – if, say, the arrival of peacekeepers to undertake a CASO is immediately met with resistance from angry crowds, even before anything has happened to further escalate the situation – both prudence and morality will almost certainly point in the direction of the PKO trying to achieve its goals in some other way. I doubt any military commander in a PKO would be willing to force her way in against civilians who are actively resisting except in the most dire circumstances, regardless. And, if the operation is necessary to stop some immediate physical threat to the civilians, then the coercion is almost certainly justified. Consider, by analogy, pushing a stranger out of the way of a speeding car – yes, a sharp shove is coercive and would normally be immoral, but no reasonable person would complain if it averted death. And, as dead people cannot participate in social systems of deliberation and consent, it is hard to conceive of situations in which peacekeepers would not be permitted to use coercion against civilians to preserve their lives – say, by ordering them out of what the peacekeepers know is about to become the site of a firefight. In more ambiguous cases, we can benefit from another insight from the civic republican literature. Braithwaite and Pettit (1990: 62–5) have

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recommended that we see that the aim of a domestic criminal justice system should be to maximize dominion – the most liberty that is consistent with living in a society of people with equal liberty, in which everyone is aware of their equal liberty. Dominion is distinct from liberty simpliciter because it requires not only equality but equality in society. If I lived on a deserted island, my liberty would arguably be increased, but not my dominion. Similarly, if I were given vast powers not available to most people in my society, my liberty would certainly increase, but not my dominion. A focus on dominion coheres well with the civic republican theory of consent advanced in Chapter 3 as well as the overall framework of reciprocity established in Chapter 2. At least beyond a certain point of imbalance in my liberties within society, my ability to enter into reciprocal relationships with other people suffers. By definition, increasing my liberty in a way that does not increase my dominion means increasing my liberty at the expense of someone else’s. It is easy to see how this follows from the sociality of the concept of dominion; if you give me more liberty to act, but it would not be possible to give everyone similar liberty, and we remain in society, it must be because my greater liberty in some way comes from an ability to compel others to give me (or at least let me have) what I want. If it did not, it would be possible for everyone to be given a similar liberty. But if I am compelling others, I am not in a reciprocal relationship with them. So increasing liberty beyond the point where dominion could be increased lets me get more of what I want, but does not let me get more social recognition for my values. In fact, it will probably involve me getting more of what I want while having less genuine (informed, uncoerced, non-adaptive) social recognition of my values. And, if Chapter 2 is right that values are inherently intersubjective and social, that amounts to saying that the ability to see what I value as a value rather than a mere preference erodes. Unsurprisingly, freedom/compulsion hierarchies that result from unequal liberty undermine social cohesion. This brings us back to the account in Chapter 3 of consent as judgment by a distributed system based on shared values. If peacekeepers want to advance consent through the occasional bit of necessary coercion aimed at civilians, ensuring dominion-enhancing coercion will be an important part of the solution. Individuals with maximum dominion are in the best position to have genuinely reciprocal relationships that can ground shared values.

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 151 There are two corollaries to this. First, though Braithwaite and Pettit are not very explicit about it, a consequence of their account seems to be that the coercers – whether police and courts, or peacekeepers – are people in the society who should be subject to egalitarian distribution of dominion, rather than special cases. This is implied by their account of why it would be wrong to punish the innocent if this would (somehow) maximize others’ dominion. The problem, they argue, is that if people were to come to know that the police might use their powers against innocent people, everyone would come to see themselves as under threat (Braithwaite and Pettit 1990: 72–6). But the deeper problem seems to be not just the perception, but the fact that the police would then be free to pursue their goals at the expense of others’ liberty – upsetting dominion. Police, soldiers, peacekeepers, and courts are all given special powers as part of their office, but on a civic republican account the powers must not be (morally) usable except in ways that do not offend against dominion. Otherwise the public official herself enjoys greater liberty at the expense of everyone else, and everyone’s (including her own!) dominion is reduced. This might seem like a case where one would envy being in a position with much power and reduced dominion, casting doubt on the value of dominion in the first place. This might be true, if not for the reciprocal nature of value.14 To the extent that we care not just about getting what we want but about being able to live meaningful and valued lives with others, power without dominion is less attractive.15 The upshot of this for peacekeepers is to reinforce the need, discussed in Chapter 4, to have consultations with the local population on uses of coercion. As with the distributed systems described in Chapter 3, this does not (and could not) mean that the population as a whole is involved in every decision to use force that may involve civilians. But it does mean that peacekeepers’ decision processes on using force (in general, but especially when it involves possible coercion against civilians) need to be embedded in a distributed system of deliberation such that decisions taken in the system can be seen as proceeding on the basis of values shared between the peacekeepers and the locals. The peacekeepers should ultimately be aiming to maximize their own dominion in concert with locals, not their raw power. Beyond this, decisions about when it will be appropriate to use coercion against civilians will need to be made on the basis of the virtues of attentiveness, restraint, and creativity. Restraint is clearly applicable, since any

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use of coercion against civilians is going to be morally problematic. The best choice – if it is available – is not to do it. But if I care about you, I need to not only recognize your separate existence (a key element of attentiveness) but also recognize that you are a person subject to vulnerabilities you may not be able to overcome on your own. There are times when we must rely on others to protect us “against our will,” when we are weak-willed, unable to cooperate with others, vulnerable to manipulation, or overcome with emotions like fear, anger, or even triumphalism. This is not to make an apology for unrestrained paternalism, but rather to insist that coercion is an ever-present possibility of caring, and that the question of when it should be used cannot be answered easily, or in the abstract. When coercion must be used, attentiveness to the views of those civilians who may be targets of coercion is critical. By attending to their interests and the way they see the situation, peacekeepers will be better equipped for restraint; they will better understand likely sources of resistance to coercive measures (e.g. are there reasons why this curfew might be especially onerous on some segments of the population?) and be able to find ways to defuse that resistance without resorting to coercion and threats. Attentiveness and creativity will also help with the necessary task of “re-integration,” to use Braithwaite and Pettit’s term (1990: 91–2). Peacekeepers should, of course, aim to be minimally disruptive to the civilian population – carry out searches respectfully and expediently, not make checkpoints very difficult and time-consuming to clear, and the like. But any coercive measures that contact civilians will disrupt those civilians’ lives to some extent. The goal for peacekeepers should be to “re-integrate” in two ways. First, to find ways to make people whole after whatever disruption the peacekeepers bring – this will require attentiveness to what is most important about the disruption, and creativity especially when restitution in kind is not possible (peacekeepers cannot return to someone the time they spent waiting to pass a checkpoint). But second, and more importantly, peacekeepers should find ways to use the coercive operation to enhance social cohesion and consent, rather than undermine it. Sometimes this will be the goal of the operation in the first place – a CASO that disarms a local militia can make it safer for people to meet and form social and political bonds that let them participate more fully in society (even members of the militia,

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 153 who must now find nonviolent ways to get what they want). But at other times, peacekeepers may have to be alert to ways in which they can take advantage of the opening that an operation makes to bring people together. If peacekeepers can remain alert to the implications of their actions that coerce civilians for dominion, they will be able to better legitimate them. Uses of coercion against civilians will be most legitimate when they are integrated into a system that tries to achieve reciprocity with civilian values both before and after the action: before the action, by involving locals as deeply as possible in structures of accountability and contestation for the PKO’s strategy in general; and after the action, by using any coercion to put civilians on a better footing to participate in society and build social connections. If the operation is unlikely to do this, then coercion against civilians is almost certainly not morally justified. USE OF FORCE AGAINST COMBATANTS: NON-INITIATION

While the use of threat and coercion against the civilian population may pose obvious moral problems for peacekeepers, that they stand in any different relationship to combatants from soldiers in a war may not be as clear. Peacekeepers are often deployed into areas where the conflict involves irregular forces that are willing and able to blend into the civilian population, and who, besides any such subterfuge, have genuine connections to people not directly involved in violence that makes their moral status ambiguous (e.g. family members who shelter combatants, locals who provide them with information). How to make targeting decisions in such an environment is a difficult question, but a problem that peacekeepers share (at least) with peace enforcers and counterinsurgents.16 But beyond these difficulties that peacekeepers share with contemporary warfighters, they face peculiar moral problems about the use of force against combatants that arise from the no enemies standard. For the sake of argument, let us assume here that we have in view individuals (and groups) that have been identified as combatants in a morally and epistemically acceptable manner. It is not sufficient for a peacekeeper to end her moral inquiry there. Traditional jus in bello would seem to imply – as will be discussed below – that so long as

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the question of combatancy is settled, combatants are morally free to treat their opponents as Schmittian enemies and “existentially negate” them. That is, combatants may be targeted more or less without limit. But, since peacekeepers do not have enemies, their moral landscape should look different, in at least two ways. First (the topic of the remainder of this chapter), they should exercise more restraint and creativity in deciding whether the use of force is really warranted, even against combatants. Second (the topic of the next), they must take action to reconcile themselves to the population when they do resort to violence. Narrow vs. Wide Proportionality Proportionality is one of the traditional jus in bello constraints. Intuitively, it is the idea that soldiers should take care not to fight in a more destructive manner than is necessary to achieve some military gain. This is, of course, a wise principle for peacekeepers as much as it is for any other armed actor. In fact, as I stated it (and this is part of the difficulty), the principle is almost tautological – no one is in favor of unnecessary destruction. The devil is in the details of what counts as “unnecessary.” There are at least two elements of this that need to be considered, which McMahan helpfully distinguishes as “wide” versus “narrow” proportionality. Wide proportionality is the traditional meat of proportionality considerations – the question of whether foreseen but unintended (incidental but not accidental) harms to noncombatants and nonmilitary targets are commensurate with the military advantage. Narrow proportionality deals with the question of whether there are any limits to what can be done to combatants (McMahan 2009: 20–1). Wide Proportionality and Due Care With respect to wide proportionality, peacekeepers’ duties are largely the same as any other soldiers’. In practice, proportionality can be interpreted as placing only an absolute upper bound on the use of force, what Pfaff calls a “maximum allowable force” standard (Pfaff 2000: 4). Soldiers – understandably – seek to minimize their own risks.17 Generally speaking, at least in powerful militaries, the more force is used, the safer soldiers are.18 It will generally be safer for soldiers to, for

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 155 example, call in air or artillery strikes on an entire area in which they believe hostile individuals may be operating than to go into complex (say, urban) terrain with light weapons and on foot. Combined with a principle that sets only an upper bound on the use of force, this leads to a situation in which “[t]he most force allowable . . . becomes the necessary force since it is what is necessary to preserve soldiers’ lives without violating the law or morality of war”(ibid.: 2). In international law, proportionality seems to be taken to provide just such an upper bound. For instance, the International Criminal Court (ICC) statute makes it a war crime to [i]ntentionally [launch] an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military ­advantage ­anticipated. (Rome Statute 1998, §8.b.iv) Compare the first additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits any “attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated” (Protocol Additional (I) to the Geneva Conventions 1977, Art. 51.5(b)). The use of “excessive” in the Rome Statute is important. Excessive contrasts with proportional (in the literal sense). While there are difficulties with saying exactly what makes some use of force “proportional” to the military gain, leaving those aside we are left with an upper bound on force. Some use of force could be more than is necessary (or, reasonably expected to be necessary) to achieve the military end in view without being excessive in this sense. Consider an analogous personal example. If someone is trying to kill me, it is probably proportional for me to use lethal force to defend myself. But I might find myself in a situation in which, say, I could stop someone from shooting me by running away from them, or by knocking them unconscious. In this case lethal force would be proportional, but not clearly necessary. Similarly, peacekeepers entering a rebel-held area might reasonably conclude that they could probably drive rebels away from a civilian population under threat by setting up a series of

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checkpoints and conducting limited patrols into disputed areas, but that they would not violate proportionality were they to strike rebel positions with helicopter gunships. In these cases, the gap between “necessary” and “proportional” tends to close, in the way that Pfaff points out, the more we allow considerations of force protection and certainty of outcome into our calculations. It is fairly plausible in many situations that every increase in the level of force used makes the outcome more certain and harm to the initiator less likely.19 So, if we read the objective as including not just that some goal is likely to be accomplished, but that the goal is as certain as possible to be accomplished, at minimum risk to the soldiers involved, proportionality will lead militaries to use no more and no less force than is comparable to the value of the end they hope to achieve. This will be true even if a reasonable likelihood of success would be in the offing at a lower level of force, especially if the soldiers were willing to shoulder additional risk. But, prevalent as it may be in military thinking, “maximum allowable force” is an inappropriate standard even for warfare. The spirit of proportionality, as Walzer points out, is that noncombatants retain their rights in war, and combatants are required to respect those rights – including the right not to be killed, which obliges soldiers to take steps to reduce the risk of civilian deaths (Walzer 2006a: 152). Walzer rightly argues that it is inadequate to see this respect as properly expressed through an interpretation of proportionality as an upper limit only, as this amounts to showing more concern for the risk of soldiers than for that of civilians, when the fact that civilians retain more extensive rights against being killed than soldiers do should put things the other way around. Walzer ultimately argues that soldiers should adopt a principle of “due care,” that requires a contextual balancing between the risks to combatants and to noncombatants (ibid.: 156). Walzer gives only very general guidance on this point, but for now let us leave it at that, since the same basic problem applies to both peacekeepers and other soldiers. For peacekeepers, the more interesting and specific questions have to do with narrow proportionality. Narrow Proportionality Narrow proportionality gets relatively short shrift in mainstream just war theory, and in the laws of war. As McMahan points out:

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 157 both just war theory and the law of war hold that all combatants are morally and legally liable to attack by enemy combatants as long as war is in progress and they have not been rendered hors de combat . . . no attacks on enemy combatants can be disproportionate, according to the traditional view. (McMahan 2009: 22–3) There is one area in which international law (and just war theory) embraces narrow proportionality, and that is by restricting the use of certain kinds of weapons, even against soldiers. International law has long prohibited the use of chemical and biological weapons, as well as certain kinds of weapons that are designed to maim, such as “mushrooming” bullets (see e.g. Declaration II to the Hague Convention of 1899 1899; Declaration III to the Hague Convention of 1899 1899; Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention 1972; Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions 1980, and its Protocols; Rome Statute 1998, Art. 8.2.b.xvii–xxi). Since no one is seriously suggesting that peacekeepers should employ chemical weapons, let me leave this aside.20 The “traditional account” embodies something like Schmittian enmity, and hence is inappropriate for peacekeeping. Compare the discussion of Walzer’s “naked soldiers” in Chapter 1; ignoring narrow proportionality is basically a statement of the Walzerian principle that even currently unthreatening soldiers may be killed, though it is kind not to do so. One might object to Walzer’s account of naked soldiers on the grounds that there is no need to kill them – that doing so does not breach any kind of proportionality principle, but rather a principle that McMahan calls “minimum force,” by which he means that no unnecessary force is to be used (a somewhat different usage from “minimum force” in the peacekeeping context) (McMahan 2009: 23). But McMahan goes on to point out that, while his minimum force is in principle distinct from proportionality, in practice the two standards start to merge – for reasons similar to the ones Pfaff points out. It may be possible, say, to capture some opponents rather than killing them, and thereby incapacitate them. But it is likely to be riskier and less ensuring of success to capture them if one has the ability to kill them instead. So the question most soldiers will actually end up considering is one of narrow proportionality – is incapacitating this opponent at a particular level of risk and certainty morally “worth” the amount of force that will have to be used? Naked soldiers, on the traditional account, fall to this sort of consideration of necessity. While the soldier

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may not be doing anything threatening now, killing her while I have the chance is plausibly something that will reduce the risk to me and my comrades later on, and make us incrementally surer of victory. Because, of course, I consider her very existence a threat – she exists as the kind of person who may kill me or mine. But the principle of unlimited combatant liability to attack is incompatible with the doctrinal principle that peacekeepers are not to seek the defeat or destruction of the enemy, but only to change their actions. The problem is specifying what principle should replace unlimited liability to attack. Unfortunately, most discussions of use of force in UN operations do not take us very far in working out narrow ­proportionality for PKOs. There are two dimensions along which force can be restricted or expanded – its scope and its level. As discussed above, the bulk of the debate and change, in the UN especially, has been over the appropriate scope of the use of force, questions of for which purposes and in which circumstances force can be used. The principle that force may be used in self-defense or defense of mandate is a principle of scope. On its own, it does not tell peacekeepers anything about how much force can be used in defense of mandate. In practice, there are at least some strands of analysis that seem to take this silence on levels of appropriate force in a “maximum allowable force” direction, as Pfaff predicts. For instance, General Cammaert, former commander of MONUC’s Eastern Division, argued that on many occasions the only effective way to minimize casualties of both UN and FARDC personnel and of civilians is to raise the level of response [i.e. use more force]. That includes the use of attack helicopters, also in situations in which the opponents “only” use small arms such as Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles. The use of attack helicopters however, can increase the risk of collateral damage . . . Therefore strict instructions are given in the Rules of Engagement to avoid collateral damage as much as possible. (Cammaert 2007: 6) Cammaert leaves the question of how much collateral damage is “possible” to avoid to the “judgments and risk assessment” of soldiers and pilots in the field (ibid.: 6). The difficulty with this standard is the logic that Pfaff calls attention to – “possible” in the context of what

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 159 level of risk to peacekeepers? How should the value of military casualties be balanced against those of civilians? If the last bit about avoiding collateral damage is not to completely overwhelm the original point of the passage, it seems that this is simply a version of the principle that no superfluous destruction is to be engaged in (of course), but UN troops under Cammaert’s command were expected to use maximum allowable force to achieve a swift, decisive victory that would be better for civilians and military personnel in the long run (thus satisfying proportionality). Cammaert seems to resolve this tension in favor of maximum force for decisive victory later, when he argues that the UN should not use a graduated response model, including issuing warnings (which might serve both to give civilians an opportunity to flee and militants an opportunity to lay down their arms), because this allows militants to take cover from a UN attack and increases the risk to UN and UN-allied forces, as well as civilians (ibid.: 7). An analyst drawing heavily on Cammaert’s experiences in MONUC, is blunter: force is but one element of promoting progress and when sanctions are enhanced by incentives the overall effect is seldom negative . . . Certainly an initial application of force can lead to escalation; however, this should be expected and planned for. This is where the principle of minimum force is problematic, as incrementally and reactively increasing force from a low base is far more difficult than initially using the “maximum necessary” level of force and then decreasing as compliance is achieved. (Terrie 2009: 31) More restrained guidance on levels of force to be used has often been found in ROE, particularly in elements of ROE that deal with graduated force. But it would be helpful to raise some of the principles commonly found in ROE to a more general level of guidance. Morally speaking, restrictions on the level of force should be seen as following generally from the proper nature of peacekeeping, and not as being tied only to the particular mandate or circumstances of an individual mission. The latter leaves them open to the viewpoints of individual commanders – Cammaert’s approach was much more aggressive than others. I will argue that an approach like Cammaert’s is generally too aggressive to be compatible with peacekeeping’s honorable distinction from warfare. But even if I am wrong, the issue is one that bears more explicit and general discussion, and clear distinction from issues of scope.

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To try to get some grip on what principles for narrow proportionality would be consistent with the peacekeeper’s honorable distinction from the warfighter, let us start with how McMahan and Pfaff have tried to address the issue. Both McMahan and Pfaff attempt to provide accounts of why some soldiers are morally bound to use less force than allowable by the traditional proportionality standard; that is, less force than the level beyond which excessive (risk of) harm would be inflicted on noncombatants. They are concerned for different reasons – McMahan believes that soldiers in general should be restrained by narrow proportionality as well, while Pfaff holds that peacekeepers specifically should not “breach the peace” with levels of violence that might be acceptable in war. But their reasons for concern are quite similar; both explain their concern as having to do with questions about the moral culpability of those against whom violence is directed. McMahan on Partial Excuse and Narrow Proportionality McMahan’s argument is fairly straightforward. Not all soldiers are equally morally responsible for their actions. Soldiers are only (except in some corner cases) morally liable to attack if they do wrong by attacking, and while soldiers generally do wrong by fighting in unjust wars, how wrong this is depends on factors like their culpability for not realizing the war is unjust or the level of duress involved in getting them to fight. Soldiers in just wars generally do no wrong. So, it is not generally permissible to attack just soldiers at all, and there are restrictions on how much harm can be inflicted on soldiers fighting unjust wars (the more strict the less responsible they are for fighting), even to achieve some just aim. Rejecting the moral equality of soldiers on just versus unjust sides of a war is a controversial position in just war theory, where the traditional theory (and the laws of war) tends to hold soldiers blameless for the justice of the war they fight in, so long as they conduct themselves in accord with the principles of jus in bello. But we can detach McMahan’s point about narrow proportionality from his position on the separability of jus ad bellum and jus in bello, so long as we grant that some soldiers may be in greater or lesser control of their position as soldiers, and take his intuition as at least initially plausible that this should affect

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 161 our obligations toward them. And, at least in some cases, his intuition does seem plausible. Consider, for instance, the case of child soldiers. It seems quite plausible that, if possible, soldiers should take additional risks to themselves or the mission in order to incapacitate child soldiers without killing them – risks that soldiers may not need to undertake against similar adult opponents (McMahan 2006: 48–9). McMahan distinguishes several levels of responsibility that soldiers (who pose a threat that, if they were culpable for it, would make them liable to lethal attack) may have (McMahan 2009: 159–73). They may be “culpable,” acting with full knowledge of the moral and threatening character of their act. They may be “partially excused,” because some factor interferes with their action – they are acting under (nonoverwhelming) duress, such as being threatened with discharge from their military, or they mistakenly believe that they are doing right (but when they are in a position to know better). They may be “fully excused,” operating under overwhelming duress like the threat of death, or “innocent,” non-culpably believing that they are doing right. Finally, they may be “nonresponsible,” a category of individuals who (non-culpably) do not even realize that they pose a threat to others.21 For culpable threats, the rules are as in traditional just war theory – they may be attacked at any time, and met with lethal force (since they pose a lethal threat) even if non-lethal force might have worked (McMahan 2009: 182). McMahan argues that the majority of combatants who can be attacked are partially excused threats (ibid.: 186). This is an especially plausible view of members of spoiler groups against whom peacekeepers may use force. Many members of such groups will be acting under some form of duress, either directly threatened into being members of the group, or more commonly seeing few other options in their situation besides joining an armed faction. Many may suffer from psychological problems that diminish their responsibility – as one interview partner said to me of combatants in the eastern DRC, you need to start from the assumption that everyone there is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).22 Plenty have some degree of legitimate grievance against the government or other groups in society that they see as justifying their actions. We need not assume a romantic view of spoiler groups to recognize that few members are likely to be motivated by pure evil or even wholly callous disregard for human life. Since members of spoiler groups are often partially responsible threats, narrow proportionality constrains what can be done to

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them in proportion to their responsibility. For McMahan, the restraint would be relevant only to the risks that peacekeepers must take on themselves in fighting against spoiler groups, and they would not have to exercise restraint (beyond the requirements of wide proportionality) if it threatened the success of the mission (McMahan 2009: 196–8). But he grants that, even for partially excused threats with pretty good excuses, in practice this may often amount to almost the same thing as treating them as fully culpable threats. He cannot allow combatants to accept risk to the mission for the sake of the partly excused (but partly not excused) threats, since ex hypothesi the war to end the threat of the opposing military is justified overall, even though we know in advance that it will involve killing some soldiers and civilians. In other words, McMahan is constrained by the fact that he is still assuming that enemies are enemies whose capacity to fight must be “negated,” even if their partial excuse may lead us to be less certain they need to be “existentially negated” in the rare cases where we have other options. The situation is actually worse than McMahan thinks, because of the logic that Pfaff points out, and that is at work in Cammaert’s comments referenced above. McMahan imagines that there might be some situations in which it would be just as certain that the mission could be accomplished without killing opponents (say, by capturing them) as it would be if they were killed. But such situations would seem to be vanishingly rare, at least if we think of the mission as neutralizing the threat posed by the opponents. In the real world, non-lethal measures require much more direct contact with opposing forces, which raises both the risks to peacekeepers and the risks that they will fail in applying those measures. Capturing spoilers while ensuring that none or few can run away into the wilderness and pose a threat on another day requires a large number of soldiers to cordon an area, go in on foot (and often house to house) with light weapons, etc. But killing a group of spoilers may be able to be done from a helicopter or with an air strike. Pfaff on the Presumption of Peace and Innocence Pfaff takes a different approach, focused specifically on peacekeepers. He identifies the root of the difference between the peacekeeper and the warfighter as being that “there’s a difference between war and peace” (Pfaff 2000: 9). Pfaff argues that the norms governing PKOs are better understood as police-like than as war-like, to avoid the logic that escalates to

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 163 maximum allowable force. Peacekeepers should, instead, adhere to the police standard of minimum possible force (ibid.: 19). Police are “oriented” toward the least amount of force possible, and must start their deliberations by “considering” using a very minimal amount of force. By comparison, while soldiers are not required to use the maximum allowable force, they are not even required to deliberate about using less than that maximum (Pfaff 2000: 17–18). When he drills down into the details of the difference between war and peace, Pfaff focuses on two claims. First, because police officers – who he argues are in an analogous position to peacekeepers – are there to maintain rather than create peace, “it does not make sense for police officers to breach the peace in order to maintain it.” Breaching the peace in order to save it makes peacekeepers “morally culpable for any further breaches of the peace their actions [engender]” (ibid.: 12, 15). Second, because individuals who breach an existing peace are criminals, rather than soldiers, they enjoy a presumption of innocence. The presumption of innocence distinguishes criminal citizens from “enemies” (ibid.: 13, 15). Pfaff’s own discussion of riots undermines his first claim, that it does not make “moral sense” for a peacekeeper to breach the peace. Pfaff claims that rioting is a “massive disruption of the peace,” but not a “destruction” of it. He then raises the question of where angry mobs bent on serious disruption of the peace fit, as well as where along the line from rioting through poorly organized irregular forces to regimented military forces we are dealing with “armies” rather than “mobs.” These are important and provocative questions, but Pfaff largely drops them (ibid.: 14). This would be less problematic if peacekeepers were typically deployed into situations that were clearly peaceful, but they are not. Pfaff is right to focus on the distinction between war and peace, but peacekeepers are not on the peace side – they are stuck somewhere in between.23 The distinction between peacekeeping and warfighting I made in Chapter 1 requires there to be a “peace to keep,” but in the sense of there being some sort of political process with at least a foothold of buy-in from the armed factions to get the ball rolling on consent, as discussed in Chapter 3. This does not quite line up with Pfaff’s definition: the condition of “peace” may be understood as that set of conditions that permit nonviolent resolution of conflicts of interests

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among individuals and groups. This does not mean groups or individuals will always seek nonviolent means to resolve conflicts; but it does mean that those means are available, and that they are the preferred and normal means of resolving conflict. (ibid.: 10) In a literal sense this definition always applies, even in the midst of an outright war – most people, even in war zones, are not combatants, and prefer to resolve their disputes through nonviolent means (even in the worst war zones, not every argument ends in murder). But in the sense in which it seems to have been intended, the requirement is quite stringent. Peacekeepers are often deployed into situations characterized by very high levels of violence, such that it is not clear that if they use military-style force they are “respond[ing] to a potential breach of the peace with an actual breach of the peace” (ibid.: 14). Even if no violence is happening this very moment in, say, a spoiler-held town, spoilers are defined by their status as groups that have breached the peace on a military scale. And while Pfaff is reluctant to grant it, such actors seem to fall into a category of peace-breachers that may warrant “selective suspension” of the orientation toward minimum force he recommends to police and peacekeepers. So, as with McMahan, it is not clear how much of a difference from the traditional just war model there would be in practice. The second way in which Pfaff tries to justify a minimum/graduated force standard for peacekeepers is by reference to the legal presumption of innocence under which police operate (ibid.: 14). It strikes me that this misses the point, however. Even when a peacekeeper has every reason to believe that the people she is facing are members of spoiler factions that mean the peacekeepers, members of other factions, and/or noncombatants harm, the political situation they are trying to rebuild counsels restraint. No soldier, whether a warfighter or a peacekeeper, should knowingly attack a noncombatant with lethal force – this is a matter of discrimination, not proportionality. And they should key their epistemological stance accordingly – both a peacekeeper and a warfighter entering a village where irregular forces are known to be among the civilian population should probably presume that any given person is a civilian until proven otherwise. If this is all Pfaff intends with the presumption of innocence, it does not make the intended point. If the only issue is identifying combatants,

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 165 then no force should be used when there is serious doubt about an individual’s combatancy, and it is not clear that there is any interesting limit on how much force may be used if there is no doubt. Perhaps in the middle we might want to use non-lethal force because it is “reversible” in a way that lethal force is not if there turns out to have been a mistake, but this is a separate concern from proportionality. In addition, Pfaff’s account ignores half of the police role, and one that plays an even larger role for peacekeepers than it does for police. The presumption of innocence is relevant only in cases where police are apprehending individuals for possible punishment. It is less applicable to situations like crowd control, where police may well be justified in, for example, requiring everyone in the vicinity of a disturbance to ­disperse (or stay put) even if most have broken no law. Narrow Proportionality and Strategies of Force In the end, the problems with both McMahan’s and Pfaff’s accounts follow from the fact that they are trying to address the level and kind of force that soldiers/peacekeepers can use against their opponents in abstraction from the approach that is taken toward those opponents. Rather than try to set a limit on the amount of force used and then judging strategic approaches by that constraint, we may have more luck thinking about which strategic approaches are appropriate for peacekeepers and then limiting the use of force in accord with them. That said, I have discussed McMahan and Pfaff at length because both of their accounts contain important points. There is something right in McMahan’s connection between degree of culpability and levels of force. And there is something right in Pfaff’s focus on a policelike deliberative process that starts from a low base and escalates. To get at the strategic side of things, let us ask: if peacekeepers are not using force because they are trying to destroy an enemy, why are they using force? If there is no coherent answer to this question, then peacekeeping is bound to be incoherent. Minimum Force as Non-initiation We can approach an answer from the extreme non-warlike side of things. Gandhi provides an interesting reply to an interlocutor who asks if force cannot be used, even to prevent a child from running into a fire:

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What do you really do to the child? Supposing that it can exert so much physical force that it renders you powerless and rushes into fire, then you cannot prevent it. There are only two remedies open to you – either you must kill it in order to prevent it from perishing in the flames, or you must give your own life because you do not wish to see it perish before your very eyes. You will not kill it. If your heart is not quite full of pity, it is possible that you will not surrender yourself by preceding the child and going into the fire yourself. You, therefore, helplessly allow it to go into the flames. Thus, at any rate, you are not using physical force. I hope you will not consider that it is still physical force, though of a low order, when you would forcibly prevent the child from rushing towards the fire if you could. That force is of a different order and we have to understand what it is. Remember that in thus preventing the child, you are minding entirely its own interest, you are exercising authority for its sole benefit . . . If you say that the actions of the English [in subjecting India to colonial domination], being evil, represent fire, and that they proceed to their actions through ignorance, and that therefore they occupy the position of a child, and that you want to protect such a child, then you will have to overtake every evil action of that kind by whomsoever committed and, as in the case of the evil child, you will have to sacrifice yourself. If you are capable of such immeasurable pity, I wish you well in its exercise. (Gandhi 2001: 14–15) While peacekeepers are not and should not be pacifists, they face a problem that also faces non-quietist pacifists (like Gandhi). They are committed to altering the behavior of others, and do not hope to do so only through rational persuasion. But they recognize that coercion and violence at least threatens their goals. What peacekeepers should focus on is Gandhi’s distinction between force used to hurt a child heading toward a fire, as a deterrent or punishment, and force used to directly restrain the child from rushing into the fire. This is where Gandhi’s point links up with Hammarskjöld’s original non-initiation standard for use of force. The “comparative advantage” military peacekeepers bring to a PKO is tied to their soldierly experience, training, and equipment. Humanitarians may be better at food and medical distribution (though not always – it is easy to overlook the massive logistical capabilities

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 167 that militaries have compared to other actors), diplomats may be better negotiators, civilian police may be better at keeping tabs on a community, but military peacekeepers are armed and trained to use coordinated large-scale force. It is a natural but unwarranted step to assume that, as a result, military peacekeepers are only distinctively useful when they fire their weapons. But the real comparative advantage of military peacekeepers is that they can operate in more dangerous situations because of their armaments. One way to take advantage of this is to participate in the danger as a combatant. But this is only one way. A military peacekeeper may not be a diplomat’s equal in negotiation, but he may be the only one who can negotiate with a warlord, or a gang of youths in an ­insecure city. Hammarskjöld’s injunction that peacekeepers should not initiate the use of force is best read very narrowly – peacekeepers should not initiate the use of force, but this is not the same as not taking the initiative, even in ways that may provoke violent situations.24 When peacekeepers use force, they should do so because they have been prevented from accomplishing their primary object. So, peacekeepers can take the initiative – moving into contested areas, erecting barriers to illicit movement, transporting civilians out of areas where they are under threat, etc. They may also, under this conception, take actions that they know are likely to invite confrontation, and then use force to meet that confrontation – for instance non-initiation would have been consistent with the peacekeepers stationed at Srebrenica defending the designated “safe area” with force (on events in Srebrenica, see Annan 1999, and Chapter 2). Even interview partners who favored a fairly aggressive strategy for peacekeepers (so long as supported by the mandate, of course) often focused on “aggressive” actions that did not involve initiation of the use of force. For instance, one gave this as a good example of taking a robust attitude toward the mandate: [The peacekeepers] were making reconnaissance in a stronghold and they had to use force to extricate themselves. It was an example by which strong force and robust force was used. It was offensive in the sense that they went to a place where if they had said, we are only doing self-defense, they would not have gone. They went there because it was logical to do an operation in this

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place to make the area safer. But in some other missions they would have not have done it. They would have stayed in the place where they were deployed, and then they would not have done this operation, they would not have been confronted with the militias.25 Non-initiation and Varieties of Strategy With non-initiation in mind, we can take a fresh look at the strategic options available to peacekeepers. Seybolt, in his study of humanitarian military interventions (of which, in his usage, peacekeeping is a species) distinguishes five basic military strategies for alleviating suffering: avoidance, defense, deterrence, compellence, and offense (Seybolt 2008: 40–3). Offense, the “use of force to defeat an opponent or occupy a place,” is clearly across the “Mogadishu line” from peacekeeping. If the force is being used to defeat an opponent as its primary goal, or continuing when there is no end in view other than the opponent’s defeat, then the peacekeepers have crossed the line into initiation. They are no longer trying to accomplish some goal that requires force to remove opposition, they are making the removal of potential opposition their goal itself. On the flip-side, avoidance and defense are clearly available to peacekeepers. Peacekeepers typically do not make avoidance a centerpiece of their strategy, but they can support avoidance strategies by civilians or humanitarian agencies within their area of operations. Peacekeepers may have superior intelligence on the movements of armed groups, and they may possess logistical capacities (transport vehicles, helicopters, etc.) that make more effective avoidance possible. Defense, which “aims to ensure that an opponent cannot succeed if it attacks,” sometimes seems to be an under-appreciated strategy. Peacekeepers may stop spoiler groups from threatening the peace or civilians by physically preventing them from doing so (or making the task so onerous as to be not worth it) – erecting physical barriers, moving vulnerable individuals to well-defended or inaccessible locations, putting weapons under lock and key. Force may be used to put some of these measures in place or to defend them once placed, but the use of force is not their point. Deterrence and compellence are more difficult in practice, and raise more difficult moral questions. Deterrence is action that seeks to raise

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 169 the (net) cost for unwanted action (for peacekeepers, breaches of the peace), and seems to be the centerpiece of much thinking about peacekeepers’ military strategy. It is the kind of use of force that seems most clearly at stake in discussions of impartial uses of force.26 And one way of putting the argument that “total spoilers” must be regarded as enemies to be destroyed or neutralized is that, because of their radical views and extreme commitment, they cannot be deterred, or at least not stably. But deterrence is still distinct from offense, and in its strategic structure can still be seen as non-initiatory. The ideal case for deterrence is one in which, like the Rwandan AMIS officer mentioned above, the credible deterrent threat means that force never needs to be used, and the peacekeepers can go about doing whatever else it was they were doing. Finally, compellence is the flip-side of deterrence.27 Like deterrence, compellence is an attempt to raise the net cost of an unwanted action; but, unlike deterrence, which seeks to preserve the status quo, compellence aims to stop some actor from continuing in a course of action it is already pursuing. I will assume that peacekeepers cannot accomplish their goals without at least some deterrent and compellent actions. But both raise the specter of initiation of force. The actions that peacekeepers may want to deter, or compel to stop, may not themselves be violent or coercive in an obvious way, and yet deterrence/compellence may seem to require a violent or coercive response on the part of peacekeepers.28 But first, let us return to the point that peacekeepers aim to accomplish things other than success in the use of force. While it may make sense to talk about defeat of an enemy as the point of a war, it is not the point of peacekeeping. A peacekeeping mission could be entirely successful – indeed, would arguably be ideal – if no force were actually used, but people were fed and returned to their homes, peaceful ­elections were held, etc. So we should look at what peacekeepers are doing that is or would be interfered with by the action they are trying to deter or compel. There will be some cases in which compellence would clearly not be an initiation of force. Compellence appears in Seybolt’s schema – aside from its use in defeating perpetrators of violence – as a strategy for protection of civilians. If some group is right now engaging in violence against civilians, then peacekeepers seeking to drive them away satisfy non-initiation. Even in situations where attacks on civilians are

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common, however, instances of this kind of direct intervention in an ongoing attack are relatively rare, as it either requires a group willing to initiate attacks in the immediate presence of peacekeepers (which is rare – even in cases like Srebenica, most killings took place outside the peacekeepers’ immediate presence, though the peacekeepers arguably failed in their duties by not going to where attacks were likely to take place), or peacekeepers having very timely intelligence on attacks and a rapid response capability (which is unfortunately rare). In other cases, the actions targeted for deterrence/compellence are actions that do or would interfere with other peacekeeping activities. For instance, Seybolt’s prime example of successful compellence for humanitarian purposes was Operation Provide Comfort, the UK/US operation in Northern Iraq from 1991 to 1996 (Seybolt 2008: 43, 49–51; note that Operation Provide Comfort was arguably compellence for humanitarian reasons, but not peacekeeping). The operation drove Iraqi military units out of Kurdish territory in Northern Iraq, but the point was to allow for the provision of medical and humanitarian aid and to return displaced persons to their homes. Compellence was necessary only because the (reasonable) view was that the presence of Iraqi military units in the area would interfere with those goals. Similarly, if peacekeepers are engaged in deterrence or compellence, say to get a militant group to leave a city it is in control of, this is consistent with non-initiation if driving out the group is necessary to accomplish other ends, particularly if the group is using force to interfere with those other goals. In fact, if the militant group’s actions are not interfering with other purposes of the PKO, such as returning displaced persons safely to their homes, taking compellent action to drive them out (or otherwise change their behavior) would be a violation not only of noninitiation, but probably of impartiality as well. In many situations, it may be objected, peacekeepers will know full well that if they try to undertake some nonviolent action, such as returning displaced persons to their homes in an area that is controlled by the hostile spoiler group that drove them out, they will be violently resisted, and so talking about non-initiation is moral hair-splitting. This objection only holds if we assume that we know that the group in question will respond with violence. Here we may recall the discussion of moral imagination in Chapter 2. At the moral core of the refusal for peacekeepers to regard their opponents as enemies is a sort of constitutive hope, that this time

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 171 problematic groups will not react in destructive ways. This hope need not be blind faith – peacekeepers should absolutely do what they can to defuse potential violent confrontations.29 But it is the kernel of truth in Pfaff’s focus on the presumption of innocence. Presumption of innocence, in the sense it is used in domestic law enforcement, is not the right concern in the peacekeeping context. There are groups in the area of operations of a PKO that the peacekeepers know full well have violated whatever standards are in place. What is unknown is what they will do next. This also gives better grounding to a graduated use of force. I may be skeptical that shouting a warning to rebels hiding in a village will get them to lay down their arms and come out, but it might work. In fact, de-escalation and negotiation sometimes does work. Seybolt, like many analysts, looks at deterrence/compellence primarily through the lensof coercion, but this was not the main frame for most of the peacekeepers we interviewed, for whom de-escalation was a common theme: ●●

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A Ghanaian officer who had served with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) told me of a case in which Hizbollah forces had stationed artillery in a Lebanese village, and the mission worried that the Israelis would attack. Unable to confront either Hizbollah or the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) directly, in some desperation members of the mission went to ask Hizbollahaffiliated elders to remove the weapons – and they did.30 The officers in that discussion emphasized that de-escalation should be a priority, and it was important not to take aggressive action so as not to ­inadvertently escalate. One Ghanaian officer was critical of dismissals of UNAMIR as ineffective, because “a lot of people said that mission was a failure, but that little force, the presence of that small force, helped to alleviate some of the sufferings of the people, because that was the force that started the negotiations between the two sides.”31 The Rwandan officer with the ambush story also told us that AMIS had problems with nomads passing through farms and gardens (the nomad/pastoralist divide is caught up with the civil violence in Darfur), and the way they avoided violence was to maintain contacts with all parties and try to mediate disputes at low levels once trust was built.32

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One peacekeeper told us about how he and his comrades were detained by a Bosnian militia that was suspicious of their observation position. They dealt with it by negotiating their way out – “we tried to keep everyone as quiet as possible in the situation. To tell them that we were not threatening them. I told them that our aim was not to replace them or to denounce them to their enemies.”33 A CIVPOL gave as an example of how he protected people in the field that he talked with locals to calm their suspicions of foul play by another group after a young mentally challenged boy was injured falling into a well.34 A Rwandan officer explained that UNAMID would always try to negotiate, and stress that there were IDPs associated with all the factions that had been harmed by fighting, before deploying ­military forces.35 For an example beyond my interviews, General Anyidoho, Deputy Force Commander of UNAMIR (and head of the Ghanaian contingent), tells of a situation in which UNAMIR vehicles were taking fire while attempting to evacuate Tutsi civilians. He went to the problem area in his own Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) and, despite taking fire, declined to return fire and instead continued through to a safe position from which he was able to negotiate safe passage for the convoy (Anyidoho 1998: 66). A Ghanaian CIVPOL perhaps summed up the whole approach: “If you are humble enough, then you don’t stomp your feet, you are reasonable.”36

Peacekeepers are morally required to at least explore possibilities for negotiation and de-escalation, down to some level of implausibility. This reflects not a belief that the individuals to be deterred or compelled may be innocent of wrongdoing, as in Pfaff’s account, but a hope that they will reconsider their actions before greater force needs to be used. And only a peacekeeping-incompatible presumption that they are Schmittian enemies or total spoilers will totally foreclose the possibility. Peacekeepers must hold out the hope that even currently violent groups can be brought into the process of political community-building discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. This does not mean that officers like Cammaert and analysts like Terrie are wrong to be skeptical of graduated force in some cases, particularly cases where violence is already in progress. There may be

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 173 some situations of compellence where there is no reasonable expectation that an escalating level of force will work, either for reasons of credibility or for tactical reasons. For instance, Cammaert decries the requirement that attack helicopters fire warning shots, since it is easy for militants to hide and then return to attack UN positions once the helicopter has left (Cammaert 2007: 7). For one thing, non-initiation should be understood in at least a somewhat temporally extended sense. In Cammaert’s example, if fighters have not actually withdrawn, it would be reasonable to see any further attacks as part of the same sequence of deterrence, and not start the warning-shot routine over again. This also shows the conceptual superiority of a non-initiation standard over a brute focus on graduated force. Graduated force is valuable not for its own sake, but for the way it expresses the moral hope that previously violent groups will not continue in their violence. If fighters are already engaging the peacekeepers with violence (or violently attacking civilians), then there is less or no moral reason to start at the low end of a graduated force schedule. Admittedly, encoding this sort of judgment into ROE may be much less straightforward than simply listing a procedure that must be followed. For another, the main problem is if we generalize from specific sorts of situations in which graduated force may be unworkable or counterproductive to a general skepticism of it. In general, the aim should be to give opponents a chance to rethink and allow the peacekeepers to continue in their nonviolent activities. To return to the Gandhian analogy that started this discussion, if a child is about to fall into a fire, I may be justified in forcefully tackling her to the ground, even if this may injure her. But it would be a terrible mistake to think that this meant that I had no general obligation to try other methods before physical force in other child-rearing situations. CARE AND THE RESORT TO FORCE

Non-initiation is a very general interpretation of the standard that peacekeepers should look to when resorting to force. It is already revisionist compared to current doctrinal thinking. It implies that there is a general obligation to look to minimal, graduated force, and an obligation for peacekeepers to undertake operations in the hope – reflected in their stance toward potential opposition groups that groups that have been violent in the past will not continue to be violent into the future.

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For better or worse, I do not think it is possible to put more detailed rules behind this general orientation. Adding rules is not the only way of fleshing out a moral theory. In keeping with the framework from Chapter 2, the best way to flesh out the concept of minimum-force-asnon-initiation (and to indirectly bolster the argument on its behalf) is to explore its connection with the caring virtues of restraint, attentiveness, and creativity. Discussing caring virtues is not just a matter of increasing conceptual depth, however. So far, I have largely been discussing the use of force, but we should recognize that as a euphemism for violence (in at least many cases). In reflecting morally on peacekeeping, it is important to recognize that the context of cool moral reflection in an office or seminar room is not the psychologically jarring context of violence. If all we can say to and about peacekeepers is that force should be graduated, we have two problems. As mentioned at the end of the last section, we would seem to be left with a sterile choice between rigid rules for escalation and simply rejecting the importance of graduated force. And we will leave peacekeepers not only with inadequate guidance for judgment, but potentially without the proper training and circumstances to make good judgments. Working out the implications of caring virtues is as much about determining how to inculcate good judgment as it is about making the case for a particular approach. Both peacekeepers and “spoilers” are subject to emotional responses of fear and anger. The point of caring virtues is not to eliminate these feelings, but rather to help find resources for dealing with them in a constructive manner. The care virtues aim at more productive emotional responses by recognizing the fear, anger, and frustration that accompany conflict situations and the use of violence. We can look to the development of restraint by people in other frustrating situations, faced with temptations to violence. Developing skills of attentiveness will help peacekeepers shift their image of armed factions from unreasoning or unreasonable spoilers to individuals and groups with understandable, if often dysfunctional, responses to a damaged social situation, undermining the feeling that peacekeepers are isolated among the incomprehensibly violent.37 And the frustration and disorientation that restraint and attentiveness may bring, as well as operational paralysis in the face of what may seem like too restrictive a reading of when peacekeepers may resort to force, will be blunted

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 175 if peacekeepers cultivate creative responses; the options are not just ­violence or standing passively by. Restraint The ethic of care might seem like an odd place to look for guidance on when peacekeepers may fire their weapons, but from its beginnings in feminist reflections on motherhood, it has been intimately concerned with violence. For instance, parenting is a situation in which there is a great imbalance in possession of the tools of violence – children are abused and killed by parents and guardians in distressing numbers. Furthermore, feminists working in the ethic of care have faced the fact that parenting is a situation in which parents are often sorely tempted not just to coercion but to violence. Anyone who associates parenting solely with love and harmony has a superficial understanding of the phenomenon. Sara Ruddick (2002: 42–5) describes the situation (for the case of mothers) nicely. She uses “mothering” as a gender-neutral term for the practice of nurturing children which, in our society and many others, is (stereo)typically performed by women: what is striking about mothers is their commitment to nonviolent action in precisely those situations where they are undeniably powerful . . . Children are vulnerable creatures and as such elicit either aggression or care. Recalcitrance and anger tend to provoke aggression, and children can be angrily recalcitrant. Typically the mother who confronts her children is herself young, hassled if not harassed by officials in an outside world, usually by her own employers, and often by the adults she lives with. She brings to confrontation with her children psychological and physical strengths which are potentially lethal. Her ability to damage her children increases the more she is alone with them, the less others are available to go to the children’s aid. Yet it is these same circumstances of frustration and loneliness that will tempt her to violence when faced with her children’s recalcitrance. (ibid.: 166) Nonetheless, Ruddick points out, most mothers/parents refrain from violence. To do so, parents develop virtues of character that counteract impulses to violence.

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Ruddick (rightly) takes pains to avoid any appeal to an inherent connection between femininity and nonviolence; that sort of essentialism and mystification about the feminine is naïve at best. The experience of nurturing can cut both ways, insofar as it tends to create a deep psychological investment in the unique and fragile value of individuals. Some mothers might be inspired by this experience to resist violence at all costs. Others might be inspired, by that same investment in the value of life, to militarism when those they nurture are threatened. “If her son is killed while killing, should his mother deny herself the consolation of giving his ‘sacrifice’ a point?” (Ruddick 2002: 155; see also p. 177). Mothering produces both the pacifist activism of the Women in Black and Benazir Bhutto’s insistence that her political “son” (successor) should honor his “mother” by pushing the development of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons (Enloe 2000: 244). What feminists like Ruddick find in the practice of mothering is a domain where certain virtues that are “resources” for nonviolence can be developed (Ruddick 2002: 157). The point is not that mothers are naturally peaceful, but rather that mothering requires development of virtues to resist the temptations to violence that isolation, recalcitrance, and frustration can bring. Similarly, the Christian pacifist Yoder argues that any workable pacifism cannot deny the “legitimacy” of the destructive impulses we feel, especially when we believe we have been wronged; eschewing retribution and reprisal for wrongs requires finding “ways of processing the deep demand of blood for blood” (Yoder 2009: 33). This is not to say that parents do not use force and coercion. Even parents who do not believe in corporal punishment may face (as in Gandhi’s parable) the choice of whether and how to forcibly restrain a recalcitrant child. A child may pose little threat to a parent, but may be able to visit grievous harm on itself or another child unless an adult forcefully intervenes. Mothering thus requires a careful calibration in the use of force. Effective parents cannot simply determine that they will never use force against children. But the use of force tends to undermine the relationship of trust that one hopes to build with one’s children – even when justified, it is likely to create (at least temporary) feelings of fear and/or resentment, and to bring us close to the brink of violence. No parent is a purely rational agent – given the stresses of parenting, it is easy for a limited use of force to get out of hand and endanger a child.

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 177 The resources for nonviolent action that parents develop are virtues of character that allow a parent to keep his or her “cool” when violence is tempting; these virtues are just as relevant for an activist as for a parent (as Ruddick argues). Both are actors for whom limited coercion and especially limited violence are the goal, rather than total nonviolence. Restraint is an attitude of mind that sees violence and force as something to be avoided, rather than as core to the mission. This is an attitude that seems prevalent among peacekeepers, even if it sometimes seems to be treated by analysts as a pernicious unwillingness to use force. The Ghanaian officers who laughed at my American faith in increased military capacity (see Preface) argued that the GAF were more appropriate for peacekeeping missions because the possession of overwhelming force “affects the military psyche” and the less powerful GAF is required to be “more adaptable.” The problem, another argued, is that the US military possesses so much military power it is constantly tempted to prove its superiority and hence “goes in with a fighting attitude,” an inclination to use force even where it may not be the most appropriate tool.38 While this is not, I think, a sufficiently nuanced picture of the US military psyche to be entirely accurate, the discussion of General McChrystal’s endorsement of the concept of “courageous restraint” (though in the context of counterinsurgency, rather than peacekeeping) illuminates why the concept of restraint is important but difficult, perhaps especially in a powerful military like the US’.39 Critics of the concept cast it as rewarding cowardice and passivity. For instance, the conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh said: US troops in Afghanistan could soon be awarded a medal for not doing something, a precedent-setting award that would be given for “courageous restraint” for holding fire to save civilian lives . . . I can just see the ceremony. Obama at the White House presenting the Distinguished Yellow Cross . . . Just let France back in [to NATO]! France can now have a Courageous Medal for Surrender. (Limbaugh 2010) A soldier who served under McChrystal was even blunter: “I would love to kick McChrystal in the nuts. His rules of engagement put

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soldiers’ lives in even greater danger. Every real soldier will tell you the same thing” (quoted in Hastings 2010). Even more immoderate reactions to the concept can be found in various online discussion groups and blogs devoted to conservative politics. Critics of the courageous restraint concept tended to happily embrace both the idea that it increases risk to soldiers and the idea that it represents cowardice. But these two critiques actually pull against each other. What is courage, after all, if not being willing to endanger oneself for the (at least perceived) greater good? Aristotle (1999, 1116a10 (p. 42)) defines courage as the virtue that leads us to “stand firm because that is fine or because anything else is shameful.” And it is the willingness to suffer evils that unifies physical courage and “moral courage,” the willingness to do what one believes to be right even when one is likely to suffer disgrace or contempt for doing so (Olsthoorn 2011: 49–51). The problem would seem to be with the concept of the good to be pursued, with critics of the policy rejecting the idea that reducing civilian deaths below the level of that required by the “maximum allowable force” level of the traditional jus in bello principles could be an important element of accomplishing the mission.40 This way of thinking seems to betray a very particular way of thinking of the soldier that would be out of place for PKOs (and, arguably, for counterinsurgency). In part, it may be a privileging of the safety of the group over the mission (or, as one author argues, conflating the safety of the military unit with mission success) (Lemieux 2010: 2–3). In a PKO, excessive focus on force protection may be problematic in this regard.41 But the general issue seems to go deeper. The maximum safety for a military unit could be secured by staying in a fortified base and avoiding all contact with the enemy, and I presume US troops who did that would garner at least as much scorn from critics as those who practice courageous restraint. Importantly, killing the enemy seems to be identified with mission accomplishment. This kind of courage, where the willingness to take on risk is specifically tied to the idea of a physical contest with an enemy, cannot be sustained for PKOs. A great deal of the risk that peacekeepers take on will be aimed at accomplishing their mission, but while avoiding violence. It is also tied to the concept of minimum use of force as non-­ initiation of violence; peacekeepers should be focused on a description of their tasks that does not necessarily include the use of force or violence, rather than on their military status. The thought that must

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 179 be most strongly resisted is the idea that non-use of force is “doing nothing.” A PKO practicing restraint by refusing to initiate force may be taking many other actions, as outlined above, to advance its mission. Criticisms of the courageous restraint standard come from a very human place – people like Limbaugh identify with US soldiers and feel anger when they are endangered and killed, and want to see that anger expressed by proxy in US soldiers killing in turn. But as the discussion of the Augustinian just war tradition in Chapter 2 argued, giving in to this sort of anger is far from central to warfare; it is deeply problematic.42 It is especially inappropriate for a PKO, in which there is no enemy, properly speaking, and even the most justifiable violence spawns antisocial feelings of anger and fear in the populace. PKOs need cooperation, ultimately, rather than defeat. Forced compliance must be seen in a context where it is not the end, but only a ­necessary stop-gap measure. Restraint involves seeing the temptation to violence through the lens of moral imagination. Peacekeepers should cultivate habits of mind in which they ask themselves not just whether the use of violence will accomplish some immediate goal, but what sort of relationship could be built with the targets of violence after it is used. They probably will not come to the Gandhian conclusion – it is possible to recover relationships from violence (Ruddick does not require perfect restraint from mothers, even), and peacekeepers should not focus their imaginations so narrowly on those who use violence that the question of what kind of relationships might be better built among others if the violent are eliminated disappears. But seeing the courage in accomplishing core tasks in the face of fear and danger, and maintaining hope that a different way can be found even when violence seems inevitable is the core of restraint. A strong example of the operation of restraint comes from UNOSOM I/Unified Task Force (UNITAF), deployed to protect humanitarian access  that was threatened by the war between Somali warlords in the early 1990s, particularly between the factions of Ali Mahdi Mohamed and Mohamed Farah Hassan Aidid (sometimes transliterated “Aideed”). (For some overviews of the 1990s operations in Somalia, see Hirsch and Oakley 1995; Durch 1996; Rosegrant and Watkins 1996a,b. Note also that UNITAF was the UN designation for the US military mission co-deployed with UNOSOM I. The US ­designation for the same mission was Operation Restore Hope.)

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Following a series of events that Aidid interpreted as support for his rival, Aidid’s forces inspired violent protests in Mogadishu, demonstrations against the UN and UNITAF, and an attack (successfully repulsed) on Nigerian troops. Under traditional jus in bello, UNITAF would probably have been justified in taking forceful action to target at least any militia members among the civilian protesters (or any protesters who turned violent), and using force to fulfill NGO requests for evacuation. Instead: Additional UNITAF protection had already been provided for UN and NGO buildings and the media hotel. So long as they and UNITAF installations remained safe, the best course of action seemed to be to allow the demonstration to burn itself out . . . There turned out to be no popular sympathy for anti-UNITAF action, even in Aideed territory, despite the frustration of the Somali National Alliance (SNA) leadership, and the people soon became angry at the several hundred SNA militia and the rootless young men doing the demonstrating. Within two days, order was restored in Mogadishu . . . After the demonstrations ended, Oakley and Zinni conveyed a private warning to Aideed that he would personally be held accountable for any recurrence. There were no further anti-UNITAF actions by the SNA. (Hirsch and Oakley 1995: 78–9) There is some sense in which this was UNITAF “doing nothing.” But the non-use of force is only one part of the story – the something UNITAF did is contained rather in the attentive monitoring of the situation, the protection of key facilities, and the communication with Aidid after the fact. Attentiveness Discussions of deterrence and compellence sometimes take the goals of the actors involved as fixed. For instance, Pape argues that, while there are three elements to the calculation that deterrence/compellence is aimed at influencing – the benefits that would be foregone if the target complies, the likelihood that the target could achieve its ends if it does not comply, and the costs that the would-be deterrer/compeller can inflict in the case of noncompliance – in practice it is not possible to

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 181 affect the perceived value of the benefits the target is seeking through the actions one seeks to deter/compel (Pape 1992: 430). And while Johnson et al. make the point that persuasion, which they define as an attempt to “change what the target values or believes,” should not be neglected by military strategists, they quickly move on to discussing only strategies that assume that the target’s views cannot be changed (Johnson, Mueller, and Taft 2002: 8). If we accept such a view, then minimum force and graduated force lose a lot of their practical and moral attraction. No one wants to use more violence than necessary, but graduated force becomes a purely epistemic project of discovering where an enemy’s threshold for punishment is, rather than a partly expressive ritual geared toward opening up and leaving open the possibility that the opponent will not resort to violence. This brings us back to the kernel of truth in McMahan’s account of narrow proportionality. While I have argued that it does not work properly to treat the appropriate level of force as directly keyed to the level of fault, there is something right about the idea that many combatants who are in the wrong will at least be in the wrong for reasons we can understand and sympathize with. And this is an angle on seeing them as people whose views we could change. This puts them within reach of the framework laid out in Chapter 2, which centers around the way that values can be changed when people engage in joint action. Many “spoilers” pursue reasonable or at least understandable aims through odious means. For instance, it is understandable that members of one group may want to press their group’s interests in a land conflict over those of another (they may not only want the land, they may believe they have a right to it, and may even be correct) – what is objectionable is when they use violence against civilians to press that interest, as ex-Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP) members of the FARDC have been accused of doing in the eastern DRC (Stearns 2009). Even groups with an inherently immoral agenda – such as genocidal or democidal ones – are not necessarily implacably evil or beyond the bounds of the political project.43 Many may be acting as the result of psychological damage that they could, and often would like to, be helped to escape. The member of AFRICOM who told me that PTSD was rampant among armed men in the DRC went on to tell me about FARDC soldiers breaking down in tears as they told her about their

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involvement in rapes and other atrocities.44 Others might be acting out social resentments; in accounts of the Rwandan genocide there is often an undercurrent of class resentment against wealthy Tutsi, in the central role that looting played and the singling out of rich people for messy public execution (see e.g. Hatzfeld 2005: 82–7, 132–3). This opens possibilities even for deterrence and compellence that can be obscured if we think of coercion in peacekeeping solely on the model of state-level coercion. As Johnson et al. note, when using deterrence and compellence against individuals and small groups, to get them to take/refrain from very limited actions – the kind of “tactical” deterrence/compellence that peacekeepers engage in when they try to keep a humanitarian convoy from being ambushed, or convince small pockets of militants hiding in the bush to come in for disarmament – psychological factors can loom large that play a lesser role in deterrence/compellence against large bureaucratic entities like states (Johnson, Mueller, and Taft 2002: 13; also see Chapter 6 for more on the psychological factors of violence in peacekeeping). Being able to understand and appreciate, even empathize to some extent with, the motivating factors that keep individual members of spoiler groups fighting can be an asset for gaining their compliance. This is not to say that people do not do genuinely evil things, or that trauma or resentment excuse evil; evil is endemic in war. But it is to say that they typically do not do evil because they are monsters – they do evil because they are people who want things and who are subject to the limitations of human compassion, autonomy, and psychic resilience. And, more importantly, evil and abuses are typically not their core aim, but rather an instrument for some further goal. So, just as for peacekeepers, the need to use violence represents a kind of breakdown for the armed factions against which peacekeepers may need to use violence. In addition, as was discussed in Chapter 4, the mere fact that some actor is violating a standard does not necessarily mean that she sees herself as violating the standard. Especially when armed factions are seen as being in the wrong, it is easy to assume that they fully understand the principles according to which peacekeepers are willing to use force, and any violation of the rules represents willful confrontation and resistance to peace. But this may well not be the case. In domestic policing situations, the idea that heavy punishments will deter crime has run up against imperfect understanding by criminals. A key element, for

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 183 instance, of the Boston Ceasefire approach to gang violence was to communicate the laws to potential violent offenders – as one of Ceasefire’s architects put it, “Let offenders know what the law is, what’s coming, they may respond; if they don’t know what’s coming they can’t possibly respond. It was just that, in practice, everyone promptly forgot this” (Kennedy 2011: 125). Attentiveness to opponents’ perceptions may also help to make graduated force more palatable and feasible. As discussed above, in some cases non-initiation may be compatible with peacekeepers making a compellent “first move” with a high level of violence. But this will almost always be morally regrettable – and restraint implies that peacekeepers should cultivate a hesitancy to do so. While Cammaert’s suspicion of gradual escalation is fairly common in military circles, it may represent a response to difficulties that can be mitigated through attentiveness. Communication is key to the theory of gradual escalation. (This discussion of gradualism follows Huggins 2000: 16–17. Huggins (p. 54) also makes an interesting contrast between dominant, anti-gradualist military theories and the theory of gradualism he finds in Schelling. Anti-gradualism is focused on minimizing costs seen only from the “friendly” (coercing) side, and seeks to disrupt the target’s decisionmaking capacity as a way of rendering it unable to respond. Gradualism seeks to minimize costs to both the coercer and the target, and relies on the target’s decision-making apparatus remaining intact. This would make gradualism especially harmonious with the “no enemies” principle.) Since compellence (and deterrence) require threats to what an opponent values, it is important to understand what is valued.45 And since it requires that the target of the force or violence understand what it is being asked to (not) do, and that the violence is not an existential threat to be resisted at all costs, it requires a certain degree of communication between the deterrer/compeller and the targets. Attentiveness may be especially crucial when, as it often is, this communication is largely tacit. The effectiveness of gradual escalation may be enhanced when the force available can be used in a precise, flexible, and responsive (to the target’s understanding of things) manner – but it should not be ignored that parallel non-tacit communication with targets also helps (Huggins 2000: 110–18, esp. p. 111). More broadly, restrained and graduated force can be an element of attentive communication. As one Rwandan interview partner explained,

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minimizing collateral damage is the way the UN ­demonstrates it is there to help.46 There may well be cases in which graduated levels of force could work for peacekeepers, so long as attentive communication is maintained with the targets. For instance, one of the reasons force escalated so much during the ECOMOG intervention in Liberia in the early 1990s was that Charles Taylor perceived – perhaps correctly – that ECOMOG saw him as an enemy to be destroyed (Aboagye 1999, 60–1 (on the exclusion of Taylor’s NFPL from the 1990 agreement), 63, 82). All of these considerations point to the fact that peacekeepers should cultivate attentiveness toward potential targets of force, a willingness to see things from their perspective before using force. There are at least three possibilities that peacekeepers should keep in mind. First, “spoilers” may have ultimate goals that can be accommodated. Spoilers are not best regarded as breaching the peace for the sake of breaching the peace. Non-initiation does allow for peacekeepers to respond with force if their nonviolent activities to promote peace are obstructed. But it does not require it. Attentive peacekeepers may be able to find a way to allow dangerous groups to pursue their own goals in a way that does not obstruct peacekeepers; the first step is being open to understanding those goals. This is both an attitude of mind and something that may practically require consultation, as outlined in Chapters 3 and 4 – in a real way, the ability to use force appropriately is founded on adherence to the value of consent and impartiality. Second, where spoilers’ goals cannot be accommodated, those goals may be susceptible to change. A core point of Chapter 2 is that values and goals are not fixed for all time. If previously opposed groups are given the chance to engage in a joint project – perhaps compelled to do so by walling the possibilities for violent conflict off with deterrent threats – they may not just find new ways to compromise on their values, but may develop new values. Third, an important part of non-initiation is clear communication. Peacekeepers should not assume that there is a meeting of minds with apparent spoilers, and that therefore any time they engage in an action in violation of a deterrent or compellent threat it is because they have made a calculation to do so, and so the only appropriate response is escalation. Simple mistakes may be made, and targets may also be laboring under psychological burdens like fear or anger, that cause

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 185 them to make less than cool calculations. This is as true of spoilers as it is of peacekeepers and other soldiers. Communication and non-initiation are importantly, though perhaps not obviously, linked. The most powerful way in which peacekeepers can communicate that their interest is not in conflict with armed factions, but in consolidating the situation, is to be proactive in doing things other than using force and coercion. It should be clear, even if peacekeepers are called on to use force to pursue their mandate, that what they are trying to do is, say, remove weapons from an area – and that, if they are left in peace to do it, they will do so peacefully. Creativity People resort to violence when they believe they have no other effective or appropriate options. Peacekeepers facing a recalcitrant or hostile population, even if committed to restraint, will best be able to avoid violence if they have cultivated a creative mindset that allows them to find other ways of meeting challenges. Creativity is closely tied to both attentiveness and restraint. An important part of being able to show restraint will be finding other ways to accomplish a goal besides escalating the use of force. There may be some cases where there are literally no other options than violence, and there will be many more in which even a very virtuous peacekeeper will fail to see another option. As with restraint and attentiveness, creativity is a virtue rather than a rule – peacekeepers should cultivate a disposition to look for and find other ways to deal with a situation than violence. It is also in part a matter of skill – peacekeepers with language abilities and training in conflict resolution will “find” more alternatives than ones lacking those skills. Framing discussions of the use of force in peacekeeping in terms of the generic decision to use force or not, or even in terms of very broad families of strategy like deterrence and compellence, can hide some of the opportunities for creativity that may be available. First, as I note above, defense strategies should play an important role in peacekeepers’ thinking. It may often be possible to make threats to the peace or to civilians costly by making it difficult to carry out the threats rather than by promising to punish actors for harming civilians after the fact. One Ghanaian interview partner told me the following story about his service with UNIFIL:

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I remember they [the Israelis] were trying to construct a road in the Swede [sic] battalion area, which was in the northern part of the zone, and we deployed two platoons into that area. The instructions were for the troops to stay in their vehicles and prevent the Israeli bulldozers from grading or whatever. And they stayed. They used the buckets of the earth-moving equipment to lift these APCs, but we stayed where we were. And it made them tone down on the extent of what they wanted to do, because wherever they wanted to operate, we parked our vehicles there, and we stayed there for as long as possible.47 This was a particularly creative way of blocking actions that would breach the peace – not to mention a courageous one, given concerns that both the IDF and Hizbollah did not fully respect the position of the UN troops. But there are more mundane tactics of defense available: barriers, patrols, disarmament and destruction of weapons, and so forth. None of these makes it literally impossible for spoilers to do as they like, but they make it more difficult. Tactics of defense shade into tactics of deterrence-through-denial. Many discussions of deterrence focus on deterrence through “punishment,” the threat to destroy things of value if the forbidden action is taken. Denial, by contrast, seeks to get the target to avoid the action through making it seem less likely that the goal will be achieved, because some key capability for doing so has been destroyed or is under threat of destruction (Pape 1992: 431, 441–4; Johnson, Mueller, and Taft 2002: 16–17). Similar remarks could be made about compellence-through-denial. Within the realm of deterrence and compellence, attentiveness may reveal multiple factors leading to a group being willing to act aggressively that go beyond a simple cost–benefit calculation by an imagined perfectly rational actor. Aggression may be increased not only by a calculation that it is likely to net benefits (which itself takes into account both tolerance for pain and perception of opportunity, tied to punishment and denial respectively), but by a perception that the current situation is intolerable, by a lack of deliberation and discussion within the group’s ranks, by faith in one’s own assessment of likely success and belief that one is in control of outcomes, and by a diffuse sense of the risks of failure (Johnson, Mueller, and Taft 2002: 25, Fig. 2.2). All of these are potential footholds for deterrence or compellence,

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 187 and attention to them may reveal strategies that can succeed at a lower level of force. Finally, peacekeepers do find ways of making “persuasion” effective, even in the context of crises. Notorious RUF [Revolutionary United Front]? Nobody could go and disarm them . . . You know who disarmed them? It was me. Nobody! Everybody was scared! Because the place was not reachable. I was able to disarm them because I went across . . . I went across and met with the Liberian officers on the other side . . . I went there and I waved my UN cap. They were sitting there, the Liberian captain, like this [mimes pointing a gun]. I started walking, like, and they brought it down. When they were cooking cassava, I took it with them, the cassava and chatted. After a while, I brought them to Bumaru. We had a discussion, and they denounced violence. That is how we started it. And then we organized football. Pakistanis had a lot of footballs. So I took those footballs . . . we started playing, rebels were playing football. The rebel leaders I brought in for dinner. So . . . I said now draft a program for the disarmament, they’re going to have it. I called in the leaders and I said, what is the date that you can organize your people in all their locations? They themselves drew the plan, the program. And it was now their credibility, they had to deliver. So when we sent a truck, they were ready, standing by. That is how we did it . . . So it is doable. But you see you need to always look around. There are ways around it . . . I think, I would say, a lot of commanders, you know by the time you become a commander in whatever military, you will have learned all these skills somehow. One of the key things is flexibility.48 The idea that persuasion cannot substitute for force in crisis situations seems to be based on the idea that preferences are relatively fixed. This is not always the case – as the story shows, people are psychologically susceptible to being approached as human beings. Acts of moral imagination are “creative” not only in that exercising imagination may require breaking out of stereotyped and regimented patterns of behavior but in the sense that imaginative approaches can give others new ways of seeing things, and not just adjustments to the incentives they face.

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This chapter has tried to illuminate two major issues that the emerging consensus on a standard of “non-use of force except in selfdefense and defense of mandate” leaves morally open. Peacekeepers are not police, backed by the legitimacy of a stable political order. While their mandate may imply a limited right to coerce noncombatants, such as through crowd control, CASOs, and curfews, most noncombatants cannot be meaningfully seen as having consented to or otherwise legitimated that mandate. That their mandate is to be seen as coming from “the international community” or as being in the interest of “the people” is an idea that founders on the theoretical issues discussed in Chapter 3. The way for peacekeepers to redeem civilian-directed coercion is to ensure that it is undertaken as far as possible in consultation with affected noncombatants, and that it always aims at expanding their integration into distributed systems of consent. Even when force is directed against combatants, peacekeepers are morally bound by the principle that they have “no enemies.” To avoid making this a distinction with warfare that is not a difference, peacekeepers should take on a concern with “narrow proportionality” that limits not so much the level of force they can use against combatants, but the strategies and approaches they can adopt. Non-enmity is compatible, at least in some cases, with defense, deterrence, and ­compellence – but not with offense. And their particular implementations of these strategies should almost always involve graduated force, barring perhaps some situations of compellence in which combatants have already escalated violence. These restrictions are not intended to tie peacekeepers’ hands – in fact, there is evidence that they may simply be effective, morality aside – but keeping to them will require resources of restraint, attentiveness, and creativity. There is a strong, and intentional, pressure in this framework toward avoiding the use of force and minimizing it when it is used, that bucks the trend toward a focus on increasing “robustness” for PKOs. But at the end of the day, peacekeepers can learn from the pacifists but not join them. Violence will sometimes be necessary to protect a fragile peace, or the civilians who depend on it. But it will remain deeply morally dangerous for peacekeepers, and how to approach it when it must be used is the subject of the next chapter.

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 189 Notes   1. Interview 1.   2. As Holt and Berkman note, the Uruguayans’ very restrictive understanding was based not only on UN rules, but on more restrictive national instructions.   3. Protection of civilians will be the main theme of Section III.  4. The language replicates the UN’s “boilerplate” on civilian protection, restricting the task to civilians under imminent threat, in the immediate vicinity of the mission, within the mission’s capability to protect, and with the caveat that protection remains primarily the responsibility of the GoS.   5. Interview 24.   6. Especially between very “robust” peacekeeping and counterinsurgency, the key difference may just be on the issue of enemies and impartiality, with much of what goes on at the operational and tactical level looking fairly similar.   7. Interview 18   8. Of course, actual police deployed as part of the mission may do this as well, but, especially in insecure environments, military peacekeepers may be called upon to provide riot control, etc.   9. The rule that force is not to be used except in self-defense or defense of civilians seems to conflict with the directive to arrest or even “neutralize” hostile forces. It may be that the reference to “searches” in §2.6.1 is intended to be read very narrowly as not applying either to the lead-in to the CASO or to the cordon aspect. More simply, it is possible that this is just a slight confusion of language, and the reference to the mandate is intended to recall the general UN doctrine principle that force may be used in defense of the mandate. 10. The UN multidimensional PKO handbook does not explicitly mention curfews in its main text, but the lecture notes on checkpoints list as an important point that “During curfew, nobody has permission to pass through [the checkpoints]” (UN DPKO, Peacekeeping Best Practices Section 2003: 16, Exercise 8). 11. See e.g. Agence-France Presse (2002); Pflanz (2008); Habati (2011). Regrettably, there have also been cases in which curfews are imposed on peacekeepers to prevent sexual misconduct. 12. If I am right in Chapter 3’s analysis, there is not even anything answering to the description “what people would want” so long as society remains fragmented. So this would just be peacekeepers imposing their will, sincere though it may be. The coincidence between a consequentialist account and a hypothetical contract account that Kleinig sees only holds if we assume that fully rational people would all want the same thing,

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and that what they would want would be what is best for everyone in the aggregate. 13. Consider, for instance, anyone who would otherwise have gone out after curfew, but who stays inside because she does not want to get into a violent confrontation with the PKO. She is still coerced into staying inside. 14. There are echoes here of Hegel’s (1971) famous lordship/bondage dialectic. 15. Of course, someone might understandably desire a life of vast power and little dominion – as a tyrant, say. My point is just that the loss of dominion the tyrant experiences is a genuine loss, even if she sees it as outweighed by her increased power. 16. For an extended discussion of this problem, and principles for dealing with it, see Coady (2008: 110–22), who both distinguishes several types of “ancillaries,” or individuals involved with the war without being paradigm combatants, and discusses the question of how far, in contemporary warfare, we ought to hold members of a society broadly targetable on the basis of the actions of combatants they support. 17. Strictly speaking, perhaps it is better to say that they seek to minimize their own risks consistent with achieving their objectives, since it would clearly be safest to stay home. I am sure that many soldiers seek to personally minimize their own risks, even at the expense of their military objectives, particularly if they are unwilling conscripts or otherwise not fully committed to the cause, but no military ethic honors such behavior, so I am going to assume such individuals away here. 18. There may be some interesting questions here about long-term risks and benefits of the use of force. If it is true that high levels of force against insurgent and rebel groups serve as a recruiting tool, it may be that using force now will make the soldiers safer at the moment but increase their risks in the long run – though, of course, it will usually (bad luck excepted) not be the same soldiers targeted by future recruits, so there may be a freerider problem here. But given the clear benefits at least in the short term, I see no reason to doubt Pfaff – himself a military officer – when he claims that safety through superior firepower is an attractive strategy for soldiers. 19. Note that, under the upper-limit interpretation, there is no requirement that the increase in safety/certainty be anything like proportional to the increase in force – if a vast increase in force used would lead to a very small increase in safety, it may look justifiable so long as it does not cross the threshold of proportionality, which compares the value of the entire act to its total destructiveness, and does not apply to each increment. 20. Though, in principle, some forms of non-lethal weapons – actual or ­proposed – may raise these questions for peacekeepers, such as incapacitating gases or weapons that rely on painful sound.

Minimum Use of Force (A): Resort to Force 191 21. This is a small category. McMahan’s example is a person whose cell phone is, unknown to her, wired to set off a bomb the next time she makes a call. He also argues that most, if not all, child soldiers may be non-responsible threats, especially very young ones (2009: 198–202). 22. Interview 25. 23. The situation of Janowitz’s “constabulary,” mentioned in Chapter 2. 24. Let me be clear that this is how I believe the idea of non-initiation is best understood. I have no idea if Hammarskjöld would have found the interpretation agreeable. 25. Interview 11. 26. See Chapter 4. 27. Some writers use “coercion” as I am using “compellence,” while some treat deterrence and compellence, or even deterrence, compellence, and offense, as sub-species of “coercion.” I will follow Seybolt’s usage, that makes compellence a species of coercion. 28. One might argue that any form of control has a coercive element, and so the presence of spoilers anywhere is in some sense coercive, but this would simply write an unlimited check to peacekeepers for the use of force. 29. More on this below, under the heading of attentiveness. 30. Interview 1. 31. Interview 22. 32. Interview 24. 33. Interview 26. 34. Interview 27. 35. Interview 17. 36. Interview 28. 37. This is a version of Blocq’s “comprehensive empathy” discussed in Chapter 2. 38. Interview 1. 39. Reports that McChrystal had proposed a medal for courageous restraint seem to have been just rumors; such a medal had been proposed, but only the idea of the virtue, not the medal, was endorsed by McChrystal himself (McMichael 2010). 40. I will charitably assume that critics would not like to see US or NATO forces show so little restraint as to violate discrimination and proportionality. 41. I return to the issue of appropriate focus on force protection briefly in Chapter 7. 42. Even traditional militaries must restrain the anger of soldiers, as it can lead to attacks that hinder military progress. See e.g. Sherman 2004, ch. 4; Protevi 2008: 8–9, discussing the issue of creating “soldiers” rather than “warriors.”

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43. And even genocide may be seen as a (grossly immoral) means to an end, rather than an end in itself. 44. Interview 25. 45. As Pape (1992: 432) points out, one grim reason why counter-population deterrence may not have worked as well as predicted in theory was that, in practice, many leaders have been able to convince civilian populations to endure high levels of punishment in the name of national interests, and may not have personally cared about the sacrifices the population was making. 46. Interview 21. 47. Interview 22. 48. Interview 4.

Chapter 6 MINIMUM USE OF FORCE (B): PEACEKEEPER VIOLENCE

the images of war handed to us, even when they are graphic, leave out the one essential element of war – fear. (Hedges 2003: 83) We started from the assumption that everyone was traumatized – including me.1 INTRODUCTION

Ultimately, despite my argument that some form of the “minimum use of force” standard should be retained/reclaimed, peacekeepers will face situations in which they are called on to use force. One reaction to this is to dismiss it as an oxymoron, which amounts to simply dismissing the peacekeeping project. Another is to see peacekeeping as a limited form of war, distinguished from other forms of warfare by its object rather than by its nature. Obviously, this book will not take the first approach. But, on the latter view, it is easy to ignore the practical and moral downsides ­inherent in violence, especially for peacekeepers. Peacekeepers must worry about sowing fear, chaos, and non-political violence in a way that few warfighters must, because of the nature of their task. The goal of peacekeepers is not, or should not be, to simply “pacify” an area. Creating a political project along the lines described in Chapter 2 involves the creation of relationships that bind former enemies into a unified polity. At the same time, however, peacekeepers resort to violence for the same reason that warfighters do – it promises a “final” character that negotiations and defenses do not. Already the fact that the last chapter framed the use of force in terms of compellence and deterrence, rather 193

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than obliteration, should problematize this intuition. But this chapter will examine in more detail the way violence promises to enforce compliance, by the mechanism and at the cost of sowing psychological trauma in the wider community that combatants rely on for support. As a result, peacekeepers who use violence should engage in relationship-restoring practices of communication and mourning aimed especially at the groups and individuals they target. WAR’S VIOLENCE IS PERPLEXING

Peacekeeping is not simply a variety of war. But, since peacekeepers are military personnel put to a different purpose, it makes sense to start thinking about their uses of violence by building on existing analyses of war’s violence. As it turns out, those analyses are fewer, in the philosophical literature, than one might think. While no just war theorist could be accused of ignoring the badness of killing or death, it easily fades into the background in favor of discussions of liability, military advantage, and the like. When Walzer writes that “[w]ar kills; that is all it does,” it is to quickly move on to a discussion of how we cannot dwell on the fact that war kills but must ask whether the good it achieves outweighs the death (Walzer 2006a: 109). When Coady updates Walzer’s quip to “[w]ar kills, sure enough; but it also maims, distorts, and injures in many complex, enduring ways,” he too “intends to show the horror of war,” but does so in the context of explaining why, despite this, there would be a demand for just war theory – a demand the remainder of his book aims to satisfy (Coady 2008: 9–10). Both Walzer’s and Coady’s books are exemplary pieces of just war theory, but tend to de-center and abstract from the actual violence of warfare. When we focus on the centrality of violence to war – as Scarry graphically puts it, “the body maimed, the body in pain, the body dead and hard to dispose of . . . the sheer material weight of multitudes of damaged and opened human bodies” – war looks deeply perplexing (Scarry 1985: 62). The ability to inflict violence has very little to do with the issues at stake in the typical military conflict. If the question is whether my nation or yours should control this land, “my side can kill more of your side” is a non-answer. To use Scarry’s grimly tongue-in-cheek alternative, we might as well settle the issue with a singing contest. One might argue that war essentially functions to clarify cost–benefit

Minimum Use of Force (B): Peacekeeper Violence 195 decisions. In a world of perfect knowledge there may well be no war – anyone contemplating it would simply compare the likely outcome of the war to the value of the thing to be gained and one side would yield. In the actual world, we do not know an opponent’s true intentions, and war is chaotic enough that we cannot always predict the outcome of a confrontation. But this analysis just leaves us back at the central ­question – what is special about this cost? Violence is a harm like the loss of economic resources or the loss of pride from being beaten in a singing contest, but it is also a harm unlike them. (Magnitude of cost cannot be the answer. Many people may be harmed or killed by non-war actions – this is the core of the critique of economic sanctions, for instance. See e.g. Gordon 1999.) A different, intuitively compelling, answer is that any other contest would leave open the possibility that the loser would not abide by the decision (Scarry 1985: 95–6). In warfare, by contrast, the loser literally cannot respond. The idea may be an artifact of our metaphors of war. We often describe contending armies as large corporate individuals. Instead of “seeing” the slaughter of individual soldiers, we see a corporate “body” whose teeth have been knocked out or artery severed (ibid.: 70–2). It is then natural to think that, say, a body with a severed artery must be losing too much blood to continue to fight. In individual mortal combat, the outcome of the contest is selfenforcing, but the analogy does not hold for the corporate military “body.” The “convention [of talking about two armies as if they were two large individuals], which exists primarily to assist the visualization of troop movements and acts during war, is (inappropriately) available at the moment when the mind turns to thinking about the nature of war’s ending” (Scarry 1985: 101; emphasis in original). War short of genocide typically does not continue until one side is physically unable to fight, even under heavy military punishment. Destroyed weapons and infrastructure can be rebuilt, and replacement combatants can be conscripted or recruited. Many analysts of war resort to “morale” to fill the explanatory gap, but morale really “is not separable from the activity of injuring but is a name for the sustained capacity to injure,” and the “invocation of morale as the winning determinant is an enduring instance of circular reasoning: its active presence is inferred from the presence of a victory coupled with the absence of any other visible locus of victory” (ibid.: 104–6).

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More subtly, Scarry points out that the invocation of morale, if it is some sort of moral/spiritual quality, threatens to make the war itself irrelevant. Whatever morale is supposed to be – force of will, ability to endure catastrophe, national cohesion, spirit, etc. – if it is not simply identical with the ability to keep killing (in which case its invocation is irrelevant), it could be tested in some other fashion than war (ibid.: 106–7). This leaves us in a situation that seems paradoxical. Few wars are ended by a literal physical incapacitation of one side, but it seems right to think of war as “final” in a special sense. Despite its problems, the concept of morale must be on to something. WAR AS MASS TRAUMA

The core of Scarry’s analysis of bodily violation’s political aspect is that violence is a way of investing abstract concepts with a sense of reality. Invoking the concepts in the presence of a violently harmed human body means that our senses and mind are shocked by visceral (literally), undeniable reality and will then tend to treat the concept as if it were not just someone’s idea, but just as real as the soldier’s blood spilled on the ground (Scarry 1985: 126). This account seems overly romantic. Soldiers do not necessarily give up a fight because they have changed their beliefs – their beliefs may be inchoate while they fight, and they may bitterly resent defeat. Soldiers are instead overcome by fear of death, fear of “letting others down” (and the related fear of or actual collapse of the military social group), loss of hope and frustration at the perceived futility of their mission, sheer physical exhaustion, and the psychologically draining effects of guilt, horror, and hatred (Grossman 1996, §II, chs. 2–5; Watson 1997: 158–64. Frustration at futility is perhaps especially relevant to peacekeepers, and an example I owe to Dwight Raymond.). Much of this has little to do with belief (for example, soldiers experience guilt and horror even when they believe their cause is just), and is instead a matter of creating psychological barriers to further action, that function on a level below conscious will. War has a similarly traumatic effect on civilian populations. To take only a sample of psychological research on the effects of war: during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, one study found that 5.5 percent of Israeli Jews and 20.3 percent of Israeli Arabs in Northern Israel (subject to rocket attacks from Hezbollah fighters based in

Minimum Use of Force (B): Peacekeeper Violence 197 Lebanon) met the criteria for Acute Stress Disorder, with even more showing some symptoms (in an additional statistic telling of the psychological impact, 66.3 percent of respondents reported watching more than eight hours of television coverage of the war per day) (Yahav and Cohen 2007: 832–3). A national study in Israel of the effects of the same war found elevated levels of PTSD among the population, significantly associated with the experience of wartime traumas (such as being near a rocket attack or fearing for the safety of a loved one) (Palmieri et al. 2008: 1214, esp. Table 3). Unsurprisingly, psychological effects are more pronounced among those more directly affected by war – a study of Central American refugees in the US found that 68 percent of the sample suffered from PTSD, with severity predicted by the number of traumatic wartime experiences the individual had ­undergone (Michultka, Blanchard, and Kalous 1998: 574–6). Violence as Social Trauma One impact of psychological trauma is that it undermines human connections, and those connections make it possible for a group to go on fighting in an organized way. Psychological damage can incapacitate action just as surely, in certain circumstances, as physical destruction. Characteristic symptoms of PTSD are emotional numbness, hopelessness, and difficulty maintaining relationships (Mayo Clinic Staff 2011). In discussing the use of corporal punishment on children, Ruddick argues that “the social construction of a child’s body as a vulnerable locus of pain seems a preparation for later public domination and submission” (Ruddick 2002: 167). She echoes this comment later in discussing the body in war: “[t]he salient feature of war’s body is its susceptibility to pain and damage that lead to surrender” (ibid.: 200. Ruddick’s account is key to my own, and I will return to it in more detail below.). These wounds make it difficult to maintain communal action. Excessive or regular use of pain and violence in mothering, and the fear accompanying it risks creating semi-reflexive pathways of submission to violence and normalization of violence in relationships. Experiences of pain, fear, and violence seem to shape the way individuals interact with other human beings. The child (or adult) who is the subject of violence will shrink reflexively from those she perceives as able to use further violence. But she is also likely to model violent domination of

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those weaker than she is, having had more prosocial patterns of behavior partly or completely beaten out of her, thus “infecting” others with social models ripe for numbed obedience but damaging to collective action and identity. Bell’s (2009: 156) discussion of the psychosocial effects of the Blitz on WWII London is particularly interesting for the ways in which wartime stresses interacted with and exacerbated social divisions and anxieties. Contemporary accounts often expressed anxiety that Jews or workingclass Londoners would sow seeds of panic. This is consistent with research that indicates that “ethnic” and other polarizing divides are often (partly) endogenous to warfare, rather than exogenous instigators of it (see e.g. Kalyvas 2006: 77–82). Relatively diffuse fears or prejudices (against, say, the working class) may be reinforced and mobilized into intercommunal violence by violence that had little to do with those cleavages initially. Fears that members of the civilian population could be tempted to engage in sabotage echo Arendt’s description of the “terror” of a totalitarian regime, where society is completely atomized by pervasive violence and the uncertainty of whether any individual could betray you (Arendt 1972: 154; Bell 2009: 168). This helps explain why some of the most insightful theorists of violence, like Scarry, focus on its dominating features, rather than its physical destructiveness. Arendt, in On Violence, makes a helpful distinction between “violence” and “power” – rejecting the common theoretical and historical identification of the two. Power, in Arendt’s taxonomy, is the ability for people to act in concert (Arendt 1972: 143. In what follows, unless otherwise noted, I will use the word “power” in Arendt’s sense.). Violence can always destroy power, but never create it (ibid.: 152). Arendt argues that violence destroys collective action not primarily by causing the death of the collective’s members, but rather through violence’s power to elicit “unquestioning obedience “(ibid.: 140). The fact that both power and violence can involve people doing as others want can mask the fact that one works via shared intentions and the other through reflexive submission. Using violence, we do not metaphorically treat our target as an object, we literally do so. Violence holds out the power of making a short-cut around a person’s conscious thought, by way of fear and horror. When Arendt says that violence can demand “unquestioning obedience,” she is making a literal claim. For most people, when they are faced with immediate aggression, the reaction is emotional and automatic rather than reasoned.

Minimum Use of Force (B): Peacekeeper Violence 199 Power requires a mutual accommodation, the “reciprocity” of Chapter 2 – the fact that “power is never the property of an individual” should be understood in the sense not only that power requires many individuals acting in concert, but also that no one individual can direct that concerted action in perfect accord with her independent will (Arendt 1972: 143, emphasis mine). Ultimately, military violence is not about the combatants, but about the political entity that stands behind them. Disrupting the morale of soldiers, making them into “psychiatric casualties,” can win battles, but the war is not ended until the polity supporting the military ends it. In principle, new soldiers can always be thrown into the breach, whether the old are killed or incapacitated. Of course, this rapidly becomes inefficient, and it is easier and easier to slaughter enemy combatants as the social and material base behind them degrades, and each wave is more poorly trained and more poorly equipped – but we never get to the point of literal inability to fight until the polity is completely annihilated (or, perhaps, reduced to young children and the elderly). Political Physiology Nor should we regard these effects as “merely” psychological. Not only do they have, as all mental states do, analogues in the body (serotonin levels, etc.), but our responses to violence are tied up with our physical existence and not subject to purely rational change. Psychological damage from violence can be as real as physical harm, and often is not entirely separate from it. Bell describes the pervasive and debilitating fear in London: fear and physical responses to it were so embedded in the body politic that advertisers used it to sell products. “(1) Do you jump when a bus backfires? (2) Does worry bring sleepless nights? (3) Are you spotty? (4) Are the whites of your eyes muddy? (5) Are you puffed out after running upstairs?” asked a 1940 laxative advertisement (quoted in Bell 2009: 160). In general, psychosomatic reactions to the wartime stress were widespread, including hair loss and ulcers, indicating that the famously stoic reaction to the bombings may have been more a matter of repressing fear and stress than being unaffected by it.2 A field anecdote drives home the fact that violence is effective on a deep, non-rational level that crosses the psychological and physiological. A Ghanaian member of the UN staff told me about his encounter

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with an elderly Darfuri woman during his service in the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS): And, I remember we brought an aircraft, I think AN-12 [an Antonov cargo plane, similar to those used by the Sudanese government to bomb civilian areas] or something, and the lady, one old lady who lived in the IDPs camp was weeping, she wanted to come and touch it . . . She touched it and she started crying . . . She only knew what Antonov had done to her. So when we brought this in, because this flies over the village, the sound was very familiar. Then she was going to hide when her niece told her, no no no no no, this is for the African Union. It’s here for peace. She says she doesn’t believe it. So they brought her, and she said she wanted to know what type of thing they were using to, you know, kill their people. And I was thinking, that’s the first time she was able to touch that.3 Violence functions as an element of “political physiology,” to use Protevi’s term: the “direct interaction of the social and the somatic, skipping the subjective level” (Protevi 2009, loc. 707. Note that Protevi uses “political” in a broad sense of having to do with human c­ ollectives – political physiology need not be about “politics” in the sense of contests for control of state institutions, etc.). In a nutshell, Protevi argues that there is something to the metaphor of the army as a corporate body. Typical models of collective action go via individual choices and incentives – I agree to enter into a joint project with you because we thereby better achieve some of my goals (for an example of such an account, see Kutz 2000, ch. 3). Political physiology operates on a different level, in which physical states in one human body directly evoke physical states in another. “Political feeling” is the subjective analogue of these sub-conscious connections, but it is an effect, rather than a cause. Consider, for example, the feeling of exhaustion – there is a subjective experience of exhaustion, but what really limits action by someone who is exhausted is the depletion of their body’s energy reserves and the demands of the parasympathetic nervous system that arise as soon as immediate danger has passed (Grossman 1996: 69–71). Examples of political physiology include the way in which being in the presence of traumatized people can traumatize the observer

Minimum Use of Force (B): Peacekeeper Violence 201 (inducing “compassion fatigue”) and the fact that people will react to facial cues from other human beings as if the human possessed full personhood even if we know intellectually that their brains have been severely damaged and the facial cues are simply involuntary tics. For instance, to use one of Protevi’s extended examples, many Americans were transfixed and horrified by the thought of taking Terri Schiavo off life support when her case made national headlines, even though the medical consensus was that brain damage had put her in a “persistent vegetative state,” where she had no consciousness or higher brain functions. Many people, seeing a video of her face, became convinced against the best medical evidence that she must still have had a personality “in there,” and even though I have no reason to doubt the diagnosis, I must admit that had I been called on to pull the plug, it would have taken all my courage to do so – even though I know that she was not conscious, the mere thought threatens nausea (Protevi 2009, loc. 719 and ch. 5; on the difficulty of killing enemies one can see face to face, even when one has no moral qualms about doing so, see Grossman 1996, §III chs. 5–6, esp. p. 127). Individuals, especially soldiers, may train themselves into an alternate response to violence, but this training is characteristically the training in of a different semi-automatic response than the “fight or flight” reaction most people have, not replacing a semi-automatic response with a fully reasoned reaction. Embodied Social Bonds Violence functions in part because our social connections are built in an embodied way. Consider the social ties that build a military. Contemporary military training (in contrast to earlier “warrior” traditions) connects individuals with reflex-level practiced responses that allow the group to function together smoothly without hesitation or negotiation, and in a spatially distributed way. Soldiers are linked to each other, their commanders, and information sources with sophisticated networking capabilities to create what Protevi calls a “cyborg” in which soldiers kill as part of a complex distributed process in which their conscious decision-making is not always at the forefront (Protevi 2008: 410–12. Note that it would be a mistake to think of this structure as one in which the commander sits at the center of the network and makes decisions, but the lower-ranked soldiers are just tools. Just as the soldiers may react to a commander’s input in a practiced,

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semi-automatic manner, the commander is reacting to information fed up from individual soldiers.). The social connections in the broader political community are not so different – we only think of political communities as voluntary and conscious contracts if we forget we were born. “[B]irthing,” Ruddick writes, “is indelibly a social relation, a fact that only a radical distinction between mind and body can disguise.”4 The process by which human relationships are created is one in which total bodily union eventually gives way to individuation, but an individuation that is never totally independent. The ideal of a body fully under control of a will is at best only imperfectly realized by human beings who depend on support networks, who get sick, who act on emotions spurred by biological systems, and who die (Ruddick discusses these issues at much greater length, Ruddick 2002: 206–17). And the ability to build and maintain those support networks and connections has its substrate in the combined physical and social relationships exemplified by birthing, mothering, and sexuality, as well as less charged physical rituals, like sharing meals. The way violence impacts on political physiology is illuminated in Chris Hedges’ account of the war in Bosnia. He describes how war rent the social fabric, making fools out of those who had bought into the social and economic systems, elevating criminals, and disrupting norms of sexual morality (Hedges 2003: 99–101). The most important image for this analysis, however, is Hedges’ description of the arrival of Bosnian internally displaced persons (IDPs) at a village abandoned by fleeing Serbs. The IDPs arrive after days on a bus, stripped of their possessions and driven from their homes, to stand stunned amid the rain, mud, and dead livestock. Then a “man with a clipboard” distributes them to houses (Hedges 2003: 106–8). With their emotions numbed and their social ties in tatters, the IDPs are ripe to react to anyone who can call on the reflexes of ordered compliance with authority. The “physiological” interactions conceptually undergird the social aspects of relationship because without them the work of maintaining relationships looks either superfluous or mysterious. Ruddick (2002: 178–82) critiques traditional conflict resolution for its rationality. “Taking an ‘objective’ distance from the rage and fear of battle . . . negotiators are left without resources to understand the failure that leads to war and preparations for war; nor can they manage the ­emotions of peace, that is, of life” (ibid.: 181–2).

Minimum Use of Force (B): Peacekeeper Violence 203 Understanding violence as effective in part via political physiology lets us understand war violence in a way that explains the corporate body metaphor, and war victory, without mystifying either. In a traumatized military, or a traumatized polity, the experience of violence, transmitted through proximity and social relations, disrupts processes that allow corporate action on a physical-psychological level. Individuals who may once have been willing to risk death or sacrifice to feed their polity’s war machine find their reserves of adrenaline hammered through the stress of warfare and exposure to violence and may even find them depleted by proxy reactions to seeing injured comrades, losing family members to violence, etc. – a physical limit they ­experience as fear, exhaustion, or war-weariness. PEACEKEEPERS AND TRAUMATIC VIOLENCE

On the basis of this general discussion of the impact of military violence, we can now turn to the question of peacekeeper violence with more clarity. Keep in mind that peacekeepers can use force that is not necessarily violent – when peacekeepers literally stop a spoiler group from acting by cantoning its weapons or erecting a berm, they are using a different mechanism from the war-like contest of physical harm. To say that peacekeepers must sometimes use violence is just to say that sometimes they have no effective substitute for the trauma that makes collective violence “final.” They may not even be able to use appreciably less violence than a similarly situated warfighter would. My aim is not to second-guess the tactical decisions of PKO commanders – the difference between the peacekeeper’s practical attitude toward violence and the warfighter’s has to do with the way that peacekeepers should contextualize and deal with the consequences of violence. Violence’s trauma, however necessary, ramifies through society in ways that will tend to undermine peacekeepers’ goals. It makes the creation of general social order more difficult, and its destructive effects even on existing power groups damage the social cohesion of the population – after all, however odious, armed factions just are segments of the population, organized. As Arendt puts it: the danger of violence . . . will always be that the means overwhelm the end. If goals are not achieved rapidly, the result will be

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not merely defeat but the introduction of the practice of violence into the whole body politic. Action is irreversible, and a return to the status quo in case of defeat is always unlikely. The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world. (Arendt 1972: 177) This is not just a philosopher’s lament. Doyle and Sambanis’ statistical analysis of peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts in civil conflicts found that the numbers of people killed and displaced in a war had a negative, statistically significant effect on the likelihood that the area would be at peace two years after the peacekeeping intervention ended (Doyle and Sambanis 2006: 95, 97–9). And homicide rates in post-conflict nations rise (Archer and Gartner 1976; Ember and Ember 1994). These side effects may be irrelevant to the goal of defeating an organized enemy, and may be morally beside the point for a warfighter – if banditry and revenge killings become widespread after a war, a military intent on repulsing interstate aggression may not care. But peacekeepers are as concerned with the post-conflict order that emerges as with breaking down hostile/obstructionist centers of order in the conflict. Humanizing Violence If the spread of violence’s effects is not contained, it risks undermining the human connections that PKOs need to try to rebuild. A society in which violence is widespread and violent domination/submission is common will have trouble achieving a stable state in which people are able to work together and deal with their conflicts constructively. Containing that spread requires attention to the humanity of people in the area of operations, including even the targets of violence. As noted above, one of Ruddick’s insights is that the construction of the body as a site of pain, either in child abuse or war, is preparation for relationships of domination and submission. This is the ramification of violence down embodied social connections. Traumatized bodies, and bodies adapted to situations of domination and violence, have had undermined their ability to engage in the “active connectedness” that Ruddick (persuasively) identifies with peace, people “resist[ing] others’ violence and their own temptations to abandon or assault, persisting in relationships that include anger, disappointment, difference, conflict, and nonviolent battle” (Ruddick 2002: 183–4).

Minimum Use of Force (B): Peacekeeper Violence 205 That active connectedness is undermined by fear that the physical proximity involved in social connection will lead to vulnerability to violence, and habituation to the non-rational immediate obedience that violence can obtain. It is also a good description of what peacekeepers aim at. Part of the insight of this description of peace is that it centrally recognizes that peace is not a matter of harmonious fellow-feeling, but precisely of finding ways to build relationships in the face of powerundermining affects and temptations. Though she presents it as a paradigm of peaceful practice, Ruddick opens her substantive account of mothering with violence – telling an anecdote of a mother so overwhelmed by frustration, sleep deprivation, isolation, and the demands of her infant that she bundles the child up and takes it on the bus in the middle of the night, because she will not be able to give in to her temptation to violence in public (Ruddick 2002: 66–7). The human condition of relationships is that we recognize and deal with our temptations to hurt and dominate others, not that we become saints incapable of violence – and that we realize that others who do give in to these ­temptations are humans and not monsters. Peacekeepers may come to relate to armed individuals primarily as sources of unreasoning violence, such as in General Cammaert’s “armed groups who have conducted barbaric attacks with guns, spears and/or machetes” (Cammaert 2007: 6). It is difficult to read graphic accounts of rapes, mutilations, and other atrocities in Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, or the DRC, and then imagine the perpetrators (mostly, but not exclusively, men) as young boys, nursing from their mothers or giggling with other children. Yet they were, and even after becoming combatants, they are not murderous all day, every day – they may fall in love, they may eat with friends, they may laugh and play with their own children. If peacekeepers do not recognize this, a relationship with such individuals may become near-literally “unthinkable,” because of the way the emotions that structure our thinking interfere. Yet, an undistorted picture of peace may need to involve building relationships that include such abusers and certainly needs to understand the relationships that they have with other people in the society. The “moral imagination” that is part of creativity specifically requires not rendering new relationships with anyone unthinkable. A rationalism that ignores political physiology is also dangerous for peacekeeping. For instance, discussions of total spoilers, or enmity,

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tend to abstract from the question of whether spoilers and enemies are acting out of anger or fear.5 Motivations not subject to rational calculation (and hence manipulation through changing incentives) are excluded from consideration as fixed points beyond the scope of analysis. This is another version of the mistake that Scarry points out, of thinking of war as simply a way of comparing the strength of claims. In a context where peacekeepers are specifically in need of a way to address the anger, fear, and trauma inevitably created by the use of violence, such ideological constructions are especially problematic. What peacekeepers need is some way of re-humanizing the enemy in the context of violence, even when they must kill. As mortal beings, we have many social resources for humanizing the injured and dead, as long as we know where to look. There is a tendency to think of death as a transcendent, totally individuating moment, but this is at least partly another fantasy of disembodiment. Of course, there is something unsharable in the very moment of death (as there is in the very moment of giving birth or being born). But real human deaths are extended, messy, and tightly interwoven into social practices.6 People who die alone and unmourned are exceptional and tragic. As Ruddick puts it: A full appreciation of the capacity rooted in birth includes an understanding that death must be tended and cared for. A death that is cared for is actively non-violent. Those who mitigate pain and assuage fear are engaged in a discipline of intellect and action contradictory to the planned cruelty of a claymore mine or a napalm bomb. Tended deaths, like war deaths, are neither romantic nor heroic. Dying bodies stumble, smell, forget, leak, fester, shake, and gasp . . . whereas military strategies note the body’s vulnerabilities merely to exploit them . . . caretakers perceive pain and decay accurately to comfort an embodied being. (Ruddick 2002: 215) In the peacekeeping context, a big part of humanizing the targets of violence is developing “comprehensive empathy” (see Chapter 2), recognizing that even the “barbaric” enemies peacekeepers face leave behind friends, kin, acquaintances, co-religionists, enemies, etc. who will be bereaved, sickened, angered, elated, or frustrated at their passing – and that they themselves die in ways that reflect the physical vulnerability we share. Violence works precisely by exploiting this

Minimum Use of Force (B): Peacekeeper Violence 207 physical vulnerability that embeds us in social ties (Butler 2004: 27). Our embodiment, of course, gives a vector for physical violence and makes us vulnerable. Our embodied connections to others also transmit the fear and anger that make violence unpredictable and effective. The effect of these deaths, especially if “un-tended” cannot be completely silenced by the peacekeepers’ abstract moral justification. These ties also give a vector for responding to violence. The trick is to make the deaths of those peacekeepers must kill “grievable.” Butler focuses on the obituary as a piece of public mourning that, crucially, particularizes the dead. “[T]o be an obituary, there would have had to have been a life, a life worth noting, a life worth valuing and preserving, a life that qualifies for recognition” (Butler 2004: 34). “Barbaric” enemies are not mournable. The Tactics of Mourning The core way in which peacekeepers can and should respond to their own use of violence is to engage in rituals of recognition that the violence is tragic. In the abstract, it is hard to say more – the appropriate rituals may well be very context- and culture-specific. Learning how they can express mourning in their particular context should be considered an obligation of peacekeepers who use or may use violence. But there are likely to be certain common elements, such as refraining from triumphalism about those peacekeepers kill (straightforwardly identifying a willingness to kill members of spoiler groups with “protecting civilians” is problematic) and publicly extending the possibility to renew relationships to individuals and groups that have been the subject of peacekeeper violence. In general, peacekeepers should remember the insights of Ruddick and the woman who needed to touch the Antonov – beliefs and attitudes are not enough, but rituals must be observed and concrete action taken. Even the obituary is not just an abstract “narrative” – the fact that it is a widely reproduced cultural item is important. Butler does not linger on it, but the obituary is also tied up with other acts of mourning and grief. It is a thing that the bereaved can read to reaffirm the feeling that the dead mattered, and it is an artifact they can show to others as an act of communicating their grief. In our (my, Western European post-industrial, at least) culture, it is a form of communal recognition, of a piece with the creation of spaces where it is socially acceptable for people to cry and otherwise

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give voice to the pain of their loss. Peacekeepers may need to cry with people (see below), or share food with their kin, or let them touch the machines whose violent power is now being put aside. Two more specific examples, of general applicability, are the use of graduated force and the creation of communicative spaces. Recognizing the importance of violence’s tragic nature provides a non-instrumental reason to use graduated force. Graduated force, with its emphasis on displays like warning shots, is itself a kind of ritual. While graduated force may operate at least in part through fear, it provides a way to both rein in the effects of fear and create a communicative context between the peacekeepers and their opponents. Using graduated force sends a message that peacekeepers are committed to not killing if they can avoid it – we should not simply assume that all spoiler groups trust that this is peacekeepers’ view. But peacekeepers can and should also surround their use of violence with active communication aimed at reconciliation with the targeted groups, drawing them into a new power structure rather than just trusting in the effects of fear and trauma. Communication that the ­violence is regrettable and regretted is itself a form of mourning.7 Consider the case of UNITAF. While Somalia is often cited as a classic case of a peacekeeping failure, it was mostly during UNOSOM II that things went infamously wrong. While the war between the powerful militia of General Mohammed Farah Aidid and the US/UN forces ultimately led to the failure of the mission, an earlier confrontation between Aidid and the US went very differently. Early on, UNITAF established the United States Liaison Office (USLO), which facilitated regular “joint security committee” (a faction initiative) meetings with representatives of the Aidid and Ali Madhi factions (the other main contender in Mogadishu) throughout the UNITAF deployment (Hirsch and Oakley 1995: 58; Durch 1996: 324). These meetings, as well as general coordination between UNITAF and the factions, via the USLO, significantly smoothed and pacified interactions between the US/UN forces and the local militants. The USLO and the joint security committee paid off when UNITAF ended up in conflict over an Aidid weapons site. Members of the militia had fired on UNITAF troops, despite warnings, and Anthony Zinni, UNITAF’s Director for Operations, informed the security committee that the site would be destroyed in six hours. UNITAF surrounded the site, and responded to resistance with lethal force, killing seven people

Minimum Use of Force (B): Peacekeeper Violence 209 (Fritz 1993). UNITAF called in the security committee immediately after the attack: “It was a really solemn meeting,” Zinni recalls. “I said, “General [Aidid], here is the point. We are either at war or we put this behind us.” They got together and talked amongst themselves and they came back and said, “We want to put this behind us.” Zinni adds: “There was a forum to deconflict.” (Rosegrant and Watkins 1996a: 25) Incidents continued, but similar procedures were followed, and the overall level of violence and confrontation was kept from escalating too much. As UNOSOM I and UNITAF were replaced with UNOSOM II, the meetings did not continue, and “tension mounted” (Hirsch and Oakley 1995: 58). Both the fact of the space for continued conversation and the very solemnity of UNITAF’s response to the deaths of Aidid’s combatants were important. Unfortunately, while some of these approaches were promising, and their successes support the idea that communication, empathy, and relationship-building are important, the approach did not pervade the mission, and was even less present in UNOSOM II. While members of UNITAF and the USLO met with various local leaders, there still seems to have been a focus on the elites (perhaps out of necessity), exemplified in UNOSOM II by the fact that only faction leaders signed the first major peace agreement in March 1993 (Rosegrant and Watkins 1996a: 36). Admiral Howe, the retired US military officer appointed as SRSG for UNOSOM II, took an “arms-length” approach to the faction leaders from the start, in line with the hardline approach to Aidid that the new head of the USLO took at the close of UNOSOM I (Durch 1996: 341–2). Howe did not seem to appreciate the way in which his sincere commitment to peace in Somalia might not be enough to render the issues of violence moot; he recalled telling the press that it “would be crazy for anyone to test us. The UN is here solely to support the peace and recovery of the Somali people” (quoted in Rosegrant and Watkins 1996a: 42). At the moment of transition, political contact with the main faction leaders was interrupted, as Aidid and Ali Madhi were out of the country from March to May, and then the deputy Howe assigned to be “czar” of the political effort went on leave for six weeks on their return (Rosegrant and Watkins 1996b: 4).

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The shift in attitude in UNOSOM II toward the faction leaders, particularly Aidid, was cemented in June 1993, when Pakistani peacekeepers were ambushed after inspecting another SNA cache, near the militia’s radio station. Some UNITAF officials argued that a lack of communication may have led the SNA to believe the UN was about to shut down its radio station, or that its heavy-handed approach may have provoked resistance. The SNA was condemned by name for the attacks, and UNOSOM II was authorized to take “all necessary measures” against them (UNSC 1993: 1–2; Rosegrant and Watkins 1996b: 6–7). Major General Montgomery, the deputy force commander, declared that after an attack such as this “there can be no doubt in your mind that you’ve got an enemy out there” (quoted in Rosegrant and Watkins 1996b: 7). The enmity with Aidid would ultimately lead to the aforementioned confrontation and withdrawal of US/UN forces. A quieter development, ominous from the point of view of an approach concerned with mourning, was that the UN declined to even count Somali casualties (Durch 1996: 343). I mean only to point out the positive contribution of relationshipbuilding activities in the face of violence; UNOSOM II may have had such serious obstacles that it could not have succeeded even with the best approach possible. And there were criticisms of the elements of UNOSOM I’s approach that I praise, because it was seen as “­legitimizing” the warlords (Rosegrant and Watkins 1996a: 26). If it seems morally right that peacekeepers do not grieve for those they have killed in justified acts of violence, I think this is an effect of forcing members of spoiler groups into an abstract role as beasts or evildoers. Even the worst perpetrators of atrocities are human beings. Recall the AFRICOM trainer telling us about members of the FARDC breaking down when discussing atrocities, discussed in Chapter 2’s section on attentiveness. And there are many relationships that one can have with human beings – not all of them need be unequivocally positive. For instance, consider the relationship that one might have with an ex-spouse with whom one must raise children.8 Building and maintaining relationships with people, and recognizing them as human beings whose lives have meaning to themselves and others, and who are vulnerable to bodily pain and emotion, does not mean that we cannot morally criticize them.

Minimum Use of Force (B): Peacekeeper Violence 211 CONCLUSION

The moral paradox of peacekeeping is not that peacekeepers must use violence to promote peace. Rather, it is that they must build relationships at the same time they are threatening them. A PKO that rendered some organization or faction unable to act, or survive as a corporate body, could typically be said to have failed in some respect. Factions with power, even murderous ones, are nothing other than some part of the population, organized. They may organize in ways that set them in opposition to others, or that do not respect human rights or peace – but in such cases the goal should be to bring them into better integration rather than to exclude them, even as groups, or marginalize or target their members. Even odious groups should, so far as possible, be regarded as potential partners rather than implacable enemies. Perhaps surprisingly, as far as my argument goes, peacekeepers are not essentially bound to limit their use of force. Often, limiting the use of violence will, naturally, be the best way of reining in its bad side effects. But this is not always true – especially if some other group is looking to damage the ability of people to come together powerfully through using its own violence and trauma. More important than the amount of violence is the attitude peacekeepers take to it, and what they do besides use violence. Even if peacekeepers wield the sword with one hand, they should always – in real, practical terms, like UNITAF’s consultations and engagement in public mourning – extend the other cooperatively. Notes 1. Interview 29. 2. Throughout her paper, Bell (2009: 160–1, 165–8) makes an extensive and persuasive case that stress and fear were not absent from the Blitz, but rather that the story of the unshakable British population is more the result of shame at revealing fears in public and lack of attention in the historical record. Bell’s evidence seems to undermine Grossman’s (1996: 80) claim that fear of physical harm in the absence of a face-to-face confrontation with an aggressive enemy is relatively harmless to the psyche. 3. Interview 4. 4. Ruddick (2002: 191). But, while I believe Ruddick is correct that birthing is a social relation itself, we should be careful not to swing the pendulum

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the other way and treat it as the single pivotal moment in mothering and social bonding, rather than emblematic of the various messily embodied moments that make up the nurturing of a social being. See e.g. Kukla (2008: 74–8). 5. Stedman’s spoiler strategies, discussed in Chapter 2, are framed primarily in terms of how to influence rational calculations of advantage. There is room for the thought that total spoilers may be suffering from anger or fear, but it is exogenous to the model. 6. Even an “instantaneous” death involves a quick cessation of life processes in the individual body but an extended series of practices of mourning and grief in people connected to the person who has died. 7. Though I do not have the space to develop the thought here, of course peacekeepers should not allow public performance of mourning at the fate of violent individuals they may target eclipse a clear message that the deaths those groups themselves cause are cause for mourning. 8. I am indebted to Nancy Gallagher for this example.

Chapter 7 PROTECTION AND VULNERABILITY

Life is sustained not by a self-preserving drive, conceived as an internal impulse of the organism, but by a condition of dependency without which survival proves impossible, but which can also imperil survival depending on the form that dependency takes. (Butler 2010: 46)

INTRODUCTION

This chapter begins the book’s discussion of Protection of Civilians (PoC), the use of military force to deter and/or halt violence and human rights abuses against civilians.1 While PoC has always been a concern for PKOs, it has taken center stage in many discussions of peacekeeping in recent years, and has shown itself to be one of the most difficult challenges peacekeepers face – when people speak of peacekeeping failures, they are often speaking of failures to protect civilians. As a result, PoC merits specific discussion, alongside earlier chapters’ more general discussions of the moral framework for peacekeeping. This chapter will address the issue of what protection means, and what kind of obligation peacekeepers have to provide it. Chapter 8 analyzes one recent case where protection did not work ideally, MONUC’s 2009 support to the FARDC’s “Kimia II” operation, which illuminates many of the book’s themes to this point. Chapter 9 will then discuss how protection activities can embrace the cooperative model emphasized in Chapter 2 by reaching out to civilians’ own protection activities – and what moral pitfalls may lie there. The importance of PoC is deeply tied to the whole moral justification of peacekeeping. Morally, the presence of peacekeepers seems 215

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to be justifiable, if at all, by the benefits in terms of peace and security they bring the local population. Even “traditional” peacekeeping that focused on mediation and separation of states or organized armed factions was ultimately justified in terms of the UN’s mission to save people from “the scourge of war.” Not only is there a plausible moral call to respond to attacks on civilians, but being seen not to protect civilians can quickly lose the PKO the trust of the civilian population. PoC is what many people – both outside analysts and people in the area of operations – expect peacekeepers to do, regardless of their formal mandate. When peacekeepers are perceived as standing by in the face of attacks on civilians, an appeal to the limitations of their mandate will often be perceived as a weak excuse. As the UN’s Rwanda inquiry put it, whether or not an obligation to protect civilians is explicit in the mandate of a peacekeeping operation, the Rwandan genocide shows that the United Nations must be prepared to respond to the perception and expectation of protection created by its very presence. (Carlsson, Sung-Joo, and Kupolati 1999: 51; this passage was influentially cited in the Brahmi Report Panel on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations 2000, §62) Similarly, Pouligny relates how when a riot broke out in Cap Haïtien in Northern Haiti, UN troops had a few rocks thrown at them and left the area. This was seen by the locals as a “sign of ill will and incompetence,” but United Nations Mission in Haiti (UNMIH)’s behavior was dictated (in the mission’s eyes) by a mandate to monitor civil violence but not intervene (Pouligny 2006: 111. Similar perceptions are a theme in her discussion from 104 to 123.). The UN in particular has dealt with protection of civilians from the start of its peacekeeping operations. While PoC is often discussed as if it were a post-Cold War concern for PKOs, and it certainly received new interest in the 1990s, even early UN PKOs faced issues of attacks on civilians. ONUC, ever the exception to the story of very limited Cold War missions, ended up using high levels of force to create protected areas. (An adequate history of PoC in PKOs is beyond the scope of this already over-long discussion. For excellent resources on historical actions to protect civilians and the development of norms, see e.g. Holt and Berkman 2006, ch. 2; Wills 2009, ch. 1.)

Protection and Vulnerability 217 Until recently, one limitation of UN PKO protection effectiveness had been the lack of any general UN doctrine, let alone doctrine and operational guidance on PoC specifically.2 Since the UN tends to be a doctrinal leader for other organizations that deploy peacekeepers, this lack of guidance also limited other missions. Discussion of PoC from a number of analysts led up to the development of the UN’s “capstone doctrine” (UN DPKO 2008) and has continued in its wake (see e.g. Holt and Berkman 2006; Genocide Prevention Task Force 2008; Holt, Taylor, and Kelly 2009; Report of the Secretary General on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict 2009; Ban Ki-Moon 2010; Giffen 2010; Sewall, Raymond, and Chin 2010; Weir 2010; Raymond 2013). The recent UNIBAM contained expanded PoC guidelines; individual missions have their own more detailed PoC plans, and other peacekeeping organizations are developing their own concepts and guidelines (AU 2010; ONUCI 2012; UN DPKO/DFS 2012a, ch. 6). The most recent – at the time of writing – Security Council Report summary of UN PKO protection activities indicated that the Opération des Nations Unies en Côte d’Ivoire (ONUCI), UNAMID, and MONUSCO all had developed comprehensive PoC plans, but only ONUCI’s plan and the DRC sexual violence prevention strategy (which includes MONUSCO as an implementer) seem to be publicly available (Stop Rape Now 2009; DPKO/ DFS 2011; Security Council Report 2012: 14). The explosion of analysis and doctrine (both official and unofficial) on PoC, however, indicates that the concept – intuitively compelling as it is – is not entirely clear, nor clearly translated into operational and tactical guidelines for peacekeepers in the field (Holt, Taylor, and Kelly 2009: 26). This chapter aims to complement recent work on doctrine by ­clarifying what we mean by “protection” and how peacekeepers are responsible for it. THE CONCEPT OF PROTECTION

While the UN language on protection has largely settled on a “boilerplate” that is replicated across many missions (and is looked to for reference by non-UN PKOs as well), focusing on this consensus underplays the level of conceptual and operational vagueness that remains. Most UN missions with any protection mandate receive some variation on UNAMSIL’s 1999 mandate language (of course, with references

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to the mission, the local government, and other responsible forces replaced with ones appropriate to the particular mission): Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, decides that in the discharge of its mandate UNAMSIL may take the necessary action to ensure the security and freedom of movement of its personnel and, within its capabilities and areas of deployment, to afford protection to civilians under imminent threat of physical violence, taking into account the responsibilities of the Government of Sierra Leone and ECOMOG. (UNSC 1999, op. para. 14) But that definition leaves significant room for confusion and divergent interpretation. Unfortunately, as of 2009, Holt, Taylor, and Kelly found: Broadly speaking, DPKO (with the Department of Field Support) does not offer guidance to its troop and police contributing nations or for its field missions on what the “protection of civilians under imminent threat of physical violence” – a regular part of UN mandates for peacekeeping operations – means for planning purposes. (Holt, Taylor, and Kelly 2009: 97) Nor is it simply obvious what the mandate language means. As Chapter 4 pointed out, what is within a mission’s “capacity” is a matter of judgment. And the UNIBAM has now promulgated a definition of “imminent” that is significantly different from the lay understanding of the word: A threat of violence against a civilian is considered “imminent” from the time it is identified as a threat, until such a time the mission can determine that the threat no longer exists. Peacekeepers with a PoC mandate are authorized to use force in any circumstance in which they believe that a threat of violence against civilians exists. (UN DPKO/DFS 2012a: 103) Even this definition leaves room for judgment and confusion. For example, is every group that has used violence against civilians in the past and has not credibly renounced it an “imminent” threat, even if

Protection and Vulnerability 219 they are not currently believed to be engaging in or planning such violence? Is there a minimum likelihood of civilian attacks for something to be “identified” as a threat, for example if some group has not publicly stated an intention to attack civilians but is similar to other groups who have? The UNIBAM’s expansion of “imminent” is almost certainly an improvement on a literal lay reading of the word, but its distance from the lay concept and remaining difficulty shows how much unclarity can be hidden in the seemingly simple concept of “protection.” The Scope of Protection The conceptual unclarity of “protection” is not just a philosopher’s concern. One problem with recognizing that protection goes beyond simply stopping immediate, direct, and concrete attacks on civilians who happen to be in front of peacekeepers is that it then becomes harder to see where the obligation of protection ends. For instance, the draft PoC guidelines developed by PKSOI list 45 tasks in five categories, ranging from conducting patrols and containing public unrest to supporting a sustainable economy and transitional justice (Raymond 2013: 21). On the one hand, there is something deeply right about such an expansive list. Civilians can clearly die from the effects of a dysfunctional economy, and economic disruption can be an effect, even an intentional effect, of violent conflict. But on the other hand, even for the PKO considered as a whole, this is a Herculean task list – e­ ssentially equivalent to reconstructing an entire society. It is one that even the best-run and best-equipped interventions have often failed at. It is unreasonable in the extreme to lay it all at the feet of the military peacekeeper – but it would be a dodge to simply say that the military is limited to a very narrow concept of “protection,” and put the burden of all the rest on civilian PKO elements, especially since many must be carried out in insecure situations. This chapter will present a conceptual framework for thinking of protection that has two virtues. Ultimately, it will try to meaningfully carve out a scope of protection action for the military. In a nutshell, military peacekeepers are especially well-suited to stand fast in the face of violent coercion, and so their particular protection task should be to disrupt social relationships that are maintained with coercion and expose civilians to inequitable risks.

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To make that case, I will present a concept of protection that is integrated with the account of peacekeeping as a cooperative project. We should take the moral basis of protection at face value, as demanded simply by the vulnerability of civilians. But we should also recognize that vulnerability is not “natural” – the extent to which we are vulnerable is determined by where we stand in social relationships, and non-reciprocal relationships expose people to inequitable vulnerabilities. THE OBLIGATION TO PROTECT CIVILIANS

Though it risks sounding venal, we might reasonably ask why and how far peacekeepers should put themselves at risk to protect civilians. When thinking about PoC, it is easy to focus exclusively on the civilians who may be killed. But we should have another imagined interlocutor as well, the peacekeeper who may be putting herself in harm’s way. One of our interview partners told us that his primary motivation was to make it through his tour and return home safely, and it is hard to blame him.3 Protection as a Mandated Responsibility or Legal Obligation The simplest way of explaining peacekeepers’ moral responsibility for PoC is simply to point at the post-1999 mandates and the proliferation of protection-focused doctrine and guidelines both within and without the UN system. Peacekeepers are morally obligated to protect civilians because they are morally obligated to uphold their mandates, and their mandates demand PoC. This view is especially congenial in relation to models of peacekeeping that reduce questions of impartiality to adherence to the mandate – on such a view, whatever the ultimate source of peacekeepers’ moral obligations to protection, when peacekeepers (even PKO leadership) are trying to decide what to do, their decision should begin and end with the mandate. As one interview partner put it, “Commanders on the ground, even the force commander, should not interpret the mandate.”4 But “follow the mandate” may be insufficient guidance. Drafting clear and reasonable mandates with PoC provisions is important, but whatever the mandate, it will be interpreted by individuals in the field, and their willingness to push the boundaries of the mandate will affect

Protection and Vulnerability 221 the character of the mission. One interview partner, a MONUC officer, put this as a matter of the mission’s, or individual units’ within the mission’s, willingness to “stretch” – and of course he expressed pride in his unit’s willingness to do so (e.g. by establishing small bases deep into territory where the PKO had not previously had a presence).5 Moreover, though there is a certain easy romance to the view that the soldier’s role is “but to do and die,” morally speaking we should recognize that soldiers’ duties to obedience should not be exploited by laying morally unreasonable risks upon them. As one interview partner pointed out, it was a very difficult moral decision to send his subordinates out on tasks that might carry a risk but were not explicitly stipulated on his list of tasks.6 Of course, one can stipulate protection tasks. But, practically, it is difficult to reduce PoC to a list of set tasks – it is an aim that needs to be pursued creatively in light of the specific context (Holt, Taylor, and Kelly 2009: 99). And, morally, as officers translate high-level guidance into specific task lists for their subordinates, they must consider whether the tasks they are stipulating are morally r­ easonable ones. In addition, the discussion of the demand for protection mandates above makes it incoherent to think that the obligation to protect derives only from the mandate. Unless we want to dismiss such calls as not only mistaken but confused – it cannot be the case that peacekeepers ought to have a mandate that gave them protection tasks, if there is no basis beyond the mandate for saying what they ought to do – there must be some other basis than mandates. While there is an argument to be made that mandate obligations are backed up by protection requirements deriving from international law, this still does not seem sufficient. (Since I think the ultimate basis of the obligation to protect is nakedly moral, rather than legal, I will not spend time on the details of the legal argument. For a masterful discussion, see Wills 2009.) The expectations of protection on the parts of local civilians in areas of PKO operations are surely not based on any niceties of international law, and it would seem like weaseling for peacekeepers to stand by as people were attacked by, say, pointing to the fact that since peacekeepers are not present as the result of their own military victory, they may not be technically an occupying force (ibid.: 226ff; see also the discussion of how “consensual” PKOs can meaningfully be considered to be in Chapter 3).

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Better to go with the straightforward: stories of peacekeepers standing by when they could prevent atrocities against civilians “shock the conscience” simply because people were vulnerable to those atrocities and (we imagine, at least) peacekeepers could have stopped them. More than that, peacekeepers are not just random good Samaritans passing by – they are part of the international community’s apparatus precisely aimed at preventing war and its associated scourges. Several of the Ghanaian police I spoke with before their deployment to UNAMID explained their motivation to participate in the mission straightforwardly in terms of the oath they had taken as officers of the law to “protect life and property.”7 The special badness of the situation in which civilians in a conflict zone find themselves is tied up with the fact that they are especially vulnerable. I, writing this from the comfort of my home in an affluent nation, have human rights as well. But there is a huge protective apparatus around me – my nation’s rule of law, national defense, my local police force, my (relative) wealth, my job, my health insurance, my white skin and male gender that identify me as a member of the dominant local social group. All of these things limit my exposure to actual violations of my rights. The intuitive core of the R2P, as discussed before, is the idea that when conflict or state failure have stripped such a protective apparatus from people, exposed them to harm in various ways, it is morally obligatory for the “international community” to step in and restore it. Let us delve more deeply into the idea of vulnerability, straightforward as it may seem, starting from Goodin’s extended analysis. Vulnerability, like rights-holding, is inherently a relational concept. We are always vulnerable to someone in respect of some particular injury (Goodin 1985: 112). To be vulnerable is to depend on someone not to inflict an injury, or to prevent an injury from being inflicted (whether by another agent or some natural force). We often elide at least one term of this relation in casual use. I am vulnerable to disease (unless a doctor can heal me); I am vulnerable to a soldier with a weapon (because she might shoot me). Goodin’s account helps us to get a handle on what obligations peacekeepers have, and why they have the obligations they do. It may seem that, if civilians are vulnerable to anyone, it is to those who would

Protection and Vulnerability 223 violate their rights, not to peacekeepers – implying that, on this analysis, peacekeepers have no PoC responsibilities (at least not in virtue of civilian vulnerability). But Goodin points out that we quite reasonably hold people responsible for allowing injury to go forward when it is in their power to stop it, even if they are not the original source of the threat. Civilians are vulnerable both to armed actors who would harm them, and to peacekeepers who hold in their hands the power to stop those actors. Goodin suggests a “last opportunity” rule for morality, on analogy with such rules in the law – regardless of who else may be at fault, the person who passes up the last chance to avert some harm is in the wrong (at least unless there is some overriding reason to pass up that chance; let us assume for the moment there is not) (Goodin 1985: 129). So civilians are also vulnerable, in Goodin’s sense, to peacekeepers. In many cases, peacekeepers hold in their hands the ability to decide whether or not some harm to civilians will be averted. Of course, there are also many cases in which civilians can, must, and do protect themselves – Chapter 9 will focus more on these. But if civilians in some conflict always had the power to protect themselves from harm, a peacekeeping force with a mandate to protect civilians would be unnecessary. This power gives them a responsibility to use it to prevent and mitigate harm to civilians. This does, correctly, give rise to an “ought implies can” restriction on vulnerability to peacekeepers – honored in the standard language that a PKO is to protect civilians “within its capabilities” (as in S/RES/1270 for UNAMSIL). One interview partner, part of the UNMIS staff, expressed frustration that the mission was criticized for not better protecting civilians during 2009 fighting in Abyei (on the border between then-northern and southern Sudan), despite the fact that the military personnel there were part of an engineering rather than an infantry unit.8 If his assessment of their capabilities was correct, he was justified in rejecting negative moral judgments against UNMIS. To the extent that we are inclined to blame PKOs for failures of protection when they do not have the required military capabilities to intercede, our blame is more appropriately directed at the UN or the “international ­community” for failing to properly outfit them. It is too simplistic to look at vulnerability as a relationship between individuals in the peacekeeping case, however. Certainly, if an individual peacekeeper sees a particular civilian under truly immediate threat,

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and she can stop it (at reasonable risk/cost), she probably should – but this is just a “Good Samaritan” rule applicable to anyone. It does little to illuminate the peacekeeper’s specific role. In addition, it would lend itself to an excessively literal understanding of peacekeepers’ mandate to protect civilians in their area of operations under imminent threat – as noted above, such a literal reading is rejected by the UNIBAM, quite reasonably. Peacekeepers are expected to proactively seek out civilians under threat and the groups that threaten them – through patrols, CASOs, etc. The situation of peacekeepers is better captured by Goodin’s discussion of how groups should respond to vulnerability. In conflict situations, individual peacekeepers may, in unusual cases, be able to protect individual civilians through their own powers. But more commonly, civilians must be protected by the PKO, as a unit. Civilians may be protected by a CASO, but a CASO is the sort of thing only a group can do; insisting on decomposing it into individual actions that are all governed only by personal responsibility and expectation of other’s actions may be, in principle, possible (it may not be) but it is not morally illuminating. It is the operation as a whole, and the group that carries it out, that does the protecting. This leads to the “Principle of Group Responsibility”: If A’s interests are vulnerable to the actions and choices of a group of individuals . . . then that group has a special responsibility to (a) organize (formally or informally) and (b) implement a scheme for coordinated action by members of the group such that A’s interests will be protected as well as they can be by that group, consistently with the group’s other responsibilities. (Goodin 1985: 136, emphasis in original) This principle reflects the idea that, at least under normal circumstances, our responsibilities as individuals are tied up with the roles we play in systems that have been designed to respond to people’s vulnerabilities and meet their needs (and in non-normal circumstances, we are required to find ways to organize effectively).9 PoC is a responsibility that resides with the mission as a whole – it is not a matter of i­ndividual peacekeepers running off on their own to save people.

Protection and Vulnerability 225 VECTORS OF VULNERABILITY

Goodin’s “principle of group responsibility” points to the fact that vulnerability is, to a large degree, a feature of systems of social organization. But while it provides a first theoretical foothold, it still leaves the proper nature of the group response unclear. And it does not address how the would-be saviors interact with other sources of vulnerability. This is a perhaps-intended outcome of the last opportunity p ­ rinciple – morally, it may be right to say that it does not matter if others have done wrong: I should still protect people when I can. But at the group-planning level, this risks interfering with the need for attentiveness (in both the lay and my technical sense) to the dynamics of the overall situation. We need a better account, in particular, of how what is demanded of the group of peacekeepers fits into the broader issues with the group of the  whole community in the area of operations. This will help integrate the account of protection back into the account of ­reciprocity and ­intersubjective value. Physical Vulnerability Human bodies are actually fairly resilient, but we are subject to weapons that cut, tear, and crush us. We can fall ill. We can starve. We can die of thirst. We can be exposed to wind and rain. Peacekeepers are arguably especially well-suited to deal with these physical vulnerabilities precisely because they deal in physical force. Peacekeepers can kill people with guns, they can build berms and walls, they can put armored bodies and armored vehicles between aggressors and victims. As a consequence, civilians may be especially vulnerable to peacekeepers in respect of physical threats.10 The social nature of physical vulnerability shows itself in the vectors by which we encounter Hamlet’s “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” When a bullet is flying toward you, it may seem that physics is the only relevant issue. But there is a reason why one person rather than another is in the path of that bullet. For example, it may be that ethnic, kin, or religious group is being used as a proxy for political enmity; that rests both on a social context in which the group is taken to be salient and (of course) one’s ties to that group. Similarly for the supports of life. The cynical quip is that “soldiers eat first.” Sen has convincingly argued that famines do not result from

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a mere lack of capacity to produce food, but from social and political decisions about how food will be distributed and whether wealth will be spent on food reserves to help bridge dips in agricultural output – resulting in his famous claims that democracies do not have famines and where famines occur they are class-based (i.e., subordinated groups starve while dominant groups remain with a surplus of resources) (Sen 1981). We eat and drink by virtue of where we stand in a social hierarchy and what claims we are able to make on resources. How dangerous physical harm is can also depend on what resources are available to help the body’s natural resilience. Access to medical care or lack thereof can make the difference between an uncomfortable illness and a fatal one. But access to medical care, like food or safety, depends on who, in your corner of the world, gets trained as doctors and nurses, and for whom they work. All of this amounts to a significant social element in the way our physical vulnerabilities are arranged. A rebel officer can live in the midst of an extremely deadly war zone without much fear for her life, while a poor and marginalized person can starve to death in an affluent city. Psychological Vulnerability Peacekeepers should also not forget that people are psychologically vulnerable. People in conflict areas are subject to trauma, including pathological states like PTSD and depression. They are no doubt also subject to less spectacular psychological harms, like fear, anxiety, frustration, and bereavement. In some cases, such harms may be as inimical to other values as physical harm; someone who is depressed or severely traumatized may have as much trouble pursuing other goals as someone who has lost a limb or is subject to debilitating physical illness. In addition, psychological harm shares a social structure with physical harm. As I discuss in Chapter 6, war trauma “travels” via social ­connections – when people who you care about are killed, it affects you. Which relationships we have, and which communities we are a part of, are structured in part by our social context. On the other side, availability of social support networks can be as important to the mitigation

Protection and Vulnerability 227 of psychological harm as availability of medical professionals can be to the mitigation of physical harm. Moral and Social Vulnerability The point of the foregoing is to drive home the fact that vulnerability is a matter not only of inherent human frailty but also of social context, both in respect of who is exposed to threats and who has the power to avert them. In this sense, to say that the world of vulnerability is “socially constructed” is not to say anything mysterious – it is just to say that most of what we encounter in our lives is put there in part through human action. Guns are built and distributed, doctors are trained and deployed, kin groups weave biology with tradition, food is grown and eaten subject to the laws and norms of property, etc. Diseases, bullets, traumas, and the like obey the laws of biology, psychology, and physics – but they are also influenced by social laws. SYSTEMS OF PROTECTION

Vulnerability and Hierarchy The intersubjective concept of value (see Chapter 2) brings the social and moral aspects of vulnerability together. When we understand values as cooperative, intersubjective, and project-embedded, to have one’s projects treated as more valuable by others is to be granted more status, deference, and cooperation – status in a social hierarchy is the practical analogue of value-agreement.11 One side effect of this is that the extent to which we are exposed to risks is likely to reflect the value given to our projects in the social structure. This is not a simple one-to-one relationship of decreasing risk to increasing value – for instance, soldiers bear an unusual amount of physical risk, but their role is generally considered important.12 The amount of risk an individual faces will result from an interaction between the perceived social value of the role they play (hence, of their projects), their own choices about which risks are worthwhile, and sheer luck. This gives rise to three phenomena of hierarchy that are relevant to peacekeepers. The first is that social status allows one to shift risks that originate from outside the social system onto others. This is part

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of what is at work with soldiers. Soldiers may (or may not) share the values of their leaders that lead the community to engage in armed conflict – but a feature of the greater social status of political leaders is that they can place soldiers in harm’s way for those values while remaining relatively safe themselves. The second is that (para)military and non-military threats exist along a continuum. Peacekeepers should not see themselves as responsible for ending threats from military actors while non-military threats are not their concern, as this risks leaving the hierarchy that exposes people to risk in place while not fundamentally changing their exposure. Consider, for example, the case of SEA. Rape is, unfortunately, prevalent in many conflicts into which peacekeepers are deployed, and rape has become a common emblem of the savagery of “new wars.” But to treat rape (and other SEA) by combatants as if it is a particularly military problem that will be solved if militants are demobilized misses something: rape is prevalent in war in large part because rape is prevalent. When my colleague and I were conducting interviews in Liberia, we were surprised when one of our interview partners told us that most rapes, even during the war, were not by soldiers on the rampage, but by family members and others with a social connection to the victims.13 Surprising as the claim was, it was consistent with the story that another interview partner told us of her own sexual abuse, at the hands of a rebel fighter who was also a family friend.14 We were not sure what to make of such claims at the time of our research, but they now seem bolstered by data from the World Human Security Report project. On the one hand, drawing on Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) data, they argue that the data do not support the claim that rape as a weapon of war is on the rise, and it may (they emphasize the weakness of the support for their positive claim) be declining (Human Security Report Project 2012: 29, drawing on Nordås 2011). More importantly, they argue that – consistent with our interview partner’s claim – “the most frequent perpetrators [of sexual violence] are not combatants, but husbands, other partners, household members, and relatives” (Human Security Report Project 2012: 33).15 War may well exacerbate the dangers of SEA for women (and other targets of SEA), but it is not the primary factor that exposes them to risk – what shields domestic violence from the “mainstream narratives” is that it takes place within a private sphere of the family that is a general shield from interventions into invidious power relations

Protection and Vulnerability 229 and in particular is quietly hidden from peacekeepers’ eyes. But a focus on more exceptional and lurid public sexual violence tends to put a focus on protection activities that may “do little for the victims of domestic sexual violence” (Human Security Report Project 2012: 35). As MacKinnon bitterly argues, the refusal to recognize that “daily violence against women” is as much a threat as spectacular terroristic attacks (or, in this context, public sexual violence committed by armed factions), that “members of one half of society are dominating members of the other half in often violent ways all of the time, in a constant civil war within each civil society on a global scale,” prevents serious action on the more pervasive forms of violence against women (MacKinnon 2006: 266). MacKinnon’s focus is global, but many of her points apply to peacekeeping situations – peacekeepers should take their protection task to be facilitating the reformation of social hierarchies, or else they are likely to be preventing only the most public and obvious instances of abuse, which may not be touching the largest number of people.16 MacKinnon’s point that there is pervasive violence against women away from overt battlefields brings us to the third implication for peacekeepers, which starts to show where they may find leverage: social status, even when it has little to do with the military, is often secured and perpetuated through the use of violence and coercion. The most obvious way is through the use of tools of direct coercion: threats of physical violence, or control of the necessities of life. Less obviously, manipulating exposure to risk can be a form of coercion. This may sound odd in light of my claim that hierarchy reflects value-agreement. But “agreement” in this sense should be understood in the same practical sense that we may say a population “supports” an armed faction. Support just means material cooperation or ­acquiescence – people may do that while hating the faction and what it represents in their hearts, or simply not caring about its ideology. Similarly, on the practical/cooperative model of intersubjective value, what I think about those above or below me in the hierarchy does not matter so long as I act to preserve it, and make some projects easier and less risky to pursue than others. If these broader social hierarchies are not addressed, they may not only expose people to risk during the conflict, but extend well beyond it. One of our interview partners complained that, even nearly a decade after Liberia’s wars ended, supporters of Charles Taylor still maintained

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power networks inside the country that they used to enrich themselves and to intimidate others.17 Precarity Vulnerability, in and of itself, is neither evil nor bad. Failing to protect someone who is vulnerable to you is immoral (and vulnerability entails ability to stop or mitigate the threat) – and so in a world where everyone did as they ought, vulnerability would never even give rise to evils and all bads would be mitigated as far as they could be. We do not live in such a world. An individual’s chances of being harmed by a threat tend to go hand in hand with how asymmetrical her vulnerability is to others in respect of that threat. The reason is straightforward: if we are symmetrically vulnerable, you know that if you fail to protect me from injury (keeping in mind that, in this sense, injuring you directly is a special case of “failing to protect”) I can fail to protect you in turn. So we both have reason to protect the other’s interests. When people are subject to asymmetric, hierarchical relationships, their lives become characterized by what Butler calls precarity, “that politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death” (Butler 2010: 25). Take, for instance, the rebel leader in the middle of a war zone. She is vulnerable to her soldiers, many of whom could, if they chose, simply raise a weapon and shoot her. But they do not, because they are also vulnerable to her; her social power means that, for instance, anyone who raised a gun to shoot her would be killed. And on a more subtle level, if they are loyal to her, their self-conception is tied up with being a soldier who follows this leader in such a way that they would perceive it as bad, for themselves, if they tried to kill her. So she walks safely among them. On the other hand, a civilian facing the same armed rebels is in a very different position. In most cases, the rebels have some vulnerability to her, or they would not bother with her. Perhaps she has food that they would like to take – she can withhold that food. But if they feel no loyalty to her, if they have tools of physical violence in hand and she does not, if no other armed actor who could retaliate on her behalf feels an obligation to her, and if they can obtain the food they desire in some other way than by her giving it to them (from another civilian, or

Protection and Vulnerability 231 by killing her and taking it), she is in a very dangerous position. They ought not do her violence, or take the food, of course. But there is little besides whatever moral scruples they may have stopping them from doing so. And even these scruples are socially embedded – to the extent that everyone here does not regard the other as a partner in a valuable social project (in which case, a harm to one would be a harm to the other, in the non-mysterious way that if I shoot a co-author, the book I care about is not going to get written), there will not be a shared value about which we might scruple. Systems of Protection and Equitable Vulnerability When we recognize that exposure to threats is shaped by social systems that (in large part) determine our vulnerabilities, it helps us see the problem in a new light. It is a problem of addressing and neutralizing threats to civilians more broadly, and that is largely a matter of shifting social relationships. What PoC needs to achieve is a system of protection: a social system that defuses and deflects potential threats, intercedes against threats in motion, and mitigates the harm done to people where protection fails. Before we can work out properly what this should look like, we should also note one thing about social systems of protection and vulnerability: everyone dies. This seems obvious, but it has fairly serious implications for how we should think about altering systems of protection and vulnerability. And it is not always recognized – one of our interview partners argued that physical safety must always come first, because no one can pursue their goals if they are dead.18 This is true, but at the same time leaves out the complexity of physical safety. As Butler points out, we “have to rethink the ‘right to life’ where there is no final protection against destruction” (Butler 2010: 21). The corollary of the fact that our exposure even to physical threats is socially mediated is that when we talk about protecting “life” we are not just talking about preserving biological processes, but about a socially and morally articulated existence. As a result, protecting life means not just refraining from killing, but making available the social and material resources necessary for life to be livable. In the jargon of Chapter 2, preserving life is in large part about preserving the person’s joint projects, and ability to participate in further projects. Generally speaking, of course, someone’s death or debilitating

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illness is a serious impediment to their projects. So this is not to say that peacekeepers should ignore the need to provide “mere” physical protection. But physical protection should be conceptually subordinated to the need for people to have livable lives, rather than elevated above it. If nothing else, peacekeepers need to take this perspective to be true to the orientation of many of the people they are trying to protect. While most of us do not seek death as part of our projects (would-be martyrs aside), we all willingly take on risks and vulnerabilities as part of pursuing them. People in conflict areas are no different – they do not hold their lives in abeyance while waiting for the war to end.19 Consider three stories from Liberian interview partners. One had been a member of the Taylor government in the interwar period.20 When the second war broke out she found herself cut off from her children, though they were less than a mile away, across Monrovia. Crossing the city to get to them was a personal risk, of course, but one she clearly thought was worth running. Later in the interview, asked about her priorities in situations when conflict broke out, she said (all in one breath), “[p]rotection first of all was life, making sure my family was safe.” A second told us about having been a “sex slave” during the (second) war, though she “did not see it that way at the time.”21 A member of the government militia, a family friend, had approached her and said that he had some food for her grandmother and that she should come with him. He took her to a secluded place and had sex with her, and continued to find her for sex (in exchange for food) throughout the war. Her relatives told her to “just accept it.” Earlier, she had told us that she lost her virginity at eight to a distant relative in exchange for food, and was sexually active by fourteen, with her mother’s approval – and her sister said that she must have “wanted it to happen.” So, until she became involved with the women’s movement after the war, she had accepted her relationship during the war as normal and acceptable. A third woman told me that, during the first war, as a young teenager, she had been forced to run to the bush without her parents by the fighting.22 There, she was found by a man affiliated with one of the armed factions (United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy – Johnson (ULIMO-J)). He accused her of being a thief and a rebel, and as she had tribal scarification that was similar to that used by Taylor’s rival forces, she was afraid that if she tried to run she would in fact be treated as a rebel and killed. The accusations were just a pretext to

Protection and Vulnerability 233 coerce her into a sexual relationship. After several months, she was finally able to escape to an ECOMOG-held area of the country. But, she told me, if it had been only the sex and not that the man was also (violently) physically abusive to her, she would have stayed with him. These stories illustrate two things. First, they drive home the point that physical safety is not a simple, overriding concern. The first woman risked her life to ensure her children’s safety, and directly included the safety of her family in her concept of what “keeping safe” meant. The second was willing to subordinate her own physical integrity to secure the means of life for her family members. And the third was willing to accept a coercive sexual relationship, but not domestic violence – to the point that she risked death in sneaking out of the rebel-held area in order to avoid continuing non-lethal violence. Physical safety, of course, loomed large for all three women. But simply saying that physical protection was their overriding need misses many of the nuances of the situation. For instance, were the first woman to have found herself personally safe in a refugee camp, she may have left that safety to ensure the safety of her family as well.23 The non-overriding nature of physical survival also illuminates the way social rituals of mourning, discussed in Chapter 6, interact with precarity. Treating life as mournable is a special case of treating the person and what she values as socially valued. One moral/social function of mourning is to bring a “proper” end to someone’s life; not just to recognize the tragedy of its end, especially a premature or needless end (by the lights of the shared values) but to engage in a sort of final act of reciprocity with the dead person’s projects and values. Hence, as Butler recognizes, conceiving of lives as mournable is an important part of conceiving them as to be protected – mass violence is most easily justifiable if we regard the other’s lives as not worthy of mourning because they are not lives to which we stand in relationships of moral reciprocity (Butler 2004: 33–8; Butler 2010: 38–43). Either we conceive of them as threatening lives, whose end should be celebrated rather than mourned, or we take ourselves to be in such an asymmetric relationship of vulnerability that we simply need not care about them, even as threats – they are regarded as inconvenient biomass or tools whose interests are a matter of indifference. Second, they show the way in which reactions to threats are morally and socially embedded. In the second case, the woman was exposed to the threat of sexual exploitation through two aspects of her social

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context. She was vulnerable to her abuser, as he possessed a weapon (possession being both a physical and social matter – he was holding the gun, but also no one took it as their right to relieve him of it). She was also vulnerable to her family, who could have taken action to spirit her away, or confronted the man, or otherwise protected her. And their actions, as well as her own, were explained in part by the moral framework they accepted and the values that shaped the “project” of family life. Intuitively, we can think of PoC not just as a matter of preserving life and preventing harm, but of preserving the conditions for meaningful life and preventing needless (risk of) harm. Of course, these are valueladen notions. Whether some risk is “needless” depends on the value of the thing for the sake of which the risk is being run. Had the woman who crossed Monrovia to get her children from their school been killed, most people would probably be inclined to call her death tragic but not “wasted.” We can understand the value in the risk she ran. Things are more ambivalent in the case of the second woman’s sexual exploitation. Most of us can see some value in her getting food for her family, even at the cost she had to bear. Most people would probably not be inclined to blame her for her actions. At the same time, her exploitation seems like a “waste” in a stronger sense – not just a reasonable harm borne, but a harm needlessly borne. Social systems distribute precarity in line with the intersubjective value that the community places on different individuals’ lives, where these “lives” are themselves embodied moral/social projects – neither brute unarticulated biological life nor abstract values disconnected from the vulnerabilities that come from being a body that can be exposed to bodily threats. In the terms of Chapter 2, this is almost a ­tautology – providing social space and access to the necessary resources for pursuing a life is how the respect others have for you, and their sharing of their values, is practically manifested. And how we judge the equity of that distribution of precarity depends on how we judge the values it instantiates. Asymmetric and abusable vulnerability threatens the core value of reciprocity, even if it is not actually abused. Reciprocity requires that we mutually adjust our projects. What makes a value recognizable as something shared and public, rather than a mere private preference, is that no one person has a final say over how it manifests in practical action. The more asymmetrical the relationships of vulnerability in a

Protection and Vulnerability 235 society are, the less meaningful it is to say that there are social values that shape its distribution of precarity. The individual and systemic perspectives on PoC interact. From an individual perspective, some action may look reasonable, honorable, and deserving of support. I was awed by the bravery of the woman who crossed through rebel lines to get to her children in Monrovia, and hoped that in her position I would have the courage to do the same for my own. From a systemic perspective, the same actions may look like ones we ought to prevent. Her life would have been better had the armed factions not been willing to lethally exploit civilian vulnerability, and it would be perverse for someone to wish a war upon themselves to prove their own bravery. Peacekeepers need to embrace this complexity in their thinking about PoC, rather than gloss over it. If peacekeepers focus solely on the protection of individuals from threats, they may miss the way in which taking on risks, or voluntarily becoming more vulnerable to abusive groups, is reasonable in the context of their lives. For instance, the US Mass Atrocity Response Operations (MARO) handbook rightly notes that creating “safe areas” to protect civilians may seem to legitimate ethnic cleansing efforts (Sewall, Raymond, and Chin 2010: 78). Even though this will not be the intent of a morally responsible PKO, the de facto effect may be ethnic cleansing and support for the value system promoting the cleansing. Individuals who care about ethnic integration in their community may reasonably see the peacekeepers as political and moral threats, despite the fact that in their own minds the ­peacekeepers are merely providing “protection.” Peacekeepers also need to recognize that, once they begin to engage in PoC, they are part of the social system that distributes precarity, not an external regulator on it. This brings us back to Goodin’s principle of group responsibility. For the individual peacekeeper, the question is not “how can I best protect civilians?” That question is too narrow, and will put the peacekeeper into a reactive mode. An equitable distribution of precarity will be one that gives expression to the shared values of the community – in a sense of “shared” that requires that relationships be reciprocal enough that all members have a hand in forming them. But peacekeepers should also not be asking the very broad question, “how should precarity be distributed in this society?” Tackling PoC from this perspective is both too high-level to be effectively operationalized and violates the spirit of collaboration

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and support that animated the discussion of consent and impartiality in earlier chapters. What distribution of precarity is “equitable” is a matter of what values are given practical expression in the society, and that is properly a matter for the larger system that includes the PKO, not for the PKO alone. Having a meaningful answer to “what does this community value?” requires the construction of institutions, relationships, and projects, in the same way that “does this community consent?” does, as I argued in Chapter 3. Peacekeepers cannot meaningfully say that they have helped to redistribute precarity more equitably unless they have helped create the conditions for a more inclusive and stable political community that distributes deliberation about these issues. Peacekeepers are one voice among many in this, and so should be asking themselves primarily how to make the social process better and more reciprocal, not what the outcome should be. CREATING SYSTEMS OF PROTECTION

Theory aside, how should peacekeepers approach the creation of systems of protection? In the abstract, there are three basic ways such a system could be arranged. Vulnerability is not bad in itself, but it gives rise to the possibility of abuse and protection-failures, especially if it is asymmetrical. Asymmetric vulnerability relations create precarity and expose people to threat and harm – they are the most fundamental threat. So, first, we might try to eliminate vulnerability. If there is no vulnerability, it cannot be asymmetrical. This is impossible and anyway undesirable. Second, we might try to give most of the power to actors we can assume are especially moral, and will not abuse the vulnerability of others – and hence can be trusted with it. If there is asymmetrical vulnerability, but we somehow can ensure that it will never be exploited, it ceases being a danger. In general, this amounts to some version of a state or quasi-state to whom everyone is vulnerable and which can use the threats in its control to ensure that no other actors fail in their duties to protect. This is deeply problematic, especially if we are imagining peacekeepers in the role. Realistically, however, something like this is likely to be part of the solution. Third, we might distribute vulnerability more symmetrically in

Protection and Vulnerability 237 society. This directly attacks the danger inherent in asymmetrical vulnerability, and tends toward a more equal distribution of precarity in the society. The Allure of Invulnerability One apparently attractive solution (perhaps more to political philosophers than to peacekeepers in the field) to the dangers of vulnerability would be to try to render individuals “invulnerable.” In the analysis I am borrowing from Goodin, this would mean making sure that no one can ever threaten another’s interests (through action or inaction) and hence no one would ever depend on anyone else for the protection of their interests. While vulnerability itself is not a moral evil, it is the basis of the evil of protection failure. You cannot fail to protect someone who is not vulnerable to you. This situation may sound attractive, but unfortunately it is impossible for anyone to achieve, and anyway undesirable. True invulnerability is impossible for anyone to achieve. As MacIntyre points out, thinking of human beings as free-standing, self-sufficient autonomous creatures who are vulnerable only when they choose to be ignores the fact that all of us are born radically dependent on the care of others as infants and children, many of us (if we are lucky) will be significantly dependent on others in our old age, and nearly everyone experiences periods of radical dependency owing to illness or other forms of debilitation (MacIntyre 1999: 1–6). This is true of everyone, but even more true of people who have significant disabilities, and who should not be treated as marginal to the political project. How much any one person is exposed to the ill effects of these vulnerabilities is a matter of the structure of societal systems of protection. But this highlights how the people least susceptible to such “natural” threats are in the fact the ones who benefit most from social systems of support. Since everyone is subject to natural threats like illness, reducing vulnerability with respect to them has a perverse effect – it does not make one immune to the threat, it just converts it from a vulnerability into an inevitable harm. A hermit is much more likely to succumb to an illness than someone who can rely on modern medical systems to prevent and mitigate the effects of disease. But he is not vulnerable to anyone, because no one is in a position to help, or fail to help, him. Better protection from such things generally actually comes with

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increased vulnerability. A wealthy and powerful individual will be quite vulnerable to her doctors and caretakers when she becomes ill. In particular, she is likely to be more vulnerable to them than someone who spent less time amassing social status and wealth and more time learning medical skills to attend to her own illnesses.24 Where the wealthy and powerful benefit is that the people to whom they are vulnerable are not likely to abuse that vulnerability. The wealthy person is vulnerable to her doctors, but not likely to be harmed by them – because the doctors’ interests are much more vulnerable to the wealthy people they rely on for the necessities of their own lives. She is protected not by invulnerability, but by symmetrical vulnerability, or being on the more secure side of a relationship of asymmetric vulnerability. In addition, reciprocity implies vulnerability, so it is an inescapable part of any Chapter 2-style joint project, and in a sense we could say that mutual vulnerability is what sharing a value consists in. By sharing a value, and the associated project, I give up on it being “mine” alone, and I come to rely on the other person to participate in the project. The benefit, of course, is that I have another person to participate in the project with me. And for many if not most projects, success is flatly impossible unless I allow such vulnerability. Some projects are just the sort of thing that requires coordinated action. Most are only intelligible against a social background where many people “participate” at least to the extent of supporting the institutions that make the project possible. You can only have the goal of being a good, professional soldier in a context where you rely on others to maintain the profession of soldiering. So eliminating vulnerability, even if we could do it, would be the death of nearly all the projects that give life meaning. This is not an acceptable cost. The Allure of Control An alternative strategy would be to ensure that there was some way to control the people to whom we are vulnerable from abusing that vulnerability. As Goodin points out, we are at risk of exploitation of our vulnerabilities only if there is someone who is in a unique position to protect our interests (otherwise, if they did not protect them, we could seek out someone else who would) and who is basically at liberty as to

Protection and Vulnerability 239 whether she will protect them or not. So, if we can remove that liberty, we remove the possibility of abuse (or reduce liberty/reduce abuse) (Goodin 1985: 195–6, 200–1). One seemingly obvious solution would be to ensure that people on whom we are uniquely dependent (or, at least, people our dependency on whom it would be difficult for us to replace) have little or no discretion in their dealings with us. For Goodin, this is the preferred solution to abuses of vulnerability, though he is light on the details of how such control will be accomplished (Goodin 1985: 202). In the peacekeeping context, the seemingly obvious solution would be to put the PKO itself in the place of the universal controller, looking forward to the time at which it could hand that duty over to a territorial state. Unfortunately, there are practical and moral problems with this solution. Practical Barriers to the PKO as Quasi-sovereign The first problem is simply practical. Even the most robust PKO is not capable of fully substituting for a government. In order to solve the problem of abuse, the controller must completely eliminate (or at least, perhaps, drastically reduce) the discretion of the powerful. If there is even uncertainty in civilians’ minds about the control imposed by peacekeepers, their vulnerability can still be used to coerce them. And unfortunately, the evidence is that civilians have a tremendous amount of uncertainty about the will and ability of peacekeepers to protect their interests and deliver promised benefits. In Pouligny’s research, for example, “‘incompetence’, ‘inexperience’, ‘lack of professionalism’, ‘lack of seriousness,’ and ‘superficiality,’ even ‘laziness’ among mission members are recurrent accusations made by local actors of all sorts, and are not denied by the members of the missions themselves” (Pouligny 2006: 122). Moral Barriers to the PKO as Quasi-sovereign The ability of a PKO to do its job as universal controller aside, there are moral concerns about trying to protect civilians by making the PKO into a sort of quasi-sovereign. All these moral concerns stem from one structural issue, which is that being the universal controller means having the coercive power to force other powerful actors to respect the needs of those who are vulnerable to them. But this is quite a lot of power. And the result is that

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it risks creating a problematic asymmetry in vulnerability between the PKO itself and civilians. Let us be charitable and assume that peacekeepers are, for the most part, as moral as anyone else. But they are not saints, and military operations are inherently dangerous for people in their vicinity. Even fairly conservative attempts at counting deaths tend to find a significant and morally problematic bias in favor of civilians – remember that, by the straightforward framework implied in the jus in bello, if the danger were distributed equitably, civilian deaths would be drastically fewer than military deaths. For instance, Leitenberg’s compilation of post-World War II (until 2006) mortality finds approximately 41 million deaths in wars and conflicts, making a best attempt to include not only battlefield deaths but also deaths from the concomitants of war. He was not able to make a responsible estimate of civilian versus military deaths for all conflicts, but of the 24.5 million deaths for which a breakdown was made, just over 16 million, about 65.5 percent, were civilians.25 These numbers are borne out by analyses of individual conflicts. For example, the Iraq Body Count project is conservative in that it bases its count of civilian deaths only on documented incidents, therefore erring on the side of verifiability and not counting (or generally estimating) deaths that are not reported in the media or to morgues (Iraq Body Count n.d.). Even so, combining their civilian deaths data with official data on combatants leads them to estimate that between 2003 and 2011, 79 percent of the violent deaths in Iraq were civilians (Iraq Body Count 2012). Leitenberg’s analysis highlights the other ways in which individuals can be subject to precarity. Leitenberg includes deaths from noncombat causes in his calculations precisely because, in many cases, there is evidence that deaths from disease and starvation are not simply unfortunate side effects of war, or even the result of callous indifference, but intentionally induced as part of a strategy of attacking an enemy’s civilian base (Leitenberg 2012: 5). Leitenberg estimates that 89 million people died “by human decision,” over the course of the twentieth century, a category that includes politically induced deaths from causes other than war and war’s immediate side effects: such as the Armenian genocide, the Soviet gulags, forcible enslavement in the Congo Free State under Belgian rule, and Chinese “rectification campaigns” (ibid.: 9–14).26 Difficult-to-estimate-exactly millions more probably die from

Protection and Vulnerability 241 “structural violence” each year, victims of corruption, invidious government policies on HIV/AIDS, massive economic inequity, and the like – essentially making the same point as my theoretical one that exposure to various natural threats is a function of the social hierarchy (Leitenberg 2012: 14, 81–3). Deaths aside, the mere presence of large military forces has a problematic impact on the civilian population. Enloe, for example, has made a career of documenting the impact of militaries and militarism on women. Prostitution industries tend to grow up around military bases, for instance – not just as a spontaneous response to demand, but sometimes as a result of conscious, if unacknowledged, military policy (Enloe 2000, ch. 3). Whether one thinks of prostitution (or other sex work) as inherently harmful, the sort of thing that could not be morally acceptable under even ideal circumstances, in the actual non-ideal world (which, importantly, includes legal and social barriers to sex workers seeking protection from harms) prostitutes are disproportionately drawn from women whose lives are precarious, and who are exposed to asymmetric vulnerability through their participation in prostitution. Aside from Enloe’s general and historical discussion, the UN has unfortunately been at the center of several well-known SEA scandals. UN officers and military contractors not only turned a blind eye to but were involved in sex trafficking and forced prostitution (including sexual torture of the women involved to keep them compliant) in Bosnia (see e.g. Bolkovac and Lynn 2011). Though the Bosnia case was one of the most egregious, UN peacekeepers have been credibly accused of engaging in prostitution, including child prostitution, and other forms of SEA in many missions, notably in the DRC (see e.g. Jordan 2004; MONUC 2006). The UN has taken significant steps to reduce SEA by its personnel. In a 2008 report, Save the Children noted that the disproportionate number of complaints against peacekeepers probably represented the institution of better reporting and investigation mechanisms in the DPKO (Csáky 2008: 8). Nonetheless, in my interviews, DPKO personnel confirmed that, while they thought they had made progress, SEA was still a serious concern.27 This is borne out by the fact that the Office of Internal Oversight Services’ (OIOS) most recent full yearly report (as with many UN bodies, the OIOS year runs from July to June) lists thirty-one investigations of SEA (ranging from harassment to rape, including of minors) and fourteen more in the year to date (as of this writing) (OIOS 2012a,b). These numbers come

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with important caveats. First, OIOS reports are generally not made publicly available, so it is difficult to learn the details of these cases and assess their severity and credibility. Second, as a corollary, of course the mere fact that an investigation took place is not evidence that an abuse occurred – my point is just that SEA clearly remains an area of active concern for the UN. And third, not all of these cases were against military members of the missions, but most of them seem to have been. Nor is SEA a problem only for UN peacekeepers, of course. For instance, in 2006, the AU convened a probe to investigate allegations of SEA against its peacekeepers in Darfur (Fisher 2006). It would be a moral mistake to see SEA (and other harms that tend to follow military presences, such as distortion to local markets, drug markets, and the like) as merely a “natural” result of either the military or the nature of the (predominantly) men who serve in militaries. As Enloe argues, such a perspective is counterproductive since it tends to paralyze policy and dismiss moral assessment. Enloe sees the tolerance and promotion of prostitution around military bases as part of a larger story of the way militaries tend to be part of hierarchical – patriarchal – institutions. In addition: Militarization and the privileging of masculinity are both products not only of amorphous cultural beliefs but also of deliberate ­decisions . . . Many more decisions are made in any country’s political system than most of us realize. Conventional wisdom under counts the decisions that are necessary to keep patriarchy alive and to sustain a society’s militarization. The common conception is that decisions are driven by tradition or culture rather than by deliberate, conscious thought. Commentators on both domestic and international politics have spent many years not investigating how militarization occurs and how its progress relies on particular constructions of femininity and masculinity because many of these observers have lazily assumed that either tradition or culture was at work – and that neither tradition nor culture required explicit decisions for their maintenance. (Enloe 2000: 33–4, all emphases in original) At the same time, it would be a moral mistake to see the problems that tend to come with military presences in general and peacekeepers in particular as only the result of individual decisions by peacekeepers

Protection and Vulnerability 243 in the field, as if they could easily be eliminated by ferreting out “bad apples” and enforcing codes of conduct. The problems are more structural than that. “[Peacekeepers] are armed and provide much-needed physical security within contexts of extreme fragility. Furthermore, peacekeeping forces contain a significant number of military personnel with discriminatory attitudes to women” (Csáky 2008: 8). The dangers of SEA are just one well-documented and much talkedabout aspect of the dangers that PKOs themselves bring to their area of operations. They tend to stand out because they involve peacekeepers behaving badly. And of course it is bad behavior, but were it just a matter of the occasional member of a mission tempted to do wrong it would be morally uncontroversial and philosophically uninteresting.28 Even aside from the side effects of a PKO’s mere presence, as discussed in Chapter 4, even when a PKO is being utterly sincere in its interpretation of the situation, it may enforce rules in a way that is inappropriate, or seems so to locals. This can be a special danger if the PKO ignores the impact of precarity beyond situations of immediate violence. For instance, one Liberian interview partner told us that ECOMOG used harsh tactics against individuals caught stealing from the docks: in the struggle to find food for survival during the war, people were looting and vandalizing places. And when ECOMOG came in, they did not look at it that way. They began, especially, at the Freeport where most of the goods come through. People used to go in for kicks, or just do anything to survive, bust into warehouses and sell. When ECOMOG came, in order to secure the port, they had to do a lot of beating and killing in order to have that.29 Had ECOMOG understood at least some of the vandalization at the port in terms of the way people were reacting to being subject to inequitable precarity in other areas of their lives, it might have taken a different approach. Consider, on a similar note, a story from MONUC. One officer told us that, when his battalion first arrived, youths threw stones at the soldiers as they entered Goma (the center of UN operations in the eastern DRC). His men caught one of the youths later, and brought him to the battalion headquarters to speak with a soldier and driver who had been hurt by the stones, and then broadcast his apology over the radio.30 His

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interpretation was that the youth was genuinely sorry, and had been mostly caught up in the moment when he threw the stones – the youth saying that he “didn’t know why” he threw the stone could represent him regretting his prior impulsive action, but it should also be familiar to parents and teachers as the response of someone who may not be regretful but is cowed by the anger of a more powerful individual. Peacekeepers are armed, and so should always ask whether they are getting an accurate picture of the population’s needs, or simply hearing what people think they want to hear, and then imposing their will, however sincerely meant. Goodin notes that moral concerns about abuse of vulnerability only arise in our morally imperfect world – in a perfect world, no vulnerabilities, even very asymmetric ones, would be cause for concern since everyone would be perfectly restrained from abuse by the norm of protection (Goodin 1985: 203). But in our imperfect world, we need to worry about the very human fact that being on the powerful side of an asymmetric vulnerability invites abuse. To the extent that a PKO is powerful enough to even attempt something like broad (let alone universal) restraint of other actors, it will be powerful enough to be a serious danger itself. Also, the abusable asymmetric vulnerability that peacekeepers enjoy is reinforced not only by their military power but by their legal status in areas of deployment. UN military in the field are protected from prosecution by the SOFA that the UN signs with the host state. This immunizes them from prosecution by the host state’s institutions, leaving them subject to prosecution only by the contributing state (Durch, Andrews, et al. 2009: 36). Note that non-military personnel are covered by other agreements that generally grant more limited “functional immunity” that protects them only while they are engaged in their work (though the limits of this immunity have been drawn inconsistently) and has occasionally been waived to allow local prosecution. In principle, the UN itself may be able to prosecute. Its status as a nonstate entity makes this complicated, but it has asserted the power to prosecute and punish in earlier missions with transitional administration mandates, such as UNMIK – but this is an approach that the UN has not yet taken with respect to PKO personnel. The UN does sign MOUs with TCCs, that include codes of conduct and the expectation that the contributing state will prosecute violations. In practice, however, states are often reluctant to prosecute their

Protection and Vulnerability 245 nationals for abuses committed while they are deployed in a PKO. This can be either a matter of placing a priority on avoiding punishment for their nationals and embarrassment for the nation, or of national legal barriers – for example, not all states assert extraterritorial jurisdiction over their nationals (Durch, Andrews et al. 2009: 28). The result, unfortunately, has been exactly what we might expect from morally imperfect human beings put into the superior position in a system of asymmetric vulnerability – most peacekeepers have acquitted themselves honorably, but a steady stream of abuses have accompanied PKOs. (For a brief and depressing summary of some of the scandals, see e.g. ibid., 2–5. The UN is not, of course, the only peacekeeping organization that has suffered from abuses by its personnel. For example, the joke in Liberia during the 1990–7 ECOMOG deployment was apparently that the acronym stood for “Every Car Or Movable Object Gone.”) In many cases, there are legitimate concerns about the capacity of local justice systems, including their ability to provide trials that live up to international human rights standards, that have blocked the adoption of recommendations that the UN be more willing to waive immunity for members of its PKOs (ibid.: 18–20). Suggestions such as the creation of hybrid tribunals for prosecution of peacekeepers have remained theoretical, and Durch, Andrews et al.’s suggestion that, if the standards of the local justice system are problematic, justice support be prioritized is wise, but a severely damaged system is unlikely to be reformed completely during the time that military peacekeepers are needed as a major presence.31 Waving away these concerns would not help with the problem of vulnerability to the PKO. To the extent that a justice system is corrupt or otherwise in a shambles, prosecution within it does not represent accountability/mutual vulnerability to the people in the area of operations (it suffers from the problems of securing “consent” from dysfunctional institutions outlined in Chapter 3). At best (worst?) it would represent making peacekeepers more vulnerable to whatever sectarian interest controlled the courts in the area of ­operations – not an improvement. While MOUs and codes of conduct are valuable for other reasons, they very imperfectly substitute for something like local prosecution in terms of creation of mutual vulnerability. As was discussed in Chapter 4, who interprets standards is crucial. Even if we were to assume that all peacekeepers sincerely and religiously adhered to the standards laid out in their MOUs, being accountable to standards is not the same

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as being accountable to the local population. Of course, if we assume not only that peacekeepers are sincere and scrupulous, but that they always interpret the standards in the morally ideal way, peacekeepers would never act in such a way that they could be reasonably criticized by locals. But this is a standard of moral sainthood that we cannot reasonably expect of peacekeepers. Realistically good standards and MOUs will still be subject to serious temptations to abuse – our human tendency to break rules when there is no effective consequence and the tendency to interpret rules for our own benefit when there is any room for uncertainty. After all, it takes only a small number of peacekeepers engaging in abuse to make a scandal that can damage the overall relationship between the mission and locals and create a reasonable fear of ­exploitation by others. The UN, at least, is aware of the need for accountability to local concerns and standards. The UNIBAM contains a short section on “promotion of national and local ownership” (UN DPKO/DFS 2012a, §2.5.7). It rightly encourages the PKO to “foster trust and cooperation between local actors” and give “due regard to impartiality, wide ­representation, inclusiveness, and gender considerations.” It is not as if members of PKOs ignore these concerns in practice, either. Many are in fact quite dedicated to engaging with local values and concepts of human rights, even when they are at variance with UN standards, such as on gender. For instance, one interview partner, who had served as a police officer with AMIS, told me of her efforts in an IDP camp in Darfur to set up a women’s group.32 One of the issues that she and her comrades realized was facing the local women was unsustainable family size. Over the course of the deployment, the female AU police were able to make progress with the Darfuri women by engaging them in conversation about their values. My interview partner was able to rely on the respect that she received for being a fellow Muslim (and especially for having made the hajj). They also came to understand the ways in which the local women felt that they needed to have large families to respect God’s gift of life, and change views by focusing on other shared values, such as the need to ensure that children were well cared-for. In the end, unfortunately, their efforts to change views and norms were cut short by the end of their deployment, and they were never able to complete outreach to men – many of the local women said that they were coming to change their minds, but could not convince their husbands. But it is hard to imagine that a program

Protection and Vulnerability 247 that, for example, simply handed out contraception would have worked more effectively, even though such a thing would very plausibly be an element of reducing women’s and children’s precarity. Engagement with and willingness to reciprocate with local conceptions of value is an important part of making a protection approach genuinely protective. My suggestions in Chapters 3 and 4 can and should be seen as attempts to mitigate this problem of political accountability by continuing the conversation about “local ownership.” If the PKO makes efforts to support political structures that can genuinely count as something like “the people” giving their consent and establishes standing arrangements for interpreting the standards to which the PKO is beholden, the accountability and dialogue this creates will provide some of the channels of political accountability lacking in existing PKOs. But they operate much less through making the PKO a universal restrainer, and much more through embedding the PKO itself in more equitable systems of consultation, reciprocity – and, hence, vulnerability. The Promise of Mutual Vulnerability Goodin briefly suggests and quickly dismisses an alternative to a universal restrainer: mutual vulnerability (Goodin 1985: 202). Were all vulnerability completely symmetrical (and were all of us completely rational, and knew about our symmetrical vulnerability), the effect would be the same as if there were a perfect universal restrainer or complete invulnerability. In a nutshell, if I knew that, if I failed to protect you, you could retaliate by failing to protect me (and that the harm I would suffer would be as great as the harm you would suffer, even if different in nature), you would protect me. Even roughly comparable (but not perfectly symmetric) vulnerability will significantly restrain abuse. To return to the example of the wealthy person and her doctors above, this ensures both that the wealthy person remains healthy and that her doctors get paid. She relies on her doctors to keep her in good health, and they rely on her to pay them well – if either were to exploit the vulnerability the other has, it would go well for neither. Goodin prefers the universal restrainer to mutual vulnerability because it is potentially less costly. If people are restrained from exploiting vulnerability, then the only “loss” is whatever benefit they forgo by hewing to their moral obligation to protect the vulnerable. If

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we are restrained by mutual vulnerability, the result will be the same only if all threats are entirely credible, and everyone has perfect knowledge of the détente and is perfectly rational. In real situations of mutual vulnerability, at least sometimes people will test the existence and credibility of their counter-vulnerability. In addition, no real system will be perfectly mutual, which will lead some people either to misjudge the costs of exploiting a vulnerability (possibly engaging in exploitation if they underestimate their own vulnerability to retaliation) or to correctly judge that the cost of retaliation is less than what they have to gain through exploitation.33 In any of these cases, those with the power to exploit will occasionally use it, leading to retaliation, and a larger number of failures of protection before the situation is resolved. But at least in the PKO case, we should revisit the idea. It is not really possible to get away from some role for mutual vulnerability in a system of restraint. If we think seriously about the universal restrainer, we have just displaced vulnerability to many other people onto vulnerability to the (quasi-)sovereign. Some of the pitfalls of mutual vulnerability will not apply – an individual is much less likely to rationally misjudge her ability to challenge the sovereign than some other individual. Some new pitfalls will be introduced – a more powerful restrainer will be more subject to corruption, because less capable of being itself restrained. If we do not “asymmetrically idealize” the universal restrainer (while worrying about worst-case failures of mutual vulnerability), it is not clear that replacing distributed mutual vulnerability with a one–many relationship to the universal restrainer is an improvement.34 This is especially the case with an imperfect universal restrainer like a PKO – not powerful enough to cow all challengers, but powerful enough for it to be hard to restrain its abuses. In addition, mutual vulnerability may not always be as mutually destructive as Goodin seems to think. If we think of mutual vulnerability as always a matter of you being able to put my interests in jeopardy and me yours, it looks like a costly avenue to mutual restraint. But not all mutual vulnerability need manifest through tit-for-tat retaliation. Consider again the analysis of shared, intersubjective values in Chapter  2 – thinking of vulnerability as only about mutual ability to harm is a mistake analogous to thinking of the act of holding ­responsible as c­ onsisting solely of punishment. Here is one way that two people can be mutually vulnerable. They are both inhabitants of a small village with a well that provides barely

Protection and Vulnerability 249 enough potable water for both to survive, but only enough for one to have a truly comfortable amount of water. Both have guns. If either tries to take more from the well than she needs, the other can attack. If either attacks, the other can retaliate. Ideally, this will lead to a stand-off in which neither takes more than they absolutely need, and both get what they need, but clearly they are in danger of mutual violence. Here is another way two people can be mutually vulnerable. They are both inhabitants of a small village with a well that provides barely enough potable water for both to survive. So the village decides to build a new well, a project that will require many hands. If any member of the village decides not to help out, the others can retaliate by refusing to help as well. There are free-rider problems, but everyone has a direct incentive to help. Here is a third way that two people can be mutually vulnerable. They are both inhabitants of a very similar small village. One is a parent and one is his child. If the parent takes more water than he needs, his child will go thirsty. The parent loves his child, and so takes himself to be harmed if this happens. These three kinds of mutual vulnerabilities have different characters. The first is the kind that Goodin focuses on. The second carries risks of mutual harm, but fewer, since the project is positive-sum. The third is even more different – the mutual vulnerability comes from the fact that the parent and child share a valued outcome. A harm to the child’s interests is a harm to the parent’s interests – they are mutually vulnerable not through reciprocal ability to harm individual interests but through a reciprocal relationship that supports joint interests. This kind of mutual vulnerability is clearly less subject to a mutually destructive breakdown, since “tit for tat” makes no sense. Mutual vulnerability in any real society will, of course, always be a mixture of these three types – zero-sum games where both sides have power, positive-sum games subject to free-riding, and shared interests where it does not make sense to separate out the interests of one from the interests of another in a way that lets us see the situation as a “game” of any sum. But to the extent that the networks of mutual vulnerability in a society can be made to lean toward the third type, vulnerability will be well-protected and the danger of mutual ­destruction will be relatively low. Nor are mutual vulnerabilities of the third type rare or utopian.

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Societies are made up of friendships, families, loves, shared ideologies, and the like as much as they are filled with rivalries and rational actors. The three types of vulnerability are also not mutually independent in practice. Voluntarily exposing oneself to a more direct kind of vulnerability to another, or sharing in the vulnerability to a third party, can be a powerful gesture that can ground the creation of intersubjective values. For instance, Lederach tells the story of a colleague of his who was working to bring a Tajik militant out of his redoubt and to the table for negotiations with the government (Lederach 2005: 16–19). What finally worked was when the negotiator agreed to go with the commander to meet the government, physically exposing himself to any risk of ­violence to which the commander might be exposed. All of this returns us to the ways in which invulnerability is undesirable and mutual vulnerability desirable. Mutual vulnerability is desirable because it is the ground of shared projects, and when we have shared projects their very intersubjectivity helps ensure that they will be protected. It also reinforces the analysis in terms of “needful” deaths and risks. When the threats to which individuals are exposed reflect exposure that is necessary in terms of the values they themselves share, precarity looks to be equitably distributed. If I am killed pursuing a project that I believe to be worthwhile, and that members of my community endorse, I may not welcome my death, but I will not see it as a waste, and it will be mournable. For peacekeepers, the upshot is this. In the long run, the goal is a reasonably well-functioning state that can play the role of the (reasonably close to) ideal republic. And the PKO should support any fragmentary institutions that play that role (subject to the caveats about consent and legitimacy discussed in Chapter 3). But the more immediate way in which the PKO, as an organization responding to systemic problems of vulnerability, is likely to be able to have an effect is to work to create shared values and mutual vulnerability – in line with the Chapter 2 framework. PROTECTION-WITH

We can now return to meaningfully focusing the military task of PoC.

Protection and Vulnerability 251 I have argued above that asymmetries of vulnerability – social hierarchies that do not reflect reciprocity in the creation of intersubjective values – are the underpinning of other vulnerabilities. Reciprocal social hierarchies are maintained, after all, by reciprocity. The ones PKOs should worry about are maintained by various forms of coercion. In conflict areas, this is often violent coercion. Military peacekeepers are particularly well-suited to interfere with violent coercion, because they have the means to meet it on its own terms. There are many ways to address violent coercion, but it would be naïve to deny that being able to at least partly neutralize the power of violence with respect to yourself is a major asset. For themselves, as I argued in Chapter 5, one of the main assets that peacekeepers bring is not so much their ability to inflict violence on others, but their ability to operate relatively safely in a violent environment. So the first way in which they can affect a conflict area, where systems of precarity have become very inequitable, is for them to operate as agents who are less vulnerable to armed actors than civilians are. In addition, because they do have the means of violence, the asymmetry of vulnerability between them and the armed actors is ­significantly reduced (or even tipped in favor of the peacekeepers). This is not the whole story, though. In the first place, the kind of mutual vulnerability that peacekeepers and armed actors share is the first, most dangerous kind. And should it break down, it can break down with spectacularly bad effects for civilians precisely because peacekeepers and other armed elements are better able to protect themselves. A few armed groups are basically genocidal, interested in killing civilians for the sake of destroying the group. But many more use attacks on civilians tactically and strategically, and if peacekeepers are too strong to be confronted directly, they may attack civilians as a way of attacking the “political will” of the peacekeepers’ home nations – making the mission look hopeless, etc. If the perceived lesson of Somalia was that even a few casualties inflicted on foreign forces can send them home, the perceived lesson of Rwanda may well have been that mass civilian casualties can make a conflict look like a quagmire into which foreign nations are reluctant to be drawn. In the second place, the key question is what peacekeepers should do with their military assets to protect civilians – how they can become

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parts of a system that better distributes precarity among people in their area of operations. Peacekeepers’ own might only directly protects themselves. The discussion of the use of force and violence in Chapters 5 and 6 was intended to problematize the notion that attacking spoiler groups is the only, or even often the best, use of peacekeepers’ military capacity. Thinking of protection in terms of systems of protection and vulnerability drives home this point – if peacekeepers attack a spoiler group here, but their actions induce violence against civilians elsewhere, they undermine their goals. And if they are able to protect civilians in their immediate area, but do not alter the systems of precarity that prevail, they accomplish less than they might. Peacekeepers can well use their power to interrupt not just individual acts of violence, but coercive relationships. Sometimes this may involve violently repelling violent groups; often it will involve forceful but nonviolent tactics like CASOs. One important aspect of this way of thinking about protection is that peacekeepers should, where possible, try to provide not just protection from violent groups but “protection-with” them. As a Ghanaian officer put it: You are not there to determine the outcome of the fighting, of the operation. The outcome of the operation will be determined by parties in conflict, by them. And all that you are required to do is to create the situation that will promote the possibility of peaceful settlement of the conflict by the people.35 If peacekeepers set up safe zones and separations between civilians and violent groups, this of course may protect them from physical ­violence – and that is not nothing. But they will risk leaving dysfunctional social relationships untouched, or even sever what few social ties there are. If peacekeepers can interrupt coercive social relationships, the best use of that ability may be to give room for social relationships built on other bases to develop. The goal of creating a system of equitable relationships of precarity is a comprehensive one, but once we see the peacekeepers’ role as a limited one of cutting certain harmful social ties rather than the comprehensive one of creating the new ones that are needed, it at least becomes manageable and realistic, if still ­unenviably difficult.

Protection and Vulnerability 253 It is difficult to conclusively demonstrate this working on a systematic scale, but there is anecdotal evidence that it can work. One of my interview partners told me about working to forestall an attack on ­civilians during his time with AMIS: the Arab chief would not talk to the Zarghawa [a major nonArab tribe in Darfur] chief. And there was an imminent attack on the village by the janjawid. And I was told about it. And it’s like everyone was warning me there was gonna be an attack. I couldn’t stop it. The force commander said, prepare to evacuate if possible, we can bring you helicopters. And I said, let me give it a go first. So what I did, I had a party – not a party, but I had a small, an invited thing, unknowingly to each of them, I invited them. They came to the party, sat as far apart as they could. We talked, we had fun, and afterwards, I had a word with them, and I addressed them. So I gave them impromptu, I said, come and talk. Come and say something. Then they spoke, and the other one spoke. The elderly guy was the Zarghawa chief. When he started speaking, I could see tears. And I told one of my guys, I think we are winning. He said how do you know these people? What you have done? I said don’t worry. After he finished, I brought the other guy. When I bring the guy close, he walked away. He stayed. So when he came, I said, can you shake each other? They did not shake, they embraced. And they were weeping, both of them. And I asked them what happened – why were they weeping? The Arab chief, who was the younger, was the direct nephew of the Zarghawa chief. That’s his sister’s son. But the sister had him with an Arab. And these were people who would not see eye to eye with each other, until we had that meeting.36 Without the ability of the AU peacekeepers to provide some sort of safety to the Arab and Zarghawa chiefs, the meeting would probably not have been possible. And it is hard to say if one embrace really changed deep social problems that led to civilians being targeted – certainly Darfur has continued to be a dangerous place for civilians. But an act of protection that allowed a connection to occur that would not have done had both sides not felt safe meeting seems to have prevented an armed assault on the area that AMIS might not have been able to deflect by force.

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In order to responsibly discharge their obligations as parts of a system of precarity that needs to be made more equitable, peacekeepers will need to make use of the key virtues identified in Chapter 2. Attentiveness is needed because it is not possible for peacekeepers to be part of a system of protection unless they are also part of a system that supports intersubjective values. It is not enough for there to be MOUs and codes of conduct with good principles at the level of the UN, since the problems peacekeepers pose themselves are structural – we can stipulate that the codes are excellent without removing the fact that an asymmetric vulnerability between the peacekeepers and the locals will tend to generate abuse. What is needed is a relationship that supports shared value, and that requires that peacekeepers be open to the perspectives of locals. In addition, PoC is not simply a matter of extending biological life. Vulnerability is socially articulated and so is a “life.” Peacekeepers need to be attentive to what locals think makes for a valuable life if they are to support it. Of course, attentiveness cannot be just a matter of uncritically doing what representatives of “the people” want. Considerations for engaging with local groups as part of PoC are the subject of Chapter 9. Restraint is needed because peacekeepers themselves pose a threat, both because they bring a threat of escalation and because they may end up protecting civilians in ways that attend to their raw physical vulnerability in the moment while damaging the social bases for protecting that vulnerability – especially if they do not recognize that vulnerability is social rather than “natural.” Chapter 8 will take a look at the case of MONUC support for government military activities in the DRC, a well-intentioned and morallybacked move that was ultimately quite dangerous for civilians. Finally, as with many other aspects of peacekeeping, creativity runs through the entire enterprise of PoC. It is easy to take social hierarchies, especially, as immutable or at least inherent in a culture, outside the influence of external actors. Creativity, Lederach’s “moral imagination,” is needed to find ways to change precarity-inducing hierarchies, and to rethink the relationship between peacekeepers and locals in a way that makes the latter more like partners in protection than enforcers of rules. And creativity is needed to find ways to move away from comprehensive restraint strategies, for which peacekeepers tend to

Protection and Vulnerability 255 be under-resourced, and toward subtler strategies of shifting social systems from the inside. Notes   1. Though there is not perfect consensus on usage, “protection of civilians” is the phrase generally used to refer specifically to military protection from violence, whereas other activities that help civilians remain safe and secure in conflict zones, notably humanitarian assistance, are often termed “civilian protection.”   2. The other major limitation has been the fact that missions’ resources are not always up to their mandates. Moral philosophy has little to say about how to (e.g.) get member states to contribute more helicopters to missions, however, so I will leave these issues aside.   3. Interview 7.   4. Interview 11.   5. Interview 18.   6. Interview 31.   7. Interviews 27, 30, 31. The police appealed to the principle of protecting life and property without my prompting. When I asked for clarification, they universally affirmed that they believed their oath was general, referring to anyone’s life and property, and not specifically to protecting these things in Ghana, or under Ghanaian law.   8. Interview 20.  9. This is Goodin’s “second principle of individual responsibility” (1985: 139). 10. If this sounds counterintuitive, keep in mind that you cannot be vulnerable to me if I have no power to avert a threat to you. 11. In this conception, an egalitarian society is one particular, “degenerate” (in the mathematical sense, not the normative one) case of hierarchy. 12. Though, even here, this probably represents placing a higher value on the national aspirations soldiers defend than on their own, personal, nonsoldierly projects – especially if soldiers are relegated to a lower status once they leave the military, as many are. 13. Interview 32. I specifically clarified with her that she was not referring only to rape after the end of the wars. 14. Interview 33. This story is discussed in some more detail below. 15. The Human Security Report data seems to count abuse, as reported by some of the Liberian women we spoke with, by combatants who are also husbands, etc. as conflict-related violence. If this is the case, the amount of SEA that is linked to power dynamics not specific to war would be even greater.

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16. MacKinnon’s focus is also on women, but it bears noting that one of the other lessons of the 2012 report is that children and men are subject to sexual violence in greater numbers than often appreciated. 17. Interview 29. 18. Interview 34. 19. See also Chapter 9. 20. Interview 35. 21. Interview 33. 22. Interview 36. 23. See Chapter 9 on “victimcy” as well. 24. If she has focused herself on becoming a wealthy and high-status doctor, of course, these might not be divergent paths. But then she is likely to be vulnerable in other areas she has neglected. The core point is that the polymath may be, on some measures, less vulnerable than a high-social-status specialist, but this does not necessarily make her life better. 25. The proportional calculations are mine, from Leitenberg’s (2012: 73–9) Table 2. Where Leitenberg provided a range estimate, I have used the midpoint. I have included in this calculation only conflicts for which Leitenberg provided a number for both civilian and military deaths; if you include lines for which one side is listed with a “. . .”, counting that lack of data as zero, things look even worse for civilians, at about 68.2 percent of approximately 27.1 million deaths. Counting “. . .” as zero is plausible in some cases; for example, no military number is given for the 1976–9 “disappearances” in Argentina, which were almost certainly overwhelmingly of civilians. But in others it is less plausible, such as on the Iraqi side of the 1980–8 Iran–Iraq war, where a figure of 800,000 is given for military casualties but no data for non-military casualties, even though a nonzero number of civilians is killed in almost any military conflict. The 65.5 percent figure is probably also conservative in other ways. For instance, no breakdown is given for the approximately 1 million people killed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and so it is not included in the calculation, though the overwhelming majority of people killed were almost surely civilians. And in some cases zero estimates are given where it is implausible that truly no one in some category was killed, such as on the Iranian side of the Iran-Iraq war. But Leitenberg’s numbers represent the best judgment that can be backed up by his evidence (rather than what seems plausible to a philosopher), so in the main text I use the most conservative interpretation – which is bad enough. 26. Even if one disputes Leitenberg’s precise numbers, the point stands that many civilians were killed in such circumstances – since they are non-war situations, none of the deaths would be of “combatants,” though one

Protection and Vulnerability 257 could argue that at least some (e.g. in Soviet prison camps) were criminals legitimately sentenced to death or precarity-inducing situations like hard labor – and that we miss this if we focus solely on war. 27. Interview 37. 28. While planning this book, I joked several times to my wife that I would see if I could get away with writing a chapter on SEA by peacekeepers, the entirety of which was, “Seriously, don’t do it, what is wrong with you?” 29. Interview 35. 30. Interview 18. 31. In addition, many states would probably be much more willing to allow their non-military personnel in PKOs to be subject to host state jurisdiction, even if the problem could be solved. The principle that members of the military are not to be subject to the laws of states where they are deployed seems deeply ingrained. 32. Interview 6. 33. In the ideal case of restraint, this issue of “rational exploitation” does not arise, since we are imagining that the source of restraint is basically all-powerful. 34. I am indebted to Justin Weinberg for the phrase “asymmetric idealization.” 35. Interview 3. 36. Interview 4.

Chapter 8 PROTECTION OF CIVILIANS FROM NON-ENEMIES: A CASE STUDY OF MONUC SUPPORT TO KIMIA II IN THE DRC

INTRODUCTION

MONUC’s support to the FARDC military operations against the FDLR throughout 2009 – operation “Kimia II” – is an interesting case for thinking about protection of civilians. On paper, Kimia II may have looked like a prime example of what advocates for more robust protection have called for. The FDLR were (and are) involved in serious human rights abuses in the DRC, and their core leadership is made up of former members of the Rwandan regime that perpetrated the 1994 genocide there – a very attractive target for aggressive peacekeeping operations. In addition, a partnership between the UN and local forces, with locals taking the lead while the UN provides logistical, intelligence, and planning support, looks like a plausible and legitimate model for “robust” peacekeeping, allowing a distinct niche for the UN when force is used to protect civilians. Nonetheless, MONUC’s involvement in Kimia II was severely criticized, and for good reason (Atama 2009; Congo Advocacy Coalition 2009; Mahtani et al. 2009a; Nienaber 2009; Olson and J. Smith 2009; Thomas-Jensen 2009; Sawyer and van Woudenberg 2009; ThomasJensen, Atama, and Caeymaex 2009; Vircoulon 2010). Critics argued that MONUC ought either to have used its leverage to force the FARDC to refrain from abusing civilians, or to have refused to support it, and that MONUC did not adequately defend civilians from predictable FDLR reprisals – while endorsing the goal of eliminating the FDLR. Was Kimia II a good idea poorly executed? Or do the problems the operation gave rise to indicate that the role of military operations in protecting civilians needs further revision? Though criticisms about execution are certainly valid, the level of 258

Protection of Civilians from Non-enemies: A Case Study 259 violence against civilians seen in Kimia II also represents a failure to take into account the ways in which military operations change the dynamics of violence against civilians, and the critics who endorsed the goal of eliminating the FDLR by force also seemed to dismiss that danger. We should not limit our concern just to the ways in which peacekeepers can intercede in abuses of civilians, but also their role in (albeit unintentionally) creating them. This requires a broader focus on the context of violence against civilians, rather than just regarding such violence as an “external shock” to which peacekeepers must respond. What is at stake is the proper way of accounting for the distribution of precarity in the area of operations, as discussed in Chapter 7. Part of what a proper conceptualization of protection requires is a shift away from seeing safety as the natural state of a society that peacekeepers use limited violence at the margins to protect, and toward a model that recognizes that peacekeepers are operating in an environment where precarity is inequitably distributed, and that their actions both create and eliminate exposures to risk. Levels of violence in Kimia II in part reflected two aspects of MONUC’s approach. First, military operations to eliminate the FDLR created incentives for increased abuse of civilians. This increased violence probably could have been better contained and mitigated, but not eliminated entirely, and the likelihood of such violence should be considered when any operations aimed at protecting civilians are undertaken. Second, the nature of MONUC’s mandate, and the particular way in which the FDLR’s role was moralized, seem to have played a role in limiting the options that MONUC (and outside analysts) were (and are) willing to contemplate for approaching the organization. By trying to take the moral high ground, MONUC may have actually cut off options with much to morally recommend them. CONTEXT OF THE KIMIA II OPERATION

The eastern DRC, particularly the Kivu provinces, has been the scene of bloody conflict between forces of the national government and several paramilitary groups. Two of the most powerful, most prominent, and best-organized groups in 2009 were the FDLR and the CNDP. Both have histories that tie them to the Rwandan genocide, though on different sides. The FDLR is a predominantly Hutu group and at least some of its leaders were members of the Hutu-dominated former

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genocidal regime, though very few of its rank-and-file have direct connections to the genocidaires (African Rights 2007; Stearns (2012b) claims that one of the few remaining FDLR leaders with clear ties to the genocide was assassinated in January 2012). The leader of the CNDP, Laurent Nkunda, portrayed himself as a defender of Congolese Tutsis against further ethnic violence, especially by the FDLR, and the group was widely believed to be supported by the Rwandan government (see e.g. BBC 2007; ICG 2007a: 7–8; McCrummen 2007; Kavanagh 2008; Stearns et al. 2008, §27, 29, 61–8). Until about the end of 2008, the CNDP seemed to present the largest threat to the DRC government, and the FARDC even occasionally allied itself with the FDLR against Nkunda’s group (ICG 2007b: 14; Stearns et al. 2008, §§102–13). But, in early 2009, following an apparent rapprochement between the governments of the DRC and Rwanda, Nkunda was deposed as head of the CNDP and arrested in Rwanda, and the CNDP was assimilated into the FARDC through an “accelerated” process (McCrummen 2009; Mahtani et al. 2009a, §§180–99; Mahtani et al. 2009b, §§20–4, 29–40). While the integration process was deeply imperfect, it cleared the way for ex-CNDP to fight alongside the FARDC to defeat the FDLR. The first outcome of this partnership was Umoja Wetu, a joint operation between the FARDC and the Rwandan military. After Umoja Wetu ended in late February 2009, the FARDC began Kimia II, with backing from MONUC. MONUC provided logistical, planning, and fire support to the FARDC, as well as rations (Ban Ki-Moon 2009b, §15; Sawyer and van Woudenberg 2009: 137). The aim of both operations was to drive FDLR cadres out of their zones of control, and disarm them (by force if necessary). The UN had been shut out of Umoja Wetu planning, and so its support to Kimia II also represented an opportunity to exert some more control over the course of antiFDLR military operations (Sawyer and Van Woudenberg 2009: 135–6). Kimia II ended in December 2009. Since Kimia II, unfortunately, the instability in the Kivus has not ended. After the end of Kimia II, MONUC supported a new FARDC push, Amani Leo, that ran from January 2010 through April 2012 (Ten Questions n.d.; Stearns 2010; on dates, see ICG 2012: 5, n. 46). In mid2010, after negotiations with the Congolese government, MONUC was downsized somewhat and rechristened MONUSCO. The FDLR has been weakened, severely according to at least some reports, though

Protection of Civilians from Non-enemies: A Case Study 261 conflict between it and both the FARDC and other militias continues to endanger civilians at the time of writing (see e.g. ICG 2012: 6; Radio Okapi 2012b; Stearns 2012c; UN News Service 2013). In early 2012, the March 23rd Movement (M23) was formed, which is at least in part a continuation of the CNDP, and has proven capable of serious military gains against the FARDC and MONUSCO peacekeepers (Stearns 2012a). In an ironic twist, both the FARDC and the M23 have accused the other of allying with the FDLR (Agence-France Presse 2012; Musoni 2013). THE DYNAMICS OF CIVILIAN ATTACKS – THEORY

Attacks on civilians escalated to distressing levels during Kimia II. (On absolute numbers, see Congo Advocacy Coalition 2009; on escalation, Sawyer and van Woudenberg 2009, for example, note that rates of sexual violence doubled in 2009, during the operations; on displacement from Kimia II, see e.g. Olson 2009.) It is important to note that, while the consensus seems to be that Kimia II was damaging to civilians, substantiating that with hard data is very difficult. Data collection on conflict deaths, especially in the DRC, is controversial. And the major conflict datasets require several years to be updated with even reasonably reliable data; as of the time of writing, they do not yet cover the period of Kimia II. For instance, the PRIO battle death dataset v.3.0 runs only through 2008, and the Human Security Report’s deaths from organized violence data only through 2007. Unfortunately, this effect on civilians was predictable. It is tempting to see violence against civilians as irrational savagery, especially in Africa where conflicts tend to be portrayed (inaccurately) as savage affairs anyway (see e.g. Gettleman 2010). But, as Sawyer and van Woudenberg (2009: 52) note, FDLR killings during Kimia II showed evidence of being systematic and ordered by the command structure, and there are many reasons why armed groups attack civilians – most of them rational if not moral. For example, they may: ●● ●●

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public opinion, either to draw attention to a conflict or convince international actors to back down violently reinforce social norms such as gender dominance or racial hierarchy use violence as a means of in-group bonding callously attack civilians that another party is using as “human shields” attack civilians ostensibly under an enemy’s protection to undermine civilian confidence in and loyalty to that enemy desire to ensure that civilians comply with the group’s demands (for food, portage, “wives,” etc.) and do not collaborate with enemies, and use violence as an incentive attack civilians without any grand plan, because the leadership cannot or will not constrain individual combatants who use violence against civilians to take what they want, pursue personal vendettas, etc.

Of course, groups may attack civilians for different reasons in different contexts (or even for multiple, overlapping or confused reasons at once). And groups may harm civilians without attacking them – the proverbial “collateral damage.” When insufficient care has been taken to protect civilians from the effects of military action, this unintentional harm to civilians may be just as immoral as a direct attack (see Rodin 2004). Different motivations for violence give rise to different characteristic patterns of violence. A group that abuses civilians to ensure compliance may be relatively benign so long as it does not face significant challenges to its control. By contrast, when a genocidal group gains stable control of a target population, it may seize the chance to begin killing in earnest. Protecting civilians from violence also requires taking these dynamics into account when deploying military force – an issue not entirely captured by a focus on doctrinal and tactical issues for defending civilians from ongoing or imminent attacks. This is just a restatement of the focus on precarity from chapter 7; how a military force acts may not only affect its success in stopping attacks, but may have a profound impact on when and whether those attacks occur at all. Kalyvas (2006) has analyzed the reasons why groups that aim to control civilian populations use violence against civilians. While direct

Protection of Civilians from Non-enemies: A Case Study 263 violence against civilians is “indiscriminate” in the sense that it violates the jus in bello discrimination principle, it is often not “indiscriminate” in the sense of being randomly targeted.2 Armed groups interested in population control have strong incentives to avoid indiscriminate violence (in the second sense). First, while violence, especially indiscriminate violence, may engender fear and submission, it also tends to create anger and hatred, and so gives civilians an incentive to find ways to work with the enemy, even if they were not previously aligned with them. Second, it may cow a population, but if compliance does not bring safety (because violence does not reliably target all and only non-compliant civilians), civilians will still have little incentive to cooperate, especially at personal cost. When indiscriminate violence is not an end in itself (as in genocide) it is likely to occur only when the side using it is confident that civilians will not be able to defect to the other side and so will cooperate in the interest of ending the fighting entirely; or, when a strategy of control is combined with a different strategy of harming civilians on the theory that the opponents’ concern for civilian well-being will cause them to hesitate (Kalyvas 2006, ch. 6, esp. pp. 160–71). As Kalyvas notes, it is easy to overstate the level of indiscriminate violence in a conflict. Discriminate violence can be widespread, and indiscriminate violence is not the same as badly targeted violence. An armed group may have incentives to target all and only civilians who are cooperating with the enemy, yet may find it very difficult to get accurate information about who those civilians are. If it errs on the side of attacking suspected collaborators, many civilians may be killed, including many who were not collaborators, without the violence being indiscriminate. Where armed groups have poor intelligence, they may use geography or ethnicity as crude proxies for collaboration with the enemy. In addition, groups may adhere to views on collective responsibility that cause them to attack many individuals not directly involved in whatever defection they are trying to punish. This may either be a way of punishing collaborators indirectly by targeting vulnerable people they care about, or an expression of a genuine belief in collective guilt. We should not confuse attacks on civilians that are immoral or wrong with attacks that are untargeted. There is a difference in the patterns of violence exhibited by a group that will, say, kill everyone in a village as “collaborators” on the basis of the fact that government forces are based nearby without resistance, and a group that will kill

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everyone in a village because their goal is to wipe out the ethnic group that lives there. DYNAMICS OF FDLR VIOLENCE DURING KIMIA II

Despite the fact that, as noted above, at least the original FDLR leadership were former genocidaires, they do not seem to have had genocidal aims toward the Congolese population under their control. The FDLR economically exploited civilians, but also served as a local authority in some areas, and intermarried with the local population (Life and Peace Institute 2007; Boshoff and Hoebeke 2008: 3; Sawyer and van Woudenberg 2009: 51). The FDLR, like most insurgent groups, are not merely predators. They require resources from the civilian population to survive and as a result have an interest in maintaining the compliance of that population through a mixture of threats, inducements, and social integration. During Kimia II, the stated reasons the FDLR gave for attacking civilians were consistent with the use of violence for control. The FDLR told victims before and/or during the attacks that they were being attacked for cooperating with the FARDC, and internal records and conversations within the FDLR indicated that attacks on civilians were intended as retaliation for perceived collaboration and reprisals for FARDC/MONUC/Rwandan attacks on the FDLR (Mahtani et al. 2009a, §§345–96; Sawyer and van Woudenberg 2009: 51–7). The fact that attacks tended to focus on civilians in areas “cleared” by the FARDC and civilians living near FARDC bases is evidence for the view that this public justification for the attacks was not just a smokescreen for, for example, genocide. Most of the FDLR violence during Kimia II, catalogued most precisely in the HRW report, seems to have been at least semi-selective. The FDLR punished entire villages for “collaboration” with the FARDC; collective punishment may deter active collaborators who care about their neighbors and family members, and village membership may be a crude proxy for collaboration. Both uses of violence against civilians are strategically coherent and an outgrowth not only of a cavalier attitude toward civilian life, but of the poor information contested control creates.3 According to Kalyvas’ analysis, would-be-selective violence against civilians is likely to increase in areas of transition. Where the FDLR was

Protection of Civilians from Non-enemies: A Case Study 265 firmly in control, it had little need for overt violence against civilians and good access to information about FARDC collaborators; its stable control both lets it get to know local civilians and provides benefits in return for information.4 Where the FARDC or another group was firmly in control, the FDLR could not effectively bring violence to bear. But where the FDLR was dominant but not completely in control, it had strong incentives to use violence against civilians, and civilians had more opportunity and incentive to collaborate with the FARDC, but the FDLR lost the stable connection to the population that would let it carefully target violence. This combination of strong incentives for civilian defection, urgent need to deter defection, and poor ability to distinguish between defectors and other civilians is a potent recipe for widespread violence against civilians (Kalyvas 2006, ch. 7). The structure of violence against civilians in control cases is ­symmetrical – not only insurgents use violence against civilians to ensure compliance and deter defection. Despite the 2006 elections, it would be naïve to think that Congolese were by default inclined to respect and cooperate with the government, especially in areas where the FDLR or other militia groups had provided some quasi-governmental services, and had demonstrated their willingness and ability to harm civilians who cooperated with the government, and where the government had not proven its will and ability to protect people from harm. So, the government forces had strong incentives to use violence against civilians to secure control as they moved in, balanced only by any personal commitments they may have had to protection of civilians (probably weak in the divided DRC) and the leverage of MONUC (which it could probably have made more of). Even highly disciplined militaries with a deeply ingrained culture of respect for civilians engage in unfortunate abuses of civilians when taking control of an area, and it is inexcusable but also unsurprising that the FARDC attacked civilians during Kimia II (often for the same stated reasons as the FDLR, including “­punishment” for collaboration). The ex-CNDP members of the FARDC may also have introduced an asymmetry not to civilians’ benefit. While the FDLR seems more interested in looting or dominating populations under its control than killing or driving them off, ex-CNDP elements of the FARDC have been accused of using military operations as cover to clear areas for settlement by Tutsi (either Rwandans or Congolese Tutsi who fled to Rwanda) (Stearns 2009). If these accusations are true, civilians in areas

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taken by ex-CNDP FARDC units from FDLR units would face a double threat: violence associated with an attempt to hold onto population control by retreating FDLR, followed by differently motivated violence aimed at driving them out once the ex-CNDP FARDC had control. TAKING SIDES

Even had MONUC done all that it could to protect civilians from attack, the strategy of Kimia II and the logic of control was highly likely to inspire greater violence against civilians. Anti-civilian violence by control-oriented groups will be highest in areas where one group is dominant but not in complete control; other things equal, therefore, creating more asymmetrically contested areas is likely to increase overall violence against civilians, at least in the short term. Both the FARDC and MONUC seem to have made FDLR “strongholds” a high priority. After the conclusion of Kimia II, one of the key boasts of the FARDC’s spokesman for the operation, Major Ekenge, was that “all the FDLR strongholds have been dismantled” (MONUC 2010[?]). Toward the end of the operation, I asked a member of the MONUC military leadership whether areas of relatively stable FDLR control were made a military priority, and was told that areas of strong and stable FDLR control were struck first where possible.5 Given the goal of forcibly disarming the FDLR, the strategy makes sense. Leaving the FDLR in a position of de facto governance was not an option, so eventually those strongholds needed to be attacked and control given to the DRC government. Critics generally accepted that the operation’s heart was in the right place. The Congo Advocacy Coalition (2009) maintained that “disarming the FDLR militia should remain a top priority for the Congolese government and UN peacekeepers,” and the Enough Project’s Colin Thomas-Jensen (2009) argued that “the motivation for the Congolese-UN offensive against [the FDLR] . . . is generally sound.” One of ICG’s (2009: ii) key recommendations was that MONUC, the DRC, and Rwanda “[s]uspend Operation Kimya II [sic] and plan new joint military operations against the FDLR . . .” (emphasis mine). MONUC’s own mandate reinforced a focus on eliminating the FDLR. While much is made of the fact that MONUC’s mandate at the time of Kimia II made the protection of civilians the absolute top priority, that

Protection of Civilians from Non-enemies: A Case Study 267 is only partially correct and may be misleading. MONUC’s mandate made the “protection of civilians . . . under imminent threat of violence” its top priority, listing it as (a) on the ordered list of mission tasks in paragraph 3, and re-emphasizing this priority in operative paragraph 6 (UNSC 2008). Interpretation of MONUC’s mandate, both within the mission and by outside analysts, is complicated. But taken literally, the language of imminent threat makes this a fairly limited priority. Broader operations to “prevent attacks on civilians and disrupt the military capability of illegal armed groups that continue to use violence” are relegated to priority (f), and mentioned after deterring threats to the Goma and Nairobi peace processes. MONUC might have been obliged to “drop everything” if any of its forces were confronted with civilians under direct attack, but does not seem to have been required to arrange its operations so that it was likely to be so confronted – in fact, were (e.g.) MONUC to react to the general threat posed to civilians by the FDLR by devoting resources to protecting outlying villages on the border of FDLR zones of control at the expense of the protection of UN facilities in more secure areas like Goma, it arguably would have been in violation of its mandate. Attempting to read MONUC’s mandate in light of the later definition of “imminence” in the UNIBAM as extending from the time the threat is identified until it no longer exists only raises additional questions. It is not clear what the PKO was expected to do that might have protected civilians under this broader definition of “imminence” beyond being prepared to defend civilians who came under immediate attack (the lay sense of “imminence”) without engaging in prevention or disruption activities explicitly relegated to priority (f) behind such things as force protection.6 MONUC’s mandate made protection of the Nairobi and Goma peace processes of equal priority with preventive action to protect civilians.7 While both processes were arguably dead by the time of Kimia II, their spirit seems to have shaped MONUC’s approach. What is not immediately obvious from reading MONUC’s mandate is that both agreements/peace processes exclude the FDLR and define it as a clear enemy. The Nairobi Communique (African Rights 2007: 84–8) was an agreement between the governments of the DRC and Rwanda to “address the threat posed . . . by the ex-FAR/Interahamwe.”8 The DRC undertook to “[l]aunch military operations . . . to dismantle the

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ex-Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR)/Interahamwe as a genocidal ­military o ­ rganization in the DRC.” The Goma peace negotiations issued an Acte d’Engagement in January 2008 signed by representatives of armed groups active in the eastern DRC (Acte d’Engagement 2008). The FDLR were not signatories to the Acte, and in fact were “foreign forces” explicitly excluded from the agreement it represented. The Technical Committee on Peace and Security established by the Acte was charged with “beginning the implementation of the plan issued in the Nairobi joint communiqué on the disarmament and repatriation of foreign armed groups.”9 This task was linked to the ceasefire and to the integration of rebel forces into the FARDC, the details of which were to be worked out “taking account of the presence of foreign armed groups referred to by the Nairobi joint communiqué.” While the FDLR were not parties to this agreement and so could not technically violate it, since the elimination of the FDLR was tied to the demobilization of other armed groups in the Acte (and, in fact, it is likely that the CNDP were only brought to the table by the prospect of eliminating the FDLR), any resistance to demobilization and repatriation would clearly “threaten” the Goma process in the meaning of MONUC’s mandate (on elimination of the FDLR as a condition of CNDP participation, see Boshoff and Hoebeke 2008). MONUC’s mandate clearly aligned it with the government of the DRC and against the FDLR. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is worth taking note of: first, because it represents an influential trend in peacekeeping and protection of civilian discussions; and second, because the perspective it embodies may be the best one in some circumstances, though it constrains policy options and comes with moral costs by violating the “no enemies” principle. Part of what makes Kimia II interesting is that, at first glance, it may seem like a perfect example of the new concept of impartiality as willingness to enforce human rights standards in an even-handed manner discussed (and critiqued) in Chapter 4. I suspect that this is why critics of Kimia II criticize its costs and missteps, but not its aims. On this sort of view, Kimia II may have been a poorly executed operation, but the basic problem from the perspective that the UN ought to take forceful stance against the worst human rights abusers is how to undertake future Kimia-II-like operations without the human costs of this one. Thomas-Jensen (2009) is particularly clear on this point – his hope

Protection of Civilians from Non-enemies: A Case Study 269 is that the UN will learn from counterinsurgency doctrine, especially the clear–hold–build approach that would help protect civilians from reprisals.10 While the focus of this form of impartiality is the acts of an armed group, following it in practice can make it difficult to focus only on acts, as the “no enemies” principle requires. The FDLR are defined as a threat to the peace by the mandate. Their abuses of civilians are taken as further reason to eliminate the group – integration or accommodation, on the model offered to other rebel groups in the eastern DRC, is not an option. The Nairobi/Goma agreements and MONUC strategy did not necessarily make enemies of individual FDLR members – the Nairobi agreement makes provisions for disarming and demobilizing them, and then resettling them in the DRC or repatriating them to Rwanda as appropriate. But the organization as a whole is to be eliminated, and its abuse of civilians makes the task more morally urgent. On the other hand, the mandate makes MONUC a partner of the DRC government and thus the FARDC. Abuses by the FARDC are condemned, but are not conceived of as a reason to eliminate those forces – they are reasons for reform. One might reasonably ask whether there is anything wrong with this approach. The FARDC are abusers, but are also the government. Taking a more “robust” stance toward the FARDC would have threatened the mandate, the consent of the government necessary to the mission, and the legitimacy of the 2006 elections. At least post-2006, there is no way the UN could have contemplated an operation to coercively disarm and demobilize the FARDC – or any armed group, such as the CNDP, that had integrated with it. Enforcing a separation between the FARDC and civilians would have been counterproductive, since the aim of the operation was not just to neutralize FDLR combatants, but to transfer areas to FARDC (and government) control. The FARDC took advantage of the close contact with and power over civilians required by this goal to abuse them, but unless MONUC were willing to deny the FARDC such control – which may have amounted to vetoing Kimia II by force – its ability to defend against abuses was similarly limited. It may have been possible to “embed” MONUC forces so deeply in the FARDC operation as to prevent abuses on an individualized basis – that is, to have MONUC personnel fighting alongside and entering villages alongside FARDC, and stepping in directly when an abuse of a civilian looked likely. I could imagine such an approach working, if the resources were

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available to integrate so thoroughly and the trust between the government of the DRC and MONUC were absolute. But even so, note how different this would be from any approach that looked reasonable for approaching the FDLR. The FDLR, on the other hand and so the argument goes, were not only abusers, but rejected the democratically elected government, and anyway were led by participants in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. REVISITING THE “NO ENEMIES” PRINCIPLE

Could the UN have taken the opposite even-handed approach – that is, tried to engage with and reform the FDLR, as it has done with the FARDC? Morally, this would be very consonant with the “no enemies” principle. Practically, it was maybe (and only maybe) possible, but the dominant moral perspective taken on the FDLR by both the UN and outside observers barred it. The FDLR seemed to many to fit the model of the “total spoiler” discussed in Chapter 2 –it was willing to use extreme violence and subscribed to a totalizing ideology that caused it to make demands that could not be accommodated, such as an “inter-Rwandan dialogue” between the formerly genocidal opposition and the Rwandan government (ICG 2005: 1). The FDLR has not officially made a return to power in Rwanda, let alone a resumption of the genocide against Tutsi and moderate Hutu, a demand; but, it seems clear that Rwandan resistance to any dialogue with the FDLR leadership or other opposition politicians in exile is based on the (surely in many cases reasonable) belief that at least some of the FDLR leadership harbored genocidal ambitions that they simply recognized could not be achieved given the current balance of power (but which they might take up again if the situation changed). Defining the FDLR in this absolute and moralized way fits the moralized understanding of impartiality. Recall that the moral and practical point of classifying some group as a “total spoiler” is to define it as a Schmittian enemy – worthy of destruction or marginalization and unworthy of being dealt with in any other way. The reasons for this “must” are supposed to be both practical (they won’t respond to incentives) and moral (the incentives they want are immoral to grant). But there are some reasons to doubt whether it made sense to treat the FDLR as an enemy (and hence make MONUC more like a peace

Protection of Civilians from Non-enemies: A Case Study 271 enforcement operation by supporting FARDC counterinsurgency, rather than taking the counterinsurgency as a conflict internal to the peace process that needed to be resolved), rather than hewing more closely to the “no enemies” standard of peacekeeping. The connection between the enmity/total spoiler picture and protection of civilians is the presumption that nothing is worse for civilians than the persistence of spoiler groups. This may seem self-evident, given the fact that spoilers (by definition) want to continue the war, but war is not an undifferentiated realm of slaughter. As long as the FDLR controlled significant terrain in the eastern DRC, it made sense to say that the war there was not over – but life was very different for a civilian living in an area that was under stable FDLR control from how it was for one living in a contested area with open fighting. This is not to paint a rosy picture – at best civilians were exposed to “taxation,” random criminal violence, poor infrastructure, and the like. But it is to make the point that civilians might reasonably prefer some versions of continued war to some attempts to make peace (and not just because they share a mad ideological vision with combatants). Conceiving of groups as irreconcilable is common despite the way in which those images are routinely overturned – for example, in the DRC, the FARDC collaborated with the FDLR when the CNDP was treated as the greatest threat (and a total spoiler, unwilling to compromise), and then the FARDC and the CNDP integrated (somewhat) to fight the FDLR. Preferences are rarely completely immutable. “Radical ideology” does not necessarily imply that a group cannot be compromised with, first, because radical ideology tends to be the province only of the group’s elites, not of its mass membership, and second, because even the elites often seem to act in ways that reveal more motivation than single-minded obsession. After all, some of the leaders of the FDLR may be genocidaires, but they have also been getting rich and making lives in the DRC and abroad. Even if they were given all they ask in terms of an “inter-Rwandan dialogue” and a return to some political power in Rwanda, they would be unlikely to be able to “finish the job” of the 1994 genocide – but it might be a very good way to ensure that they remain rich and powerful. Finally, “radical ideology” is an unhelpful analytic category – Western states contain many groups with what could be called “radical ideologies,” without breaking: the Amish, white supremacists, anarchists, fascists, the Westboro Baptist Church, Dominionists, etc. Some of these groups even have radical

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ideologies that espouse violence. But their violence is controlled by the state where appropriate, and they are either integrated or marginalized in ways that minimally threaten overall social structure and governance. The problem with spoilers with radical ideologies is that they are spoilers, not that they have radical ideologies. It is at least conceivable that one could change the former without changing the latter. Does this general reflection that “total” spoilers may not be so total entail that a reconciliation was possible or appropriate with the FDLR specifically? Of course not. It might have been, but making that decision would require a detailed analysis of the conflict beyond what I can give here. My concern is that the approach to the conflict, especially as reflected in MONUC’s 2008 mandate, ruled it out. The result was to force MONUC into a position where it was highly likely to be pushed to back military operations that were inevitably going to threaten civilians. Aside from any analysis of the FDLR as totally implacable (which, given their previous alliance with the FARDC and the inclusion of other groups with similar infamy in the Goma Acte, seems rather implausible), there seem to be two reasons why it might have seemed that eliminating the FDLR was the only option available. The first is ­dangerous, but perhaps realistic, and the second is wrong. The first is that the integration of the CNDP militia and DRCRwanda reconciliation may have been contingent on a hard line toward the FDLR. The war in the DRC has always been regionalized, and Rwanda has been a major player from the start. Reconciliation between the DRC and Rwanda is probably a prerequisite for ever ending the violence. I must admit that this may be a good reason for accepting the violence against civilians sure to accompany even the best-executed approach to coercively disarming the FDLR. We should, however, accept such a conclusion only with great regret – only the level of catastrophe that the violence in the DRC has been for civilians makes it plausible that accepting some additional violence in the name of ending it would be justified. And even then, before condoning it, we should be very, very certain that it will work. There is, unfortunately, reason to be skeptical that rapprochement between the leadership of the DRC and Rwanda based on the elimination of militant groups that Rwanda sees as a threat is sufficient to end violence in the eastern DRC, even if it may be necessary. While there is substantial evidence that Rwanda has backed militias like the CNDP, and now the M23, and strongly influences them, these groups are not

Protection of Civilians from Non-enemies: A Case Study 273 just extensions of Rwandan foreign policy. They are led by individuals with their own ambitions, and they are rooted in the concerns of Congolese Tutsi communities, and factions within the FARDC (see e.g. ICG 2010: 17–18; Stearns 2012a: 52–9). A final end to violence in the eastern DRC is likely to require more fundamental reforms and reconciliations, such as solutions to land tenure/use issues, the divide between groups that consider themselves “autochthones” and those that trace their lineage to Rwanda and Burundi, and the legitimacy of the central government in the eyes of historically marginalized groups (see e.g. Autesserre 2010, ch. 4; Autesserre 2012: 210–13; Verweijen 2012). The second reason, and the one that seems to dominate advocacy discussions in the US, is that the leadership of the FDLR are genocidaires and abusers and forcible disarmament is the only way they will be brought to justice. Any sort of compromise or accommodation with the group is likely to end with the leaders either retiring into comfortable exile or having positions of influence in the DRC or Rwanda. This seems odious, and it is. But we should ask ourselves if the massive civilian cost of operations against the FDLR would be justified by the goal of bringing the leaders to justice. Some strict moralists might say “yes,” but I think it is hard to maintain that judgment and take the situation seriously – it is a very harsh deontology that would say to one of hundreds of civilians raped or killed during Kimia II that this is obligatory to avenge past misdeeds. In fact, it verges on behavior that would make the FARDC and MONUC “spoilers” with a “radical ­ideology” – an ideology radically committed to justice, which may be noble, but radical nonetheless. If we put it starkly, and ask if we ought to be willing to countenance violence against hundreds if not thousands of civilians, so that leaders of the FDLR will get their just deserts, I think the moral logic of proportionality would say “no.” Proportionality sometimes does mean that one lets evil go unpunished because the costs of accountability are too great. This also brings us back to the discussion of accountability practices from Chapter 2. Regardless of how evil the FDLR may be, dismantling the organization is only one possible reaction. And it is not clear that the broader population of the DRC had meaningful input into what it would mean to hold them accountable for violations. But we cannot simply wish asymmetry away. Beyond Kimia II, an asymmetric approach to civilian abuses is likely to be a feature of any

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“robust” peacekeeping approach, especially as such models of peacekeeping approach the border with peace enforcement. Except in cases where the UN or another agency is willing and able to establish a transitional administration, a local state is going to be a necessary partner for any emergence from conflict.11 As the DPKO’s “concept note” on robust peacekeeping puts it, a “robust approach is more effective when in support of host state authorities” (UN DPKO/DFS 2010: 2). Once a peace process is in place, and especially if state-legitimating political processes like elections have taken place, intervening forces (including the UN) will need, to some extent, to choose a side. The moral ideals of treating all harms to civilians equally, being willing to respond to the most serious abuses with force (both for effect and a sense of justice), and extending the legitimate rule of a state are not likely to all point in the same direction. IMPLICATIONS FOR CIVILIAN PROTECTION

Coercively disarming groups with stable control over a population requires phenomenal resources, especially if military assets will also be used to protect civilians from reprisals and to monitor local partners. This is not just a matter of calling for more UN troops or stronger mandates. The US experience in Afghanistan and Iraq should be a cautionary example – the US has access to resources far beyond what the UN or a regional actor (such as the AU) could expect to have, especially in terms of the ratio of resources to population/geographic area to be controlled, and as fully-admitted counterinsurgency missions US (and coalition) forces have maximum permission to use force. Despite this, both efforts have dragged on years longer than initially planned for, and the US has been plagued both by confidence-­ undermining attacks on civilians by its enemies and by abuses by its own forces and local partners. Rather than look for ways to bring to bear perhaps unrealistic levels of resources to support a strategy of legitimating a central government as early as practicable and then using force to back up a disarmament process for “spoilers,” we should at least consider whether that is the wrong model. A different approach would be to treat areas controlled by spoilers who provide some governance (even if not up to moral standards) seriously as small political entities, and the government’s legitimacy as a process that cannot be considered established by any fairly sharp event,

Protection of Civilians from Non-enemies: A Case Study 275 like an election. Just as UN forces (and civilians) work with government forces like the FARDC to improve their respect for human rights and civil–military relations, the UN could work with spoiler militias to ensure that they extracted resources in a more humane manner and conducted their military operations with greater respect for civilians. If this seems hopelessly naïve, I am not saying that it is clearly better in all cases, or that it has no moral and practical problems. But the costs of the approach of eliminating spoilers by force are heavy, and so should at least be weighed against other heavy costs. Taking such an approach toward spoilers legitimates them to some extent. But, if they have even the ambiguous and partly coerced support of civilians, they may in fact deserve some degree of cautious, limited legitimacy. “Making looting more humane” may seem paradoxical, but we should not place too much weight on the moral divide between looting and taxation backed with the force of law – there is a continuum here, not a sharp distinction. Integrating quasi-political units based on spoilers into a state will inevitably be difficult, and pressure should be strong to get them to rein in practices that thrive only in conflict in favor of the benefits of some kind of legitimacy. But it is not clear a priori that integration on the basis of some legitimation will always be more ­difficult or more morally costly than forceful elimination. For a case in point, consider the Renamo insurgency in Mozambique (see Vines 1996). Renamo was a brutal group, known for mutilation of civilians and often accused of having no political program aside from destabilizing Mozambique on behalf of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and, later, apartheid-era South Africa. Nonetheless, it was brought into both the peace process and ultimately became a responsible partner in the post-war government, largely through UN support to its development as a political party. Granted, Renamo accepted a role in the peace process, but peace processes are not ideal forums of justice, and so that should not be a moral divide where terrible human rights abuses were not. This approach is consonant with the approach to consent elaborated in Chapter 3. In a divided society there is nothing that can count as unproblematic “consent” to the government, just as there is nothing that counts as full “consent” to the presence of the PKO. The relationship between the FDLR and the population in its zones of control may be distorted and dysfunctional, but it is a political one. And the “raw material” of the new state is likely to be a patchwork of dysfunctional

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political organizations that will include paramilitary actors like the FDLR and non-military ones like business groups, leaders of ethnic factions, formal and informal village leadership, etc. This does not rule out a military solution; it just changes the options. If MONUC were treating the FDLR as a governing group to be accommodated and absorbed or integrated eventually, while being reformed in the nearer term, it might still engage in military operations aimed at containment or zone protection. And it may be, as a matter of contingent fact, that no approach to a particular group will allow it to be integrated – but that should be an empirical matter, and one of last resort, rather than enforced by the concept of the mission itself.12 The military priorities might be reversed as well, given the dynamics of violence against civilians – rather than seeking to drive the FDLR out of its strongholds, military operations would be used to prevent attempts to expand zones of control (with the attendant incentives to abuse civilians) and to secure contested areas (probably with a bias toward s­ecuring them in the government’s favor). LONGER-RUN IMPACTS AND IMPLICATIONS

From the vantage point of early 2013, Kimia II and its successors do not look like clear successes. The FDLR remain, and where they are weakened new militias that also endanger civilians have risen to take their place (ICG 2012: 7; Stearns 2012d). As noted above, ex-CNDP members have started a new rebellion that has managed to go even further than the CNDP did, capturing the provincial capital of Goma (Jones and Smith 2012). Civilians in the Kivus continue to be subject to high rates of violence and abuse (see e.g. UNHCHR 2011; Ban Ki-Moon 2012, paras 11–25, 43–4, 49–62). Analyses of the failures of MONUSCO and peacekeeping/­ peacebuilding in the DRC show many of the same marks that criticism of Kimia II did, however. In particular, there seem to be two contradictory bits of conventional wisdom: that the problem in the DRC is the limited reach of state authority, and that the state is predatory and as much of a threat as any other actor. For example, the ICG (2012: 5–6) criticizes FARDC strategy during Amani Leo for “being incapable of capitalising on its ‘victory’ and holding the territory gained,” despite being able to drive FDLR from the field, but then goes on to argue that a major failing of the military

Protection of Civilians from Non-enemies: A Case Study 277 operation was that it allowed the FARDC to extend its “predatory behavior.” Similarly, an Oxfam briefing argues that stabilization plans have achieved little in the eastern DRC because “[t]he authority of the state still does not reach many places,” but then in the very next sentence states that “the propensity of many [members of state security forces] to extort money and goods from civilians” is a serious problem (Dixon 2012: 3). It is not at all clear why, if the government and its security forces are predatory, extending its reach to more areas would be an improvement. These analyses of the failure to bring peace in the Kivus seem to represent examples of what Autesserre recognized as the influence of a simplifying narrative, that the solution to the DRC’s problems is state building (Autesserre 2012: 17–20). The problem is that “state building” can mean different things, not all of equal value. As Autesserre points out, the state-building narrative is not something entirely imposed by outside interveners; local actors also desire state-building, but there is “nuance” to their desire for it. Local actors in the Kivus desired “state-building” in the form of a strengthening of the justice system and professionalization of security forces, while the main kind of “state-building” provided by outside actors was the creation of material infrastructure (Autesserre 2012: 18–19; Dixon 2012: 3 notes a similar distinction but does not develop its implications). A similar distinction seems necessary when assessing the protective impacts of military operations. Extending the reach of the FARDC is at least not a clear benefit, and may even be a harm, to civilians if the force remains a predatory institution. What would protect civilians is the extension of effective, legitimate, and responsive security forces capable of providing some measure of “law and order,” not simply extension of the effective reach of the state military. One way to think of this is as making a distinction between the state as a particular bureaucratic entity embodied in its various sub-organizations (such as the army and police) and the state as a large-scale communal project, embodied in social coordination. The latter is what I have endorsed in Chapter 2 as a core aim of peacekeeping. But it has only an indirect relationship to the former; in particular, increasing the power of an organization that is able to claim the mantle of “state” in an international sense, over people who are not integrated into its distributed deliberative processes in a meaningful way (as seems to be the case with extending the power of Kinshasa in the east), is likely to harden

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boundaries and cut off opportunities for cooperation rather than increasing them. There are political reasons why it would have been difficult for MONUC/MONUSCO to treat their goal in this way, not least of which being the UN’s support for the 2006 elections (and the later, even more seriously flawed 2011 elections).13 But just as there is an important nuance that is lost, leading analysis into contradiction, if we contrast state with non-state and place both governance and road-building equally on the “state” side, one way of understanding what is lost in the analysis of military operations in the eastern DRC is that the analysis has tended to reflect a Schmittian enmity, with the FARDC (perhaps grudgingly) and MONUSCO on one side, and “spoilers” from the FDLR, various Mai Mai groups, CNDP, M23, and the like on the other. There may be an implicit view here that if the FARDC, being beholden to the state, which is in turn beholden to the international community (at least to some extent), which is in turn beholden to universal values of human rights (ideally, if not always in practice), is reformable, a major barrier in the way of its reform is that the state does not have a certain enough grasp on its territory to be willing to “clean house” internally. Or it may represent a Hobbesian intuition that any stable authority is better than no authority, that “the greatest [incommodity] that in any form of government can possibly happen to the people in general is scarce sensible, in respect of the miseries and ­horrible calamities that accompany a civil war” (Hobbes 1994: 117).14 But the Hobbesian line of thinking is not clearly worse for the FDLR (or, again, any other non-state, non-genocidal militia) than for the FARDC. I have argued above that there may be reasons to prefer living in an area of stable FDLR control to being subject to a war between the FARDC and the FDLR. And the hope for reform, on the other hand, does not seem to have been borne out by the history. It is always possible to argue that the FARDC has not become professionalized because the prerequisite – stable state authority – has not been achieved. But it is at least as plausible that so long as the FARDC can count on a relatively free hand from the government to enrich itself and relatively low pressure from outside actors like MONUSCO to become reformed because it is nominally “on their side,” this will inhibit any possible reform. So this brings us back to my recommendation to treat areas controlled by militias that provide at least some governance as sites of organization

Protection of Civilians from Non-enemies: A Case Study 279 and political action to be integrated into the larger political community, rather than simply as areas of state territory under illegal occupation. It is probably best to think of integrating FDLR-controlled areas rather than integrating the FDLR. To think about integrating the FDLR is to make a similar mistake to the one I have called out above – the FDLR is a particular organization, but it is only part of the political structure that exists in the areas it controls (and of course, similarly for other groups that exercise some degree of territorial control). The problem is how to make whatever political arrangements appertain in areas under FDLR control part of a widening network of communal interactions that can form the basis for nation-wide distributed deliberation. Part of that may be a matter of shifting members of a militia group into membership in the national military, but peacekeepers cannot simply “re-hat” militia members as soldiers and consider the job done. This is especially true if the national military is not well-integrated into the other organizations of government, and if the government does not have a meaningful political relationship with other actors in the militia’s areas of control. That is the case in the DRC, and the result is predictable: militias will become part of the national military in not much more than name, since the same conditions that supported their relationship to the other actors in their zones of control remain, and the government is not organizationally powerful enough to entice or force them to act otherwise.15 This is why I would like to distinguish my suggestion from the history of failed militia integrations in the DRC. As Baaz and Verweijen argue, one of the failings of security integration in the DRC has been an approach that is “carrots without sticks” (Baaz and Verweijen 2012). That leads to a situation in which militant groups have incentives to take an integration deal, accept the incentives and rewards (pay, positions within the military, etc.), and then defect in hopes of getting another integration deal. My suggestion of seeking to reform and integrate socio-political structures associated with militant groups might seem to be a version of a carrot without a stick.16 One approach to this problem is Baaz and Verweijen’s suggested one of “serious military pressure on non-integrated forces,” and “sanctions for defectors.” But my model represents a different way. If we treat the units to be integrated into the state as just the militant organizations, peacekeepers will be at risk of creating the vicious cycles of integration and erosion that Baaz and Verweijen point to. In fact, it

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may create perverse incentives for militias to have even less functional relationships with the populations and other actors in their zones of control, since the “carrots” will seem more urgent to supply to the extent that they are abusive, and there is no other path to stable integration into the broader political community. And it may lead to a cycle of creation of new, possibly abusive militant groups as “self-defense forces” by other political actors, if the existing militia is integrated into the national military but neither replaced nor reformed. On the other hand, if we treat the unit to be integrated as the militant group plus the other actors in its zone of control, the PKO can seek to simultaneously integrate the organized armed elements and reform their relationship to the population. A significant part of this work will be working to locally redistribute precarity along the lines of the analysis in Chapter 7, and enhancing “protection-with” that allows deeper integration between divided but active elements of the community, the theme of Chapter 9. It is difficult to assess the prospects for this working in a place like the DRC, as it has not been tried. But it is promising, coherent with the theoretical framework and moral commitments of peacekeeping, and distinct from failed approaches that have been tried. SPOILERS, PROTECTION, THE HOLY TRINITY, AND THE CARING VIRTUES

Let us take a look back at the theoretical framework elaborated in previous chapters and see what light this extended case discussion can shed on them. Protection and Precarity The framework for this analysis of MONUC and Kimia II is the extension of protection from questions of direct intercession to a broader consideration of precarity, as outlined in Chapter 7. If we focus only on the ways in which peacekeepers can stop the actions of particular groups, or dismantle them, we miss out on the ways in which military operations shift the overall context of precarity. They may expose civilians to new risks in the name of removing old ones. Though this is not intentional on the part of peacekeepers, a protection-of-civilians focus (rather than a narrower International Humanitarian Law (IHL) focus)

Protection of Civilians from Non-enemies: A Case Study 281 imposes positive moral responsibilities on peacekeepers to take action in such a way as to distribute precarity in a more equitable way. Too much focus on extending state authority and the reach of the state military threatens that principle. Living under militant control exposes people to dangers, of course, typically very inequitable dangers. But those dangers are conditioned by the aims and stability of the dangerous groups alongside whom they live, and governments often distribute precarity inequitably even if they have been “legitimated” by elections. The basic point is that militant groups generally score poorly on supporting equitable exposure to risk, but, especially since military operations themselves expose civilians to danger, the cure may be worse than the disease. This is especially true if the group sees its control or existence as threatened, reinforcing the peacekeeper’s “no enemies” principle in situations – those in which peacekeeping is appropriate – where there is some indication that “spoiler” groups can be brought to exercise quasi-governance functions and may be able to be brought into a peace process. The Holy Trinity As discussed above, seeing consent as inevitably partial and developing undercuts some of the impulse to treat the FDLR in the way MONUC did in supporting Kimia II. People in the DRC have no more consented in a full-blooded sense to the government in Kinshasa than they have to the presence of a UN PKO; the distributed deliberative structures for them to meaningfully do so are not fully in place. Even if we agree with one of the interview partners I cited in Chapter 4 that “there can only be one army,” there is no overwhelming reason to assume that the FARDC, as constituted in 2009 or now, is it, or that the only way of constructing the “one army” is by bringing other militant groups into the FARDC and only then reforming the structure. This brings us directly to the consultative model of impartiality I recommended in Chapter 4. The effect of binding MONUC by mandate to the Nairobi and Goma peace processes was to shut off consultation with the FDLR (insistence that M23 was entirely a Rwandan puppet may have had a similar effect, though at the time of writing talks between the M23 and DRC were under way in Uganda). MONUC may have been able to preserve impartiality in the sense that it did not condone abuses by the FARDC any more than it did those by the FDLR, but the

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process for applying those standards was radically different, undermining the point of calling adherence to them “impartiality.” On the political side, it may have been helpful to facilitate negotiations between the FDLR leadership and the government – but just as importantly, at the local level, it may have been helpful to intercede and try to understand why individuals and smaller political actors were supporting, acquiescing in, or opposing FDLR abuses. That sort of smaller-scale consultation could, ideally, be rendered safe(r) by military peacekeepers, and would feed back into a process of widening consent by giving opportunities for the political arrangement in FDLR-controlled areas to become more politically and morally respectable. Of course, impartiality would demand a much deeper focus on extending the state-as-governance to areas controlled by the FARDC, and, given the predatory nature of the institution, the process would not necessarily have looked much different. Finally, attention to the deleterious effects of force and violence makes “space” for these other processes of consent-building and impartiality-negotiation. Peacekeepers who treated violence against the FDLR as a potentially tragic action done to and among already violence-buffeted people, rather than as a laudatory destruction of an evil organization, would be better able to calibrate limited uses of force to influence behavior and communicate to the FDLR that they are aiming at a new community where their aims and interests can be protected without violence, rather than simply one where the preferred violent organization replaces them. The Caring Virtues Restraint is clearly involved with this, not just as a minimum use of force standard, but as a habit of mind. It is natural for human beings, especially those with weapons, to be inclined to want to destroy or defeat groups, like the FDLR, that have uncontroversially engaged in violent abuses of human rights. But restrained peacekeepers may find ways other than supporting military campaigns by governments that are still struggling with legitimacy. In a case such as the FARDC and FDLR, restraint may be as much a matter of trying to see the situation in shades of gray as of jumping to find a “bad guy,” and hence defining even some other dangerous actors as the “good guys” by Schmittian logic.

Protection of Civilians from Non-enemies: A Case Study 283 As a result, the needed restraint shades into attentiveness. Peacekeepers  need to understand much more of the local dynamics in order to be able to do their jobs well in a situation as fraught as the eastern DRC. In particular, they need to be alert to the difference between individuals who support or acquiesce in the actions of “spoiler” groups because they reject the peace process and those who do not fear peace and social integration but the particular bureaucratic entity that is the state currently on offer – or who are motivated by localized conflicts that may be only tangentially related to what ­peacekeepers see as the major issues at stake in the peace process. Finally, as always, creativity supports all of this by opening up alternatives and resisting the conclusion that there is no other way than the current one. Baaz and Verweijen inadvertently highlight the importance of creativity, especially under its aspect as moral imagination (Baaz and Verweijen 2012). They cite as one of the reasons for poor FARDC morale the fact that the cycle of integration–defection– reintegration of militant groups means that members of the FARDC deployed against other armed groups ask themselves: “Who would want to risk their lives for an enemy that might very well be welcomed back again into the army, perhaps in an even more privileged position than before?” A different understanding of the process might help even with this. I imagine it would be quite demoralizing to be told one day that a group is so evil it must be destroyed, and that all of its members are legitimate targets of violence at all times, and then the next that they are a friend who you must kill members of other groups alongside. But if the violence that must be used against spoiler groups is from the start seen as limited, and used only to prevent egregious abuses so that the possibility of integration can be realized, it may provide a more coherent framework for soldiers, as well as peacekeepers. CONCLUSION

My argument in this chapter is fairly limited in terms of tactical and operational import, but significant in terms of our moral theory of peacekeeping and protection. First, I hope to have established that patterns of civilian abuse are not generally exogenous to military strategies – especially when, as in the case of the FDLR, abusers are motivated in substantial part by a desire to control rather than eliminate the

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population. Second, I hope to have shown that peacekeeping missions can get boxed in to strategies that threaten to change the dynamics to the cost of civilians by an overly moralized picture of the conflict – the option of working with armed factions to reform them as political military units should be taken off the table only after carefully assessing the likely civilian cost of eliminating them, rather than being ruled out on principle because they are abusers or “total spoilers.” In the end, the only option for the DRC and situations like it may be using military force to crush groups like the FDLR – but we should not rush into such a risky strategy out of a desire to seize the moral high ground, ­regardless of cost. While limited, these conclusions help to reinforce the argument of the book to this point. Actually taking the approach I recommend toward spoilers requires that we take seriously the principles of the “holy trinity,” rather than giving in to a temptation to see them as ­outdated and suitable only for simpler peacekeeping missions. If I had to sum up the fundamental core of this chapter’s argument, it would be this: members of spoiler groups are people, acting for comprehensible if not moral reasons, and treating them as potential members of the political community is the way to express the peacekeeper’s honorable distinction from the warfighter. One implication of this is that we need to see peacekeepers not as imposing a political order on a purely chaotic process or stepping in to protect people from apolitically predatory armed individuals by creating a state. Rather, the “patchwork” model drives home the fact that people are already doing their best to protect themselves, as part of a social dynamic that includes the armed groups. How peacekeepers can think about interacting with that social dynamic will be the subject of Chapter 9. Notes   1. The legal definition of “genocide” applies only to the destruction of certain kinds of groups – I intend this category to also cover genocide-like attacks made against groups that do not support a legal finding of genocide, such as political, class, or gender groups.  2. Unless otherwise indicated, in this chapter I will follow Kalyvas in using the latter, descriptive rather than normative, meaning of “indiscriminate.”  3. Importantly, I am not implying that killing only active collaborators – people who in fact provided some material support to the FARDC – would

Protection of Civilians from Non-enemies: A Case Study 285 be morally acceptable. Leaving aside any judgments about the relative merits of the FARDC and the FDLR, most civilian “collaborators” in situations like this have little choice in the matter. If the FDLR, or the FARDC, or whoever, shows up and demands food, reasonable people will comply. Holding the relatively powerless responsible for the consequences of their lack of power is morally perverse, an insight that is at the moral heart of the idea that civilians should be protected, even once we drop the fiction that they are never materially implicated in a war effort. See e.g. Slim (2008: 271–2).   4. In this discussion, for the sake of not bloating the word-count any further, I will focus on the FARDC, as it (and its internal ex-CNDP elements) were the main adversary of the FDLR in Kimia II. But of course, the FDLR has conflicts with other armed factions in the DRC, and similar comments would apply to them.   5. Interview 18.   6. One possibility is simply that the new definition of “imminence” was not official before the publication of the UNIBAM in 2012, and so at the time of MONUC’s mandate “imminent” in the language of priority (a) was to be understood in the narrow, everyday sense. I have been told in conversation – though I am unable to confirm this – that the broader sense of “imminence” was in use at DPKO before the UNIBAM was published. MONUSCO’s mandate (UNSC 2010, op. para. 12) is less difficult to reconcile with the UNIBAM definition, as it contains similar language in its own priority (a), but does not include other language about prevention or disruption. It does relegate other tasks, such as disarmament, that might plausibly be seen as part of protection of civilians – recall the broadness of the task as outlined in the draft military guidelines discussed in Chapter 7 – to lower priorities. But in the MONUSCO mandate, it is much easier to read those clauses as something like: “supporting safe return of displaced persons is priority (g), unless it is a matter of protection of civilians from imminent physical threat, in which case it is elevated to priority (a).”  7. Or perhaps higher; both are in priority f, but the peace processes are ­mentioned first.  8. Because the FDLR’s original core and leadership were made up of members of the FAR under the genocidal regime and the interahamwe paramilitaries who helped carry out the genocide, “ex-FAR” or “ex-­ Interahamwe” are sometimes used to refer to the FDLR and allied/­spinoff groups such as the Rally for Unity and Democracy (RUD)-Urunana.   9. All translations from the French are my own. 10. One problem with Kimia II was that the FARDC drove FDLR forces out of areas but was not able to securely hold the areas and prevent militants from returning.

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11. And transitional administrations have an uneven history (see Chesterman 2004). 12. In this particular case, it also bears repeating that the FARDC has engaged in a level of abuse and predation comparable to that of many of the militant groups. 13. Too early support for elections may be a general failing of peacekeeping and reconstruction projects, but it is a topic that would take us too far afield from the case of military peacekeepers. See for example Flores and Nooruddin (2012) on the general problem of election timing, and Dizolele and Kambale (2012) on the DRC after the 2011 elections in particular. 14. Kalyvas’ analysis may put an interesting twist on Hobbes. By focusing on the “war of all against all,” Hobbes ended up thinking primarily about unstable, contested transition situations, which Kalyvas agrees will be especially dangerous for civilians. But there might be two equilibria in the state of nature – areas of solid control by a faction or quasi-sovereign and areas where control is stably balanced. Hobbes implicitly assumes that the latter kind of balance is never stable. 15. And where the state is predatory, even if the government can break up militia structures, it is not a clear improvement. 16. And I should note that I expect, in practice, care would have to be taken to avoid turning it into one.

Chapter 9 PROTECTING WITH CIVILIANS

the lines of analysis followed by intervention are mostly based on the figure of the victim – the civilian – passive, and seen as an undifferentiated mass. (Pouligny 2006: 67) There was a person inside who was hurting, but another person inside who wanted to make a difference.1 INTRODUCTION

A PKO arriving in the field will not find organized armed factions set against an undifferentiated mass of civilians. Even at the “grassroots” level, the mission’s focus will most often be on grassroots leaders (see the discussion in Lederach 1997: 42–3). Peacekeepers will find themselves having to take into account not just what civilians are doing, but particular, active civilian groups. Peacekeepers may find “traditional” organizations like hierarchical community structures – it is no easier to talk to “the community” than it is to talk to “civilians” – as well as informal social groups, religious organizations, western-style NGOs, and state structures (even in the worst civil conflicts, remnants of the state will usually be politically relevant actors). Much of the protection-of-civilians literature has focused on what peacekeepers and other military forces can and should do to protect civilians from death and other serious human rights abuses.2 What civilians do in their own defense is often absent from these discussions, and as a result some of the implications that civilians’ self-protection activities have for peacekeepers risk being ignored. (For important exceptions, see Bellamy and Williams 2009; Barrs 2010, 2012. There is a brief mention of local strategies at Ban Ki-Moon 2010, §40.) 287

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Protection, to be fully worthy of the name, must be a joint project with locals, that incorporates emerging intersubjective assessments of how precarity ought to be distributed into peacekeepers’ practices. Doing this requires a focus on civilians as active agents, not passive victims. Incorporating civilians’ own actions into protection of civilians is not simple. While PoC by PKOs is largely a matter for the period between the initiation of a peace process and the end of para/military violence, protection is not just a matter of an individual being in the right place at the right time to intercede in an act of violence or abuse; it requires the creation of systems of protection that deflect threats of violence, intercede in crises, and mitigate harm afterwards. But because these systems of protection involve social organization, and integration into the rest of civilians’ lives, they are inherently political in the sense that they represent interventions into contested social situations. In light of Chapter 4’s understanding of impartiality, this should not be as problematic-seeming as if peacekeepers were expected to remain neutral. It does go beyond even an even-handed imposition of international standards (many issues of great social import are ones in which neither side has an absolutely clear claim to be the one that is uniquely respecting human rights). Impartiality, understood in this sense, still typically retains the idea that peacekeepers should not be on any side in the local conflict, and should not seek to influence it beyond ensuring that all parties respect human rights, international law, and whatever peace or ceasefire agreements may be in place. But, civilian organizations and protection systems are players in internal conflicts. Civilian protection systems come with all the moral complexity of any other organization in the midst of a conflict – they have social and political aims other than mere protection, they are most often headed by elites rather than “representative” of the broader population, and they may be “uncivil” in other ways (patriarchal, nationalistic, sectarian, etc.). If we recognize that civilians are not just passive victims, granting them their agency also entails granting that they will have a stance on the issues in conflict. On the other hand, working with civilians in their own defense fits nicely with my consultative concept of impartiality, while at the same time raising questions about who to consult – a variety of Chapter 3’s problem of inclusion. There is no simple, universal answer to the question of which civilians peacekeepers should work with and how; too much will depend

Protecting with Civilians 289 on the context. But making explicit some of the moral questions that arise when we think of civilians as more than just passive targets of attack (or, a little better, people purely yearning for democracy and human rights) provides some guidance for those judgments. In particular, Chapter 7’s concept of peacekeepers as protectors-with, helping civilians broaden and consolidate systems of protection that involve partnership with peacekeepers and encounters with the very groups that threaten civilians, gives guidance here while the focus on civilians’ own agency deepens that chapter’s concept of protection. In particular, this chapter will focus on civilian protection activities in Liberia during the two civil wars there (1990–2003). Liberia was chosen because of the unusual international prominence of the women’s peace movement there. Given that women are often framed as the paradigmatic passive victims of violence, it is especially worthwhile to look closely at a situation in which they displayed clear agency. For instance, a German scholar working in Liberia told us that during testimony at the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), one woman was grilled repeatedly on whether her peacebuilding activities interfered with her ability to perform traditional female roles as a wife and mother to her children, with the clear implication from the questioner that it would have been better for her to stay quietly at home.3 While women (and men) everywhere find ways to respond to social violence, Liberia’s women have been better documented than most. In addition to its inherent interest for questions of peacekeeper interaction, showcasing the actions of Liberian women may help undercut the perception that civilians, particularly women, are stripped of their agency in conflict – a perception that can, unfortunately, cause interventions to undermine that agency by assuming that they are simply in need of “saving.” WHAT CIVILIANS DO DURING VIOLENCE

Before we can meaningfully discuss peacekeeper–civilian interactions, we should at least discuss briefly what exactly it is that civilians do on their own. Explicit Protection Strategies The perception that civilians are helpless in the face of physical violence results from too narrow a focus on the “point of impact,” where

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an armed group is threatening unarmed individuals right now. In such situations, there may be little for civilians to do besides flee if they can. Chapter 7’s focus on precarity and systems of protection was an attempt to shift this focus. Recall that protection systems will have at least three aims: to deflect/defuse gathering threats and reduce vulnerability, to intercede in actual acts of violence, and to mitigate the consequences of attack. Civilians and their organizations may be weak on the second aim (stopping immediate violence), but strong – perhaps stronger than the PKO – on the first and third. When we take this broader view, civilians engage in all manner of self-protection. As Bonwick argues, civilians mostly protect themselves, with international intervention a relatively marginal source of safety (Bonwick 2006b; note that Bonwick is concerned with humanitarian “civilian protection” as well as issues that fall under the narrower, military “protection of civilians”). Paffenholz and Spurk (2010: 67–8) acknowledge that civil society groups often have protection functions, including negotiating safe zones and temporary moratoriums on violence (e.g. to allow humanitarian access), monitoring, or even demobilization and demining in unusual cases (though they imply – I believe wrongly – that protection is largely a function of international NGOs). Several recent case studies have focused in detail on civilian self-protection in Uganda and Sudan (Corbett 2011; Harragin 2011; Baines and Paddon 2012). Barrs has made an inventory of civilian strategies, which he divides into three categories, as follows. Avoidance strategies are more or less what they sound like – in the most literal sense, individuals and communities simply take themselves out of the path of violence. Civilians who take their possessions with them (or, presumably, destroy them in place if they cannot be moved) strip looting actors of resources that may prove tempting or help fuel the conflict. As Barrs notes, there are less direct forms of avoidance as well. Communities that can find ways to provide for their own needs may avoid the influence of armed actors who control populations through access to food, water, etc. (Barrs 2010: 5–6). This echoes Goodin’s point, discussed in Chapter 7, that vulnerability is mitigated if there are alternatives to engaging with some actor to meet one’s own needs. Accommodation strategies involve working with the armed factions in some way, though this emphatically does not entail that civilians

Protecting with Civilians 291 endorse the factions. They may bribe or cut deals with armed actors, find connections with members of the faction who can be deflected from violence against the community, or work out understandings about who is a legitimate target and what the noncombatant community needs to stay out of. Of course, such deals are often inequitable or unpleasant, and subject to undermining and “work to rule” by both sides, but communities may reasonably prefer them to open (and ­dangerous) defiance (Barrs 2010: 4–5). Barrs’ taxonomy relegates any interaction with armed factions to accommodation, including many of the strategies pursued by women in Liberia, such as protesting, or trying to convince factions to join peace talks – Barrs puts “confront with protest and nonviolent action” and “conflict mediation” in this category, for instance (Barrs 2012: 1). “Accommodation” has the ring of civilians accepting armed actors’ goals as givens, and learning to live with them. While Barrs is clear that accommodation is “not intended to carry a negative connotation,” placing both strategies of resisting and those of acquiescing in armed groups’ demands in the same category flattens important distinctions. It might be better to make room for a third strategy of “confrontation,” though the element of compromise inevitable in any interaction between civilians and armed groups means that there will be significant overlap with accommodation.4 Barrs identifies a third category of affinity in preparedness support, which encompasses strategies that rely on the connections and networks that civilians build (Barrs 2010: 4). It may be an apples-tooranges comparison to treat this as a third strategy, however, as his more recently updated inventory acknowledges (Barrs 2012: n.10). The use of affinity groups and networks is a tactic that cuts across other strategies. Civilians use their affinity networks to facilitate both avoidance and accommodations. For instance, one interview partner explained to us that, prior to the outbreak of war in Sierra Leone, many Liberians were fleeing and living not in refugee camps but with extended family there – and the start of the war there seriously disrupted many Liberians’ plans to escape.5 In fact, it is hard to see how other strategies could be advanced without some use of social connections; the primary strength that civilians can bring to bear in the face of armed groups’ firepower is organization. Some civilians may escape this taxonomy and deal with violence by

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not remaining civilians (Barrs 2010: 3). Even though “women and children” is sometimes treated as a synonym for “noncombatants,” joining the ranks of the armed is a fairly common choice even for women and children. In Liberia, several women rose to notoriety as combatants, such as Martina Johnson and Black Diamond (and many more women fought without becoming in/famous). In other conflicts, women serve armed factions as everything from front-line combatants, to political leadership, to porters and “wives” (for an extensive and fascinating study of female members of armed groups, focused on Sierra Leone but with broader implications, see Coulter 2009). Many women are abducted or otherwise forced into service to an armed group (even though some later come to identify with the group), but others make an active choice to join. In one focus group of female members of armed groups, the most common reason the women from opposition groups gave for joining was that they had suffered violence (often sexual violence) at the hands of government forces (Mazurana 2004: 27). I will largely leave these “ex-civilians” aside, but their existence is worth mentioning. We should not fall into the trap of thinking of “civilians” and “combatants” as completely different types of person, when they are better seen as people caught in quite similar situations, only some of whom have chosen to use violence, and perhaps more importantly, who both still are part of the same social situation. In particular, while peacekeeping doctrine may focus on protection of civilians, civilians’ own self-protection systems may crucially involve connections with non-civilians, and peacekeepers should be aware of how their protection activities may impact positively or negatively on armed groups. Life Goes On Self-protection is rarely all-consuming. Explicit protection activities are in a sense marginal to self-protection; the core of self-protection is ensuring that lives can be lived. Political violence tends to be sporadic and come in spasms, and even during extended military campaigns, the violence is not everywhere, all the time. People live their lives in the interstices of violence, and find ways of accommodating to it. Life during conflict is one that some individuals can become quite adept at navigating, even if from a safe outside perspective the situation seems oppressive. For instance, Utas has written an account of one woman caught up in the Liberian war who developed such aptitude for

Protecting with Civilians 293 “victimcy” strategies that she left a refugee camp (that called for different coping skills) to go back to the war (Utas 2005). In describing her, Utas uses a helpful distinction between “tactic agency” and “strategic agency.” The former is being able to make meaningful short-term decisions in a given social situation, while the latter is “an agency for those who can forecast future states of affairs and have the possibility to make use of other people’s tactical agency.” To this Utas adds a notion of “victimcy,” “the agency of self-staging as a victim of war,” which is the type of agency pursued by his subject as she became, by turns, a “girlfriend” to more powerful soldiers, a refugee, a taxi driver, and other roles (ibid.: 407–8). Utas seems to make victimcy a sub-category of tactical agency, and implies that most ­civilians caught in the war zone are capable only of tactical agency. Relegating civilian actions to reactive tactics undersells the agency exercised by women in Liberia (and probably by male and female civilians in other conflicts). While granting Utas’s point that it can be dangerous to treat individuals in a war zone as if they are fully masters and mistresses of their fate, given the extreme pressures they act under, in Liberia civilian agency seemed to involve at least partly effective attempts to shape the situation rather than simply react to it. The creation of peace networks and organizations even meets Utas’s strategic agency criterion of being able to make use of others’ tactical agency. If we see civilians as exercising only victimcy/tactical agency, it might be tempting to think that anything peacekeepers can do to increase the physical safety of their situation can only be to their benefit – they are only reacting in a short-term fashion. But if we recognize that civilians can have long-term strategies, the moral landscape is more complicated. Let me now turn to some of the strategies pursued by women in Liberia in particular. What Women Did in Liberia The roots of Liberia’s civil wars reach back at least as far as the ­nineteenth-century project of returning freed US slaves to their “homeland” in Africa, thereby creating a class of Americo-Liberians who dominated local populations, and the conflicts had more recent origins in Samuel Doe’s 1980 coup against the Americo-Liberian regime. The war began in earnest in 1989 when Charles Taylor invaded from Côte d’Ivoire at the head of the NFPL. The NFPL split early on into

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two factions, with the INFPL led by Taylor’s former lieutenant, Prince Johnson – who would be the one to capture and kill Doe. The factions continued to fragment (though the NFPL and INFPL remained dominant players), and the conflict drew in ECOWAS (in the form of ECOMOG), as well as destabilizing neighboring Sierra Leone. The first conflict drew to a close with 1997 elections, won by Taylor, but the nation remained unstable, and war reignited in 1999, ending when Taylor and the main rebel groups signed a peace agreement in 2003 (for general overviews of the war see e.g. Ellis 2007, covering the first war only, and Tellewoyan 2006). Much of what women did during the wars fell into Barrs’ category of avoidance. Avoidance is, of course, not always a passive matter of hunkering down until violence passes. The wives and market women who crisscrossed Monrovia while many men hid inside were engaged in active strategies of economic and social survival at the same time as they dodged armed factions. But Liberian women also actively organized to promote peace, particularly during the second war. They met with warlords, protested, organized strikes and sit-ins, and attended international peace meetings (for overviews of Liberian women’s action, see e.g. African Women and Peace Support Group 2004; Fuest 2008, 2009; and the 2008 documentary film Pray the Devil Back to Hell). On a more intimate scale, we heard stories of women going out to get food while husbands hid at home, as well as men and women confronting families and elders about sexual violence in the community, sharing information about threats, and helping community members (often through religious organizations) recover from the psychological damage of violence. “Fortunately for Us, The War Came” Interviews with Liberian women and data from elsewhere emphasized how deeply entangled “peace” movements are with social divisions, moral and political aspirations, and organizational dynamics.6 One of the lessons that we learned through our interviews was that it was very difficult to cleanly separate civilians’ self-protection activities from “making peace.” Women’s peace work was not direct “protection of civilians,” but it was not entirely separate from protection strategies, either. First, in the long run, achieving peace would

Protecting with Civilians 295 increase civilian safety – in that way, it is as much a protection of civilians strategy as those aimed at defeating perpetrators of attacks on civilians. While peacemakers in Liberia were concerned with individual acts of violence, their perspective was more systemic, and aimed at reducing sources of vulnerability and mitigating the impact of violence (one of our interview partners, a man, was heavily involved in work with his Church counseling victims of violence).7 It would be a conceptual mistake to treat this as something other than protective activity, however, simply because the fact that their organizations were weakest at the point of impact meant that they focused on aspects of protection less emphasized in the military-focused PoC discussion. This may be a consequence of life going on in wartime. Civilians who face a constant background threat of violence are likely to respond by trying to find ways to pursue their interests and convictions in the context of that threat, rather than sacrificing all their other commitments to remove the threat.8 While women’s peace work and protection work were entangled, on the other side of the coin the war affected the broader social and political landscape of Liberia. Several of the women with whom we spoke even claimed that the war had had a positive effect on women’s rights in Liberian society – in particular, that women were accorded more legal rights, that the average Liberian woman (though certainly not all, and more in urban areas) was more aware of her human rights, and that it was now socially possible for many of them to occupy higher-status positions (many of our interview partners were leaders in non-governmental organizations) in a way that would not have been possible in, for example, the 1980s.9 One said: Fortunately for us, as Liberian women, the war came. Though we were abused, our rights were violated during the war, it highlighted a lot of things and created awareness. So that’s why I say it’s fortunate, because it’s because of what happened that we began to speak out.10 These were not women who saw the war in a rosy light – they had lived through extreme violence, and many of them had been personally subjected to wartime atrocities, particularly sexual violation. The “silver lining” of the war was just that it disrupted social relations so badly that

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it broke down many bad social norms (like subjection of women) as well as the good ones (like communal trust). Female leaders with whom we spoke told us that they, personally, had always been more outspoken than their peers, but social norms had resisted them before the war’s disruption. One said she had “always been an outspoken person,” and another said, “all along, I wanted to be different.”11 The war seems to have allowed individual women to rise to the top in a period where norms that held them back were losing their force, rather than fostering general female empowerment. Our interviews were consistent with Fuest’s research on the Liberian women’s movement, which found divides between an (often internationally) educated elite and the rank-and-file of the movement, and that there was a perception of women’s rights talk as being “­something of the city” (Fuest 2009: 131–3, quotation on p. 131). The relevance of individual, non-typical actors highlights the impact that choices about who international actors will empower can have. They are people, with their own commitments, desires, plans, flaws, and virtues. They are typically (relatively) elite members of society, with opportunities, education, and resources not shared by everyone and which shape their values and perceptions. And the organizations they head are likewise concrete and peculiar, rather than simply expressing an apolitical social consensus or transparently transmitting human rights norms. The fact that organized social movements tend to generate elites does not, in itself, make them bad. The point is that these are individuals with connections and skills that put them outside the social norm, and views that are not universally held. A model of protection that ignores the fact that promoting, say, women’s rights is a move in a social conflict does not necessarily do women’s rights any favors. Liberians who oppose women’s rights have their reasons – they may not be good reasons, or they may be understandable reasons manifesting in a distorted way. If we care about women’s rights, the goal should not be to ignore the conflict or to end it by putting international power on one side but to create ways in which the defenders of women’s rights and their opponents can meet in constructive ways. If peacekeepers focus exclusively on ending immediate violence, issues of how the period of violence is changing society are unlikely to be at the forefront. But the social disruption of oppressive norms about women in Liberia highlights the fact that any action to end the violence

Protecting with Civilians 297 will put peacekeepers in the position of taking some “stand” on the underlying social conflicts, because it is a choice to stop the disruption of some norms and the creation of others. Violence does not come from thin air; it is an expression of broader social conflicts that happen to turn violent. Even “meaningless” violence generally isn’t – violence that serves no obvious tactical purpose may be a way of solidifying in-group bonds, terrorizing a populace into compliance, or just an effect of societal frictions that manifest as an individual’s frustrations (the fact that such violence may not be “for” anything does not necessarily render it inexplicable). If peacekeepers kill members of some armed faction, it weakens them in contest with their rivals. If they provide food to a stricken area to prevent an armed group from moving in, it weakens that group. If they protect areas with natural resources, along with civilians, from incursion, they effectively ratify the control of whichever group holds those resources at the moment. Not only armed factions have power and interests. The mere fact that some groups are civilians does not automatically mean that they will act more disinterestedly than their armed neighbors, or that they are without means to affect the situation. The result is that working with civilian organizations is not anything so straightforward as doing what “the people” want – imagining that it is is to fall into the confusions discussed in Chapter 3. Peacekeepers’ actions never just stop violence, and once peacekeepers arrive they are not fully outsiders. Every action a peacekeeping force takes is part of the evolving situation of disruption, and planning such actions should take into moral account the ways in which action here will change the overall conflict of which peacekeepers – whatever their scruples of impartiality – are now a part. If there is a coherent concept of impartiality to be saved, it cannot be one that conceptually involves remaining above the fray without preventing peacekeepers from doing their job of halting violence. Taking action to stop or prevent some violent incident is civilian protection but also an intervention in those social conflicts. While the experiences of women in Liberia provide a strong example of how protection, peace, and politics become entangled in practice, the observation is certainly not unique to Liberia. For a non-Liberian example of the breadth of protection systems, consider the work of Bosnian civil-society organizations in mitigating domestic violence (Belloni and Hemmer, 2010: 140).

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Relegating domestic violence – which can, after all, harm someone just as severely as a paramilitary attack – to the sphere of private or “merely” criminal activity risks leaving civilian vulnerability untouched by ignoring both the severity of the violence itself and the connection between domestic violence and warfare. Civilian organizations may be especially well-suited for extending systems of protection off the battlefield and into spaces like the home. However, given the importance of social and legal change for this sort of protection, as Belloni and Hemmer note, it is unsurprising that “protection activities merged with advocacy.” The “peace communities” in Colombia provide yet another example of how, in practice, it is rarely if ever possible to separate self-protection activities from the social and political cleavages in society. Set up to resist collaboration with both the rebels and government-affiliated paramilitaries, these organizations helped organize a united front against armed elements and provided mutual aid to members, but many also espoused leftist politics and a confrontational stance toward armed actors that led one analyst to assess them quite critically: “Objectively, as a project to increase safety (rather than to increase freedom or respect for political beliefs), it is an abject failure since the risks faced by the population are considerably higher than those faced by people in the surrounding area” (Bonwick 2006a: 17). Bonwick also points out that the politicization of the peace communities led many humanitarian agencies to keep their distance. Just as there was no bright line between protection and peacemaking activities for many of the women’s groups in Liberia, the Colombian peace communities may not have seen their political and moral views as so distinct from their protection practices as international humanitarians do. Physical safety may have been less valuable to some civilians if it came at the cost of sacrificing freedom or respect – though if that possibility is entertained, we should also ask whether everyone in the peace community saw things the same way, or if their leaders were taking a radical stance on their behalf. WHY INTERACT WITH CIVILIANS?

One might think that peacekeepers should keep aloof from civilians’ own organizations and activities and only take care not to interfere. Whatever peacekeepers do, it should add to civilians’ own strategies,

Protecting with Civilians 299 and the main way in which peacekeepers should attend to civilian strategies at all is to be sure to stay out of civilians’ way – for example, by not creating safe area boundaries that cut civilians off from their livelihoods or placing food distribution points in ways that incentivize civilians to displace themselves (for brief discussions of these problems, see Bellamy and Williams 2009: 31–2; Sewall, Raymond, and Chin 2010: 78–80). But, as noted in Chapter 7, this hands-off approach to protection is incompatible, morally, with the attentiveness to equitable distribution of risk/precarity that characterizes ideal protection. In addition, practically, while in the abstract it may be clear what kinds of things are likely to interfere with civilian strategies, determining the probable impact of a peacekeeping strategy on particular civilian activities in a conflict is complicated, messy, and requires deep knowledge of the dynamics of the situation. Civilian organizations are in much better positions to understand these dynamics than outside interveners. Especially when using military force, peacekeepers do not make surgical incisions into a society that leave the rest of the situation untouched; their presence and operations have drastic effects on at least the local environment. People are displaced, armed factions are created, destroyed, or splintered, control changes hands, movement becomes more difficult or easier, areas become safe havens or danger zones. If peacekeepers do not in some way work with civilian groups, acting so as only to protect civilians and disrupt nothing else will be difficult or impossible. One thing that peacekeepers can gain from engaging with civilians is information they may need to avoid interfering with those civilians’ own self-protection schemes. Somewhat paradoxically, engagement may be the best means of staying out of the way. Civilian organizations are also sources of information for the peacekeepers’ own work. While some of the most egregious cases that led to the focus on protection of civilians in peacekeeping involved civilians being attacked in the immediate vicinity of peacekeepers (such as attacks on civilian protesters in Haiti, on safe areas in Bosnia, and the Rwandan genocide), many more attacks on civilians go forward because peacekeepers do not respond until it is too late. Civilians and their organizations will often be keyed in to dynamics likely to lead to violence in ways that peacekeepers – who often lack relevant language skills and certainly will not know the local situation as well – are not.

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But the advantages of working with civilians are not just abstractly moral or purely informational. Ideally, peacekeeper and civilian protection activities can be mutually supporting. Peacekeepers can add coercive incentives and international legitimacy to civilians’ own strategies, and civilians can defuse potentially violent situations, make connections, create and maintain support networks (not every civilian who dies from a conflict dies immediately – many die from lack of food, shelter, sanitation, or medical care), and otherwise provide preventive and reactive protection that may be more difficult for peacekeepers on their own. Peacekeepers and civilians can become part of a system of protection more comprehensive than either could provide on their own. Despite reasonable concerns, the advantages mean that working with civilians is the right answer, and it is endorsed by the UN (Ban Ki-Moon 2010, para. 37). But it is not uncomplicated. ”HYBRID” PROTECTION

If peacekeepers work with civilians, their protection efforts will end up being “hybridized,” in a sense similar to that in which the term is used in the peacebuilding literature. Peace is hybridized to the extent that local agents “respond to, resist, and ultimately reshape peace initiatives through their interactions with international actors and institutions” (Richmond and Mitchell 2012: 7–8). While in some sense this is true of every interaction, the nature of the hybridization varies depending on how much the international presence is able to make its vision of peace attractive or use coercion to get locals to go along, and how far locals have the power to resist or the resources to present attractive alternative visions (MacGinty 2010: 398). Similarly, peacekeepers should recognize that protection will be hybridized. This may seem meaningless – in what sense is standing in the way of aggressive actors, or attacking their positions with helicopters, “hybrid” or not? Of course, if someone is right now going to harm an innocent person, and you can stop them, you probably should. It is not clear that doing so will bear any meaningful marks of cultural or moral context. But, again, things only look this simple at the point of impact; focusing on the broader system of protection presents a different view. Consider the choice to engage in avoidance: different people have

Protecting with Civilians 301 different views about when it is morally appropriate to ask someone to back down versus when the appropriate response is to back them up with protection from a threat. Peacekeepers, for example, may make this cut in terms of safe zones, green zones, and other areas they are prepared and obligated to defend, while locals may think of things more in terms of social status, kin relationships, or other aims/ attributes. As a more concrete example of civilian strategy, in Somalia, clan membership is a major component of local systems of protection. Someone in danger of attack may be able to deflect that danger by being adopted or marrying into a powerful clan (Menkhaus et al. 2010: 334–5). In Afghanistan, communities were able to pay off the Taliban to avoid attack (Borchgrevink and Harpviken 2010: 245). Entering into something as personal as marriage for the sake of safety (perhaps almost literally with a gun at one’s head) or helping to finance the activities of a group as abusive as the Taliban may (reasonably) offend the moral sensibilities of peacekeepers. But there may be pressures from locals to allow such strategies, especially if peacekeepers are not able to fully make good on alternative protections from violence. These examples raise one way in which my focus differs from that of at least some of the literature on hybrid peace. Some peacebuilding theorists focus primarily on the ways in which Western-liberal political forms are blended with more traditional institutions. For example, Boege et al. discuss at length the ways in which nascent political orders combine Western democratic state forms of authority with “traditional” authorities like chiefs, and they define hybridity (in part) by the fact that hybrid political orders include “non-state forms of order and governance” and institutional elements from “genuinely different ­societal sources” (Boege et al. 2009: 20–4). It is, of course, very worthwhile for peacekeepers to understand and interact with local, culturally embedded systems of protection where they can. But the above examples are not just matters of attending to (morally neutral) cultural forms that peacekeepers may miss the significance of if they think of Western-style institutions as being the only way to do things. They raise genuine dilemmas about values and human rights. Moral questions arise not so much when the forms diverge as when working with some local group involves peacekeepers in a controversial moral stance, either because the moral commitments of the locals clash with those of peacekeepers or because the

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moral commitments of these locals represent a position in an ongoing clash of values tied to the conflict – in other words, when going along or compromising with civilians’ values seems to mean either violating impartiality or cooperating with “obvious evil.” As a reply to Boege et al. points out, one of the “positive” examples of a hybrid order that they use is Somaliland, which does not live up to “universalist claims of human rights and emancipation,” particularly with respect to press freedom and women’s rights (von Trotha 2009: 44). Further, since war is a process of social disruption and change, the issue is not just one of finding the right compromise between peacekeepers’ values (as if they were unequivocal in a multi-nation mission) and local values (as if they were unequivocal in any society, let alone one in conflict). Stepping in to stop violence necessarily involves altering the course of that social conflict, and interacting with groups that have interests in directing change one way or another. A model of “first stop the fighting, then resolve the social conflicts,” is naïve. In general, it is important not to be drawn in by an image of the PKO as the only, or even the dominant, force in the dynamics of the situation. This would be to fall into the problems of trying to set the PKO up as a “universal controller,” a strategy for ensuring that vulnerability is not exploited that was rejected in Chapter 7. PKOs are often powerful influences, of course. But from the perspective of people on the ground, engaged in their own attempts to build systems of safety, they are only one actor. Factions, including armed actors, may attempt to leverage the PKO’s presence. Local NGOs and less formal organizations may see the PKO a rival or patron. Their main impact, seen from the ground, may be to exacerbate, bias, or suppress existing social conflicts (Pouligny 2006: 104–7). A PKO’s moral and strategic vision should be shaped by a self-conception as one actor operating in such a way as to make civilians safer, not as an organization that will, by its own force, provide safety. Civilian–PKO Alliances In addition to factors that generally embed peacekeepers’ actions in a social conflict, peacekeepers may find themselves more directly drawn into the orbit of particular civilian organizations. Civilians, especially those leading active self-protection or peace movements, and/or living through long conflicts, may not be making

Protecting with Civilians 303 “first contact” with internationals. As a result, civilian contacts may be well-versed in international protection concepts, and they will not be approaching the PKO as naïve actors. The women’s peace movement in Liberia was deeply linked to external actors by the time of its most prominent activism in the second civil war (well before the arrival of UNMIL peacekeepers), and began building strong international links early in the career of ECOMOG peacekeepers (Sewell 2007: 17–18; Fuest 2009: 128–30; Tyrrell 2010: 15–16). When we asked what had contributed to women’s increased willingness and ability to engage in peace activism, especially during the second war, we received several variations on the response that they had become connected to broader peace networks and sources of information. One woman told us that the involvement of the Liberian Women’s Initiative (LWI) in the Abuja peace talks in 1994 brought in international assistance that had not previously been forthcoming, and, that during the wars (between 1990 and 2003), “several Liberian women had the opportunity of having training on women’s rights, human rights and what have you.”12 The urbanization of Liberia’s population also seemed to help spread information among Liberians, both locally generated ideas and strategies and information that individuals were bringing back from international connections. One woman told us that “women who know” spread information from outside trainings to other women, especially in densely populated urban areas.13 Civilians, especially those with previous international contacts and training, may be savvy about seeking out alliances with PKOs. One of our interview partners was a member of an important women’s peace group. When asked about her group’s relationship with ECOMOG, she told us that it was very close and involved, “a lot of interaction.”14 In particular, she said that her group provided ECOMOG with a lot of information on the conflict and factions, and ECOMOG facilitated several of their meetings with warlords. Peacekeepers should expect organized locals to use the peacekeeping mission as part of their own strategy – one frequent characteristic of internationally linked advocates is that their strategies follow a “boomerang” pattern, where domestic obstacles are moved by going outside the country to enlist the aid of foreign or international agents (Keck and Sikkink 1999: 93–4). Savvy civilians can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the existence of well-organized civilian groups can provide an invaluable

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lever for peacekeepers trying to protect civilians – the information given to ECOMOG being only one example. And civilian organization is one of the most potent forms of civilian power. With and without international assistance, the women’s groups in Liberia did tremendous work, both on the war and on changing an environment in which the stories briefly related above were only some of the depressing narratives we heard. But on the other hand, civilians who know how PKOs “tick” may also use that information strategically. And even groups not setting out to cynically manipulate peacekeepers will inevitably (and in many cases quite reasonably) use their connections with peacekeepers to press their view of how things should change. The point is not to undermine the credibility of civilians, but just to realistically point out that assuming they are too innocent to be able to manipulate peacekeepers – to make use of peacekeepers’ tactical agency in service of the locals’ strategic agency – is to deny them due respect. Choosing Among Elites A non-Liberian example, the Community Liaison Interpreters (CLIs) attached to MONUC, helps illuminate the difficulties peacekeepers face in choosing how to work with civilian groups (Kahn 2010: 13–15). CLIs were Congolese nationals charged with translating for the peacekeepers, but more importantly serving as a bridge between the mission (particularly its Joint Protection Teams) and civilians. But their successes were mixed. Part of the reason was that they varied in the level of community engagement they were able to build: CLIs do not reach the entire community . . . CLIs appear to speak primarily with community leaders rather than the community at large. This fact, coupled with the lack of female CLIs, means that a significant number of voices are still not being heard. (ibid.: 14) This criticism still implies that it is possible to speak to “the community at large,” but how would this look? It could mean speaking to each member of the community individually – but even this approach would in some way reflect community structure. For instance, would it be harder to speak to women? Would children be included, and how?

Protecting with Civilians 305 Would CLIs speak to “whole communities” defined by boundaries natural on the ground (e.g. kin groups – and would these be “natural” to everyone?) or defined by the area of operations of the peacekeeping mission? Would they have an open door policy (who would feel comfortable coming? everyone equally?)? More probably, the solution would be to set up some form of community forum or consultation – which might be headed by the community leaders, or by (perhaps civilian) peacekeepers. In any event, once we consider the details of what it would mean to speak to “the community at large” we see that all of the concerns about civilian organizations and structures and their particular perspectives re-arise. The philosophical depth of this problem is that it brings us full circle to Chapter 3’s problems of consent. It is not just that it is difficult for peacekeepers to know “what Liberians want” – it is that there is arguably no such thing as what Liberians want in a situation like wartime or immediately post-war Liberia, precisely because of the damage to social institutions that peacekeepers are trying to repair. Peacekeepers need to approach civilian organizations in the way they approach the parties to the conflict, with an eye toward bringing them into a distributed system of deliberation, rather than framing the problem as one of finding out who speaks for the already-existing community. As was discussed in Chapter 3, the peacekeepers’ own moral commitments form an important normative background for developing distributed deliberation, joint projects, and meaningful consent based on shared values. But they do not do the whole job – simply imposing peacekeepers’ views leaves no room for the development of intersubjective values among the population in the area of operations, which is the ultimate point. So peacekeepers should not decide which local organizations to work with solely on the basis of their own judgments of which ones are good and which (morally) bad. Perhaps peacekeepers should recognize that they are always talking to organizations and just favor civilian organizations over ones that use violence. But trying to reduce the dilemma to the civilian/­combatant divide does an injustice to the decisions civilians make. One Liberian woman (speaking mostly about the 2000–3 war) told us that a big challenge for the women’s peace movement there was the fact that many women were supporters of the armed factions.15 Civilian women were involved with the armed groups in a number of ways. Some, like feeding combatants, would leave them clearly civilians on most

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understandings – but still undermined the task of building peace and mitigating the violent threat to civilians. Other such women, like market women who helped keep supplies of ammunition flowing, would fall into a more ambiguous category (Coady 2008: 112–13 introduces the helpful category of “ancillaries” for people in such positions). For this woman’s group, the challenge was to get women whose activities were helping sustain the conflict, and who possessed organization and social power, to agree that their overriding interest was in peace and not their kin-group or the short-term benefits offered by alliance with an armed faction, and to “face up” to their role in promoting the conflict. Even civilians who may initially seem to have no connection to the armed conflict may be part of the overall social system in which violence operates – for instance, one of the things this interlocutor talked about was needing to go to the market women and discuss with them the need to tell their sons to lay down their arms, sons who otherwise fought in the belief that they enjoyed familial sanction. The peace work thus involved both critique of “civilian” actors (like the combatants’ mothers) and engagement with at least ambiguously “combatant” actors, like women who transported ammunition for fighters. Peacekeepers who assume that all civilian organizations are “good” or that all organizations/individuals who serve a military or paramilitary role are to be kept at arm’s length may not be willing or conceptually able to make choices that are important to civilian allies. Also, consider the example of protection through clan allegiance in Somalia mentioned above – even though the clan’s “civil society” structure itself may have been “civilian,” at least part of the safety of belonging to a powerful clan surely came from the clan’s paramilitary assets. The relationship between political and armed actors in the environment is typically fluid and defies drawing of an easy conceptual line (see e.g. Pouligny 2006: 57–64). In addition, military peacekeepers are themselves purveyors of violence. If the peacekeepers begin to act in a way that supports the agenda of one civilian group over another, or over an armed faction, that “civilian” group is in fact now able to pursue its goals through violence, if indirectly. This is just a different version, in a sense, of protection by Somali clans – peacekeepers are a militarized part of a protection system that includes both civilian and combatant elements. Third, it may lead to an uncritical attitude toward civilian alliances. Peacekeepers have limited ability to support civilians and need to

Protecting with Civilians 307 choose whose information they will act on. If peacekeepers are given no other guidance than to work with civilian organizations that seem to be good ones from the peacekeepers’ perspective, this may smuggle partiality in through the back door. We do not, after all, simply assume that all non-armed groups in our own societies are purely focused on the common good. Similarly, in conflict areas, civil society groups may be nationalist, sectarian, “tribal,” tied to economic divides, sexist, or otherwise “uncivil” (see e.g. Belloni 2008). A more fruitful analytic distinction than violent–nonviolent, which misses the potential incivility of civil society groups, or moral–immoral, which risks simply imposing the peacekeepers’ own views of morality, is the distinction between “dividers” and “connectors” proposed by the “Do No Harm” project framework for humanitarian aid. Connectors are individuals, groups, institutions, and practices that link people in society, including across the divides that are salient to the conflict – the infrastructure of Barrs’ affinity techniques.16 Dividers, in contrast, are those elements of society – whether people, institutions, practices, or ideas – that separate people from each other, set their interests in opposition, and cause them to think of each other as rivals or enemies. This distinction does not line up with either the non/combatant distinction or the im/moral one. A multireligious armed “neighborhood watch” group may be a connector, and an NGO intent on ensuring accountability for war crimes by opposing an amnesty deal may be a divider. In addition, few groups (or ideas, or institutions) are unambiguously “connectors” or “dividers;” rather, they typically have connecting and divisive functions. A religion may bring people together across ethnic divides while sharpening sectarian divides. A marketplace may be neutral ground for armed groups, but a site of reproduction for other evils. For instance, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a large, initially unregulated (but later formalized and taxed) expanse of traders, the “Arizona market,” developed under the eye of UN and NATO forces. On the one hand, it was hailed by defenders as a place where the commerce would bring together people from the various ethnic factions, uniting them in mutually profitable trade (and thereby making it unattractive to resume fighting). On the other, detractors pointed to the black-market activities that flourished there, most infamously including the trafficking of women (for a critical discussion, see Haynes 2010). Unfortunately, both may have been right.

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The advantage of understanding the landscape of elites in terms of the connector/divider dichotomy is twofold. First, it focuses attention on the social role of the groups with which peacekeepers interact, rather than on their means and capacities. To return to my main theme, this highlights the way in which peacekeepers are not separate from social dynamics (not simply sitting above the fray and determining who deserves their protection and who does not on the basis of their conformance with an ideal). They can maintain some degree of impartiality through honestly recognizing the limits of that impartiality. Second, the ambiguity of the connector/divider identity opens up the possibility that the contribution of groups to violence and social conflict can be changed without having to alter their identities or moral/ ideological views. The question “Who can we interact with to pursue protection?” is subordinated to “How can we interact with civilian factions in a way that enhances their connective aspects while inhibiting their divisive ones?” The problem is not to support the Arizona market/the clans/the feminist peacebuilders or not; the problem is how to engage with them. Even the traditional worry that engaging with abusive actors will “legitimate” them is somewhat displaced – instead of assuming that interaction entails legitimacy, peacekeepers should look at how, precisely, their interaction will change the social dynamics in which legitimacy consists. Lederach provides a supporting idea – “mediative space” (Lederach 2005: 95). The idea of a mediative space is to create the possibility for engagement between diverse perspectives on the conflict – whether through literal space or through facilitating contact and discussion. Mediative space links us back to the caring virtues. The “space” of it requires a certain amount of restraint from peacekeepers – both literal restraint in the use of coercive techniques to divide “safe” from “unsafe” groups, but also a more subtle restraint in passing judgment, and deciding who must not be legitimated through engagement. It requires attentiveness from peacekeepers because they must be alert to which social fault lines are most likely to be ones that give rise to inequitable distinctions in precarity, and expose civilians to risk. And creating it, in addition to being an act of “moral imagination” that requires holding in abeyance the judgment that some groups are inevitably enemies, may also require a significant degree of literal, operational

Protecting with Civilians 309 creativity. For instance, one of the Liberian peacebuilders told us that, during the talks to end the 1999–2003 war, they needed to find a way to talk to some of the militant leaders without those men feeling as if they would lose public face: We met with them, one, one, one, different groups as warlords. We even had a time when the two warlords didn’t want the press involved, so we should meet in a bathroom – we went in the ­bathroom and met with them!17 Peacekeepers may have to be at least as creative in finding ways to keep people physically safe without physically dividing them and reinforcing social cleavages. The important conceptual shift for the peacekeeper is to stop thinking of himself as an outside agent who must decide which alliances to make, which will, importantly, involve deciding who should influence where and how he uses violence. Instead, he should start thinking of himself as a participant in a social process through which joint social interests can be worked out. This may require the creation of a mediative space for imagination both for the parties to the conflict, and for the peacekeeper himself. In considering the respective roles of peacekeepers and local agents, we should not take the “space” part of mediative space too metaphorically. In conflict situations, one barrier to changing conflictual relationships and to civilian self-protection in a more immediate sense can be literal physical space: barriers to communicating with those in other groups, barriers to flight, barriers to access to food and water, lack of violence-free spaces to pursue activities that in more normal times foster cross-communal relationships (e.g. trade). Peacekeepers can sometimes themselves exacerbate this problem, by creating security spaces with sharp boundaries – for instance, by cutting off any contact between civilians in a “safe zone” and armed factions (and other civilians, with whom there may be links of affinity) in a “red zone” (see e.g. Higate and Henry 2009, esp. chs. 3–4; Sewall, Raymond, and Chin 2010: 75–80). They may also reinforce social divisions and grievances by securing major urban areas and capitals (where the local elites tend to be concentrated), making safety and humanitarian assistance less available in suburban and rural areas (Pouligny 2006: 33–5). A significant part of peacekeeper creativity will be needed to rethink

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safety in a way other than the way militaries tend to conceive of it. For instance, Pouligny (ibid.: 102–4) describes how in Haiti (her period of analysis is the tenure of UNMIH in the 1990s) people in rural areas had responded to a long-term absence of effective state control by developing a system of protection based on “a code of relationships . . . based on reciprocity and mutual respect,” involving the clear placement of every individual within a family structure to which she was responsible and which was responsible for her; this system was extended to the suburbs and for a while “managed essentially to master internal violence.” The violence that concerned Haitians was “external” violence – primarily from the state. As the conflict and then the PKO progressed, this communal system began to break down, in large part because fragmented but undisarmed elements from the state and other armed actors were being dispersed into rural areas. On the one hand, such a system of protection may sound alien to many Westerners. Within that system, safety was based on particularistic relationships and negotiations. Furthermore, the fact that position within a hierarchical family structure affected how the rules applied might seem offensive to the Western ideal of an impersonal, even-handed, and implacable rule of law. But at the same time, it is not surprising that when the PKO attempted to keep control with statelike measures (and was similarly unable to extend its reach universally) with the aim of putting a state back in place over people who had not had positive experiences with a state, many Haitians engaged in strategies of avoidance against the peacekeepers themselves. Attentiveness to the views of Haitians may have blunted some of this, but even if the situation were perfectly understood, creativity would be necessary to productively hybridize what is good about the Haitian communal system with the advantages of the Western model.18 On the face of it, the ideal would be “saturation” – enough peacekeepers to function as a domestic police force and completely prevent violence. But this is prohibitively resource-intensive in most peacekeeping situations. In addition, it would risk losing the attractive aspects of hybridity. Peacekeepers who could single-handedly create a complete system of protection would not just be able to intercede in individual acts of violence or abuse; they would need to handle the definition of threats, monitoring of vulnerability, decisions about levels of acceptable risks, choices about which groups and individuals can interact with each other where and when, etc. This level of pervasive

Protecting with Civilians 311 influence would problematically – especially since their influence may not be immediately obvious to the peacekeepers themselves – entangle peacekeepers in the social conflicts that stand behind vulnerability, but as arbiters rather than partners.19 Protection-from vs. Protection-with Barring saturation, peacekeepers must create safety strategically. This is where the remarks about physical space come in – to create mediative spaces, peacekeepers cannot simply create safety from armed actors. They must create situations in which civilians can experience safety with members of other groups, including perhaps armed factions. Not only does this shift in approach provide moral guidance for peacekeeper interactions, it is one that allows peacekeepers their own active role in shaping where and how civilian vulnerabilities will manifest, so that they can proactively address threats rather than react to imminent ones. Protecting civilians by separating them from threats (“protectionfrom”) blocks mediative connections and sets peacekeeper agency at odds with local agency. Peacekeepers are in control to the extent that they can exercise control over the actions of civilians and those who threaten them (i.e. restrict their agency, even if benevolently). The outgroups (which typically include both combatants and those socially bound to them) are out until they accept the conditions for entry to the protected area – and negotiations about those conditions of entrance are generally carried out at leadership levels, where interests are most locked in and imagination hardest to exercise (the interventions of Liberian women at peace talks being a notable exception to the elite focus of many peace talks). This is potentially counterproductive for peace, and perhaps even for making the activities of civilian organizations wrapped up with self-protection effective. If I am right that peacekeepers working with locals cannot neatly divorce protection of civilians from influencing the social conflict in a more progressive direction, they need to note Lederach’s insight that “those building social change must intentionally seek to link people who are not like-minded and not like-situated in the context” (Lederach 2005: 84). This returns us to Chapter 7’s concept of protection-with, which involves greater risk, but also allows for new connections to be made between groups. While in an immediate crisis peacekeepers may not be able to make civilians safe

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here, now, the creation of a system of protection is a broader aim that conceptually involves providing safety for ongoing civilian activities including at interface points where they contact threatening groups – constructing these interface points as a rigid border is only one option, and my argument is that it should be a last resort. Conceiving of physical protection as aimed at protection-with is helpful precisely in that it allows the connections between self-­ protection, social change, and conflict transformation to be maintained. If peacekeepers focus only on physical protection without concerning themselves with working with local self-protection actors, they risk breaking all the links. If they focus on working with certain approved groups and protecting their own protection activities, they risk breaking the link between politics and conflict transformation. To recapitulate a bit, the fact that civilians organize to safely accomplish concrete projects means that self-protection is always for something (agenda) and for something that has become a matter of concrete conflict (in need of transformation). The other advantage of thinking of protection of civilians as ­protection-with is that we should not expect military peacekeepers to play the role of primary mediators and relationship-builders. What peacekeepers bring to the table is their ability to (ideally) create safety for themselves and others in their immediate vicinity. By accompanying and cooperating with civilians engaged in conflict resolution and selfprotection tasks, peacekeepers can make it possible for them to expand their activities. The creation of new relationships is still the work of the local civilians. If, to lean on the metaphor, peacekeepers can “open” mediative space by providing physical safety for civilians to interact, civilians and their organizations “fill” it. If interactions that help build a broader and more stable system of protection for civilians were safe in the absence of peacekeepers, the mission may not be needed. This should affect the strategic vision of peacekeepers. Even in the presence of an agreed ceasefire or peace treaty, they should not see the peace as “finished” and those who oppose the agreement as “spoilers” to be simply controlled, co-opted, deterred. Rather, they should seek connections with civilian organizations involved with self-protection, and as part of this cooperation actively seek opportunities to bring stakeholders into contact with each other – women, for example, should not have to fight to be heard because they are not the ones who took up weapons to fight physically (and not only women who can

Protecting with Civilians 313 “speak the language” of international actors should be heard, even if they provide a necessary entry point). Such a strategic vision is also coherent with the concept of consent as a relationship that must be gradually extended through bringing more and more of the polity into contact, discussed in Chapter 3. Finally, seeing the “how” of connection with civilian organizations this way pulls the sting of the “who.” Peacekeepers are not aligning themselves permanently with one side of a social conflict. They are focusing their protection activities on creating safer spaces in which to work those conflicts out concretely. This is not to be read as a matter of providing a global safe space; peacekeepers need to identify particular organizations and make them safe with other particular organizations. Nor is it primarily about creating spaces for them to negotiate, or talk – that may come, especially later when things are safe enough for civilian mediators. It is primarily about creating space for joint work on issues of concrete protection and life-sustaining activity. The ideal for military peacekeepers should not be just setting up a conference or workshop – though they may draw on peacebuilding insights, they should still remain primarily concerned for the creation of systems of protection, not general social rehabilitation. For instance, we pressed the woman who spoke with us about the need to reach out to women who had been supporting the fighters about what approach she and her comrades used. It was not just a matter of trying to get them to see where interest lay or even of moral suasion. An important part of their success was getting women involved actively in the peace movement itself.20 This gave them an alternative means of working to help their society, families, and friends, and that active involvement, she argued, was key to bringing women away from the factions. This makes perfect sense if we keep in mind that even people supporting the worst abuses generally believe that they are doing right. If they were supporting armed factions because they believed it was what was required of them as a member of their community, they needed to be shown a more attractive community with more attractive modes of belonging. It also shows a different face of mediative space. It is not just about creating space for people to come together: it is about fostering joint projects that expand the reach of the organizations that speak for this or that group of civilians. Through their links with whatever civilian organizations they ally with, peacekeepers should seek to foster greater practical involvement with other civilians.

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The ideal of creating mediative space, and thereby space for the expansion of systems of protection, through the provision of concrete protection-with is a realistic one, I believe, for military peacekeepers. It is neither too demanding, nor does it take them too far outside their comfort zone to become the primary mediators or peacemakers. That is not to say that it is easy, or will be realistic in all situations. The accomplishments of Liberian women under very difficult circumstances were impressive, but there may be some situations in which the violence is so immediate and overwhelming that protection-from needs to be the first priority. Fortunately, these situations seem to be rare outside genocides-in-progress and major assaults by industrialized militaries. Peacekeepers also need to be careful and honest about the protection they can provide within the limits of their mandate, any restrictive instructions from their national governments, and their equipment and training. Spaces that are on the border of zones of control are often the most dangerous for civilians, and peacekeepers should not encourage civilians to enter them unless they can be fairly certain of being able to provide effective protection. (On the danger of border zones, see Kalyvas 2006, esp. ch. 7 and §8.5; also see Chapter 8 of this book.) THREAT, NEGOTIATION, AND APPEAL

One way protection-with can be implemented, beyond being a philosopher’s construction, is through shifting the understanding of how peacekeepers’ military force relates to the political and “diplomatic” overtures of other actors. Many of my conversations in Liberia made me feel quite stupid. We were interested in the ways Liberian women approached armed actors to make peace and provide for their own protection, and conversations often went something like this: I would ask how they managed to get an armed actor to refrain from using violence in some way. The person I was talking to would say that they talked to them. I would press, wanting to know how this was done. This would be met with a look and a tone usually reserved for annoying children, and a reiteration that they talked to them. “So we just keep insisting, talking to them from time to time, time.”21 “Well, it took a lot. It took a lot of constant contacts and constant banging to even be heard.”22 Upon reflection, my colleague and I realized that we only found this answer mystifying

Protecting with Civilians 315 because we were in the grip of a particular kind of theory. Armed actors have more or less fixed preferences. Abusing civilians and otherwise engaging in violence helps them achieve their goals. Resistance to their abuses increases the cost of abuse. If the cost can be raised above the benefit, they will not abuse. This sort of rough model is behind much illuminating research on violence and the prevention of violence, including the work by Kalyvas that I relied on heavily in Chapter 8. But it makes very little room for talking, except as a pure exchange of information on intentions and preferences. Talking-as-informationexchange can be important, of course. If an armed group does not understand what actions will invite resistance or retaliation, it may mistakenly engage in abuses from which it would refrain under better information. What the Liberian women were talking to us about, however, was a different kind of talking, that relied on the possibility of changing the interlocutor’s views, not just informing him of the consequences. For the sake of clarity, let us call talking that centers on informing the interlocutor of one’s own interests and intentions, with the aim of finding an outcome that maximizes one’s own advantage, negotiation. Then we can label conversation that seeks to change the way that the interlocutor sees things, possibly creating new interests or reshaping old ones, appeal. Consider two stories that we were told about talking, first from a woman who had participated in a delegation to Guinea to seek thenpresident Lansana Conté’s help in bringing Charles Taylor to peace negotiations (Guinea, like most of Liberia’s other neighbors, having been drawn into the war, and credibly accused of backing armed ­factions there): We met Conté, we started talking to him, we told him why we were there, we told him what the women were suffering, what we were suffering, we could not sit back and let our country deteriorate, we told him people were dying and he had to do something . . . the eldest of all of us, she said Conté, look, President Conté, we are suffering, we are suffering! If you do not agree to talk, if you do not want to talk with Taylor, we will lock you and Taylor up in one room! We will keep the key! We will not give it back to you until you start talking, and then we will bring the two of you out. And President Conté was so carried away he said “Huh!” He started laughing, he said, “OK, look, let me tell you,” he said, “You are my

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mothers, you are my sisters.” He said, “You are come because of peace.” He said, “All of the organizations that have come speaking to us, the United Nations, the US, the OECD countries, they have their own interests. So I don’t entirely trust those people when they are talking about peace, peace, peace. But I trust you. You are the people I trust. Why? Because you are my mothers. You are my sisters. You know pain. You brought me into this world with pain.”23 A member of NGO staff who worked with women peacemakers in the post-war period in rural communities related the following story about a situation one of her Liberian partners had managed to defuse.24 In Liberia, moped and motorcycle “taxis” are a common sight, and many of them are driven by young male ex-combatants. In one rural community a truck driver had struck and killed a young man on one of these bikes, and the motorcycle “union” was threatening to retaliate, forcing the police to put the truck driver in protective custody – but given the military background of many of the motorcycle drivers and the fact that they might still have had access to weapons, the truck driver was not safe. Women from the peace group in the community went to talk to the family of the slain young man, to try to convince them to forgive the truck driver. Our interlocutor was clear that they had nothing in particular to offer the family as an incentive for ­forgiveness – all they could do was approach them humbly, mourn the death of their son with them, and plead with them to help avert violence.25 Eventually, they were able to convince the family to forgive the truck driver, and they went with the family to convince his comrades in the union not to retaliate. As our interlocutor put it, “when they show respect to each other, it works.” Neither of these stories is a story of successful negotiations. The Liberian women had nothing to offer Conté and could not actually make good on their threat of locking him in a room with Taylor. The rural “peace women” could not bring the young motorcycle driver back, or punish the family for retaliation. It is not even clear that in either case an argument for something like “enlightened self-interest” was or could have been made – perhaps the rural family could have been convinced that contributing to the cycle of violence that persisted even in post-war Liberia was bad for them personally, but this is a very roundabout argument.26 It makes more sense to take the stories at

Protecting with Civilians 317 face value, as cases in which talking to someone helped change their views in a way that averted violence. They are appeals rather than negotiations. These appeals rely on a particularistic, emotional, humanizing connection. Appealing to human rights in the abstract is unlikely to have much effect – we can assume that no abuser will be surprised on an intellectual level to learn that her targets are human beings or that her actions violate international law. But appeal does not rely on humanity in the abstract, but rather on making an emotional connection in the particular. In the case of the discussion with Conté, what seems to have brought him round was not a consideration of the abstract human rights of Liberians, or even abstract reflection on the honor due to mothers.27 Rather, it was being “carried away” into laughter. This is similar to the “naked soldier” effect – someone with whom you are laughing, or mourning, is someone it is hard to kill or condemn to abuse. And that opened the door to recognizing in the women an exposure to pain and vulnerability that Conté could identify with, relating it to his vulnerability as a soldier. As Butler points out, when we recognize the fragility of human lives, the unequal and inequitable distribution of precarity in the actual world starts to look morally obtuse (Butler 2010: 22–3). What these stories of appeal add is a recognition that, while Butler’s argument for the need to “think precariousness in terms of equality” is based on an abstract, transcendental argument, appeal motivates people to want to equalize precarity through a more visceral, concrete recognition that can work where the abstract argument would seem irrelevant. Were it my child who was killed by a reckless driver, I am not sure that reflections on abstract morality would stop me from desiring retaliation, even though in calm moments (like the one I enjoy as I write this) I do not think retaliation would be moral. But facing weeping, pleading women imploring me to mercy and sharing my grief might very well. Appeal also makes sense in the context of the psychological impacts of violence I discuss in Chapter 6. Violence and trauma tend to create and harden divisions, and make people less able to work together and create Chapter 2’s intersubjective values. Mourning, as discussed there, and as it arises in the second story, can be an important part of overcoming this. If we think of violent and/or abusive actors as simply desiring some end and being callous about the use of violence to achieve it, peacekeepers risk missing opportunities. In at least some

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cases, making space for or even assisting in mourning might change the emotion-laden viewpoint of someone who frames her ends in such a way that they can be achieved violently or abusively. The particularism and emotional nature of appeal point to at least two implications for peacekeepers. First, they reinforce the importance of protection-with. The sharp classifications of protection-from risk blocking the kinds of emotional contact that underlie and facilitate appeal. In some cases, merely thinking about someone else’s circumstances may be enough to humanize them and invoke constructive attitudes of reciprocity and care toward them. But for most people, much of the time, actual contact is important as well for sparking our visceral, emotional connections with others, and building politicalphysiological links that animate joint action. We may be surprised – given our limited moral imaginations – by how we feel for and about someone once we are brought face to face with either their pain or their laughter, but we will have no opportunity for that surprise if we have decided in advance who it is safe to encounter and who it is not. Peace thrives on the surprising changes that only impurity, admixture, and miscegenation can bring about. And some of our interlocutors reinforced the importance of making people safe together to build peace. For instance, one of the Liberian peacebuilders, when asked in what ways the presence of ECOMOG made her attempts to build peace easier (or more difficult), told us that one of the PKO’s key contributions was providing security for a meeting between women from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, so that they could be with each other in relative safety. If they had to rely only on militants aligned with their national communities, they would have had much more trouble coming together. Second, they cast the force that peacekeepers can use in a different light. Peacekeepers can use force as a threat, for purposes of compellence or deterrence. This fits naturally with talking-as-negotiation. If you know that peacekeepers will shoot you if you engage in violence, this raises the costs of violence and makes it less attractive. But threat is much more problematic in a context of appeal – the presence of a threatening military force may actually make appeal more difficult. If we think of talking as always negotiation, the discussion of minimization of force in Chapter 5 may seem wrong-headed, as more decisive, abrupt, and overwhelming force is a greater threat. But if we understand that appeal is playing an important role in how civilians

Protecting with Civilians 319 are building safety for themselves, a more measured approach to force becomes more attractive. Peacekeepers providing protection-with may have better success if force is de-emphasized and held in reserve only as a means of making other interactions possible, rather than as a key part of the relation to armed groups. It is difficult to prove in any meaningful way that appeal plays a large role in peacebuilding, though I think these stories are very suggestive, and the idea is morally congenial to the framework I have argued for. Appeal will probably not work in conflict situations without plenty of negotiation as well. But its importance should not be downplayed. For an anecdote from the other side, consider the case of Joshua Milton Blahyi, better known in Liberia as the infamous “General ButtNaked,” a leader in the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) faction noted for his magical powers (a belief in magical protection encouraged him to go into battle naked and protected from bullets, earning him his nom de guerre). Blahyi claims to have received magical instruction from a violent spirit protector of his tribe, and important in his account of that spirit is the fact that its protection required that the tribe observe a ban on touching or eating kola nuts (Blahyi 2011: 50, 137). The reason, he explained, is that this prevented his tribe from having normal peaceful relations with other tribes – kola nuts are central to rituals of peaceful greeting and acceptance in parts of Liberia (and elsewhere in West Africa). Disrupting rituals of ­acceptance – that made members of tribes safe with each other despite other tensions – condemned his tribe to much more violent encounters. And in the end, he explains his conversion to Christianity and renunciation of violence by telling the story of how members of a local church came repeatedly to see him in Monrovia and talk to him, at risk to their own lives. They returned no matter how many times he turned them away (ibid.: 199–205). Blahyi gives credit for his conversion and the “defeat” of the spirit he previously worshipped to the power of Christ, a claim that is even further beyond the scope of this discussion to assess than the value of appeal – but his account is also consistent with a view that places explanatory weight on disrupting norms of peaceful communion during his violent time, and the power of contact to humanize people in his later dealings with the Church.28

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Peacekeepers who do not recognize the presence of organized, directed civilian groups already engaged in self-protection strategies risk disrupting those strategies – possibly endangering civilians further, especially in areas where peacekeepers’ ability to project safety on their own is limited – and depriving themselves of connections that are resources for protection. But peacekeepers who ally with civilian groups need to recognize that the connection goes both ways, and they are now part of savvy civilian strategies to affect the socio-political situation. The activities of Liberian women show the ways in which civilians can be both quite active on their own behalf and also savvy about their own socio-political goals and their relationship to peacekeepers. These problems can be concealed if we focus on protection of civilians primarily in the moment when civilians are at immediate risk of violent death or abuse. A broader perspective reveals that people are protected by social systems that deflect threats, protect from immediate attack, and mitigate damage. Peacekeepers who recognize that their protection activities should be seen as the creation of such systems will see new opportunities and pitfalls in working with civilians, but can also glean much insight from peacebuilding analysis that may initially seem irrelevant to military protection of civilians. The way out of the dilemma of which civilians to work with and how is through peacekeepers who embrace the fact that they affect the socio-political situation by their presence working with civilians to extend their own work, while also focusing on making it safe for that work to involve fruitful contact with other groups, with other agendas. A shift from a focus on protection-from to protection-with may seem subtle, but opens up far more possibilities for imaginative connections between peacekeepers and populations they are trying to help. On a more philosophical level, this approach does require peacekeepers to embrace the fact that they are now part of the conflict s­ituation, in a way that may offend against some concepts of ­impartiality – they must actively try to shape the political environment, not just the security environment. All I can say to this is that, regardless of their intentions, they are shaping the political environment no matter what they do (safe zones are as separating as mediating spaces are joining). Any concept of impartiality that cannot accept that is unworkable.

Protecting with Civilians 321 Notes   1. Interview 33.   2. For a brief review of the literature, see the introduction to Chapter 7.   3. Interview 29.  4. I am indebted to conversations with Guy Hammond and Casey Barrs for clarifying some of the nuances of and potential pitfalls attending the taxonomy.   5. Interview 38.   6. In fact, as a matter of “context of discovery,” it was these conversations that initially sparked my thinking on Chapter 7’s framework.   7. Interview 29.   8. In fact, individuals facing existential threats may be especially vulnerable if they do not have commitments that transcend their own situation. The classic study of this phenomenon is Frankl’s (1997) reflections on survival in Nazi concentration camps. See also Corbett’s (2011, §3.4) discussion of the importance of unity, rights, and even fun in Nuba self-protection.   9. Interviews 32, 33, 35. 10. Interview 35. 11. Interviews 35 and 33, respectively. 12. Interview 35. 13. Interview 32. 14. Interview 38. 15. Interview 33. 16. Anderson and her collaborators differ slightly in terminology in different project publications. In her 1999 book (1999, ch. 3, esp. 24) she seems to equate connectors with “capacities for peace;” but, the Do No Harm project’s 2000 practitioner manual (Anderson 2000: 11–12) distinguishes between aspects of society that connect and those that provide capacity for peace. Given the centrality of fostering connection to the manual’s model of peacebuilding, however, this seems to be a distinction without a difference. Similarly, I will assume that “dividers,” “tensions,” and “capacities for war” are more or less synonymous. 17. Interview 38. 18. This echoes the dilemmas associated with the goal of extending the reach of the Congolese state, discussed in Chapter 8. 19. In a nutshell, this is just a special case of the complaint that peacekeeping aims to establish a “liberal peace” that purports to be value-neutral, but is not. 20. Interview 33. 21. Interview 38. 22. Interview 35.

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23. Interview 38. 24. Interview 39. This story is paraphrased as the interview partner did not consent to audio recording. 25. The phrases “humbly,” “mourn,” and “plead” are taken verbatim from interview notes. 26. It may also suffer from free-rider problems; if they desired vengeance, forgoing it in this one case would not suddenly have made Liberia peaceful overall. 27. As a side note, while the idea that Liberian women were able to trade on their social status as “mothers” to shame or cow warlords into complying with their demands is a fairly common one in discussions of the peace work there, our interviews did not consistently support this view. Some people we spoke with thought the “mother” image was very important, while others said that the social norms were so damaged in the war that expecting deference just as a “mother” was useless for peace work. 28. It should be noted that not everyone buys Blahyi’s conversion story. Interview 39, in particular, mentioned him specifically and claimed that he was a charlatan who was simply now making money by peddling an attractive religious story. But even if Blahyi is cynical, the fact that his story makes sense, and that he would tell it in this way, is interesting for thinking about the ways in which we can try to approach violent and abusive individuals.

Chapter 10 CONCLUSION

The complex nature of peacekeeping means that even a book-length discussion like this one will end up leaving things out. There are certainly peacekeeping missions that could have been discussed, which raise unique issues. And there is much more to be said about the PKOs, like AMIS, MONUC, and UNOSOM, that I have spent time talking about here. There are entire issues that arise in the context of PKOs that I have not been able to delve into in any detail – intelligence, DDRRR, Security Sector Reform (SSR), child protection, the focus on “winning hearts and minds” imported to peacekeeping from counterinsurgency theory – and details of the issues I have discussed that I have neglected to take into account. Not to mention that the military is only one aspect of the peacekeeping mission. Despite these limits, I hope to have developed the basis for a theory of peacekeeping that maintains its “honorable distinction” from warfighting, even in the face of the task that has given rise to the most insistent calls for robust, counterinsurgency-like action by peacekeepers, the protection of civilians from violence and other human rights abuses. Central to this account is the idea that we should take seriously the principle that peacekeepers have no enemies – and many peacekeepers in the field do seem to take that idea seriously. To do it justice, we should embrace the fact that peacekeeping has elements of governance and policing as well as war, and see it through the lens of a cooperative project with the people in the area of operations, rather than (like war) as something that suspends normal moral rules toward the enemy and from which non-enemies mostly need to be insulated. This means radically rejecting the concept of an enemy, not smuggling it in even under the language of “spoilers,” and trying to conduct operations in such a 323

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way as to permit and encourage contact between members of different social factions. In the end, the peacekeeper’s obligation to protect civilians is more fundamentally tied to her peacekeeping role than just through the fact that wars often endanger civilians and peacekeepers can often protect them. Protecting civilians ultimately means reforming the social systems that inequitably distribute precarity – and war is a mode of social organization in which inequitable exposure to risk runs rampant. If we embrace something more than the thinnest concept of peace, and concern ourselves with the threats and exploitations and vulnerabilities that can remain even where military violence is absent, it turns out that peace and protection of civilians are two aspects of the same phenomenon, social relationships in which values are widely shared, and in which people pursue their aims cooperatively, respectfully, and with reciprocity. Perfect reciprocity is a utopian ideal that is never achieved in even the most stable societies, and so we should expect perfection even less in the context of peacekeeping. But peacekeepers can disrupt hierarchies enforced through violence, and make it safe for people to be with others who normally stand across social divides. So it is not too much to ask that peacekeepers begin the task of cooperation, by making the area of operations safe for joint action, creative encounter, and practical rapprochement. I have found no better analytical framework for thinking through how peacekeepers ought to act than the old-fashioned “holy trinity” of peacekeeping principles, and I hope I have made the case that they can and should be interpreted in ways that do not make them look like relics of past restrictions on UN action. Consent is not just a matter of asking permission from abusive states to act; it focuses peacekeepers on the need to ensure that they are partners with the local population and power centers, part of the political community’s own healing process, and not just imposing a “solution” from outside. Impartiality does not need to mean either taking no stand or elevating the peacekeepers’ own views beyond politics; it can represent genuine openness to considering a variety of perspectives, so long as they are meaningfully focused on achieving peace, and understanding the ways in which even abusive groups attempt to justify themselves. And minimum use of force does not need to mean passivity or unwillingness to live up to the mandate, just an unwillingness to initiate the use of force or to accept a blanket assumption that the way to deal with recalcitrant

Conclusion 325 groups is to punish their failure to comply – rather than to recognize the genuine social divides, anger, fear, and trauma that drive many conflict dynamics. This book may be entirely wrong-headed in its skepticism of robustness and emphasis on, effectively, humility in peacekeeping forces. Where possible, I have tried to be clearly and explicitly wrong rather than hedge my bets. But I think that a cooperative, less robust concept of military operations to midwife peace and protect human rights is worth considering as R2P settles into the lexicon and we tend to hear more criticism of states’ failure to use overwhelming military force than of their overreach. And I think that the limitations of full-on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations, such as the US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, should give us pause if we assume that moving toward peace enforcement operations with stronger mandates and more firepower, in areas where once peacekeepers may have been deployed, will be a panacea. Even where such forces are deployed, we should always keep in mind that there are other practices to hold people responsible besides punishment and defeat, and everyone involved is a person who values something, who cares about someone, and who fears death. I would like to give one of my interview partners the last word, a brief story which I have not been able to make into a clear example of any theoretical point in the book, but which I hate to leave out, as I have often found myself reflecting on it when problems of war and violence seem hopeless, and I need my faith in the moral imagination and the importance of people living together renewed: I will be in my accommodation [in Bosnia], and the door will ring. And she [his landlady] will come in and sit with me. I don’t understand their language and this lady doesn’t understand English, and we will be conversing by signs. And then I will cook, and they will come and participate in the eating. Now, if I were given the opportunity, if I were given the chance to visit that woman again, if she is still alive, I would like it. Because the lady was very very nice to me.1 Note 1. Interview 30.

APPENDIX A

ACRONYMS

ACOTA AFRICOM AMIS AMISOM APC ASF AU CASO CIVPOL CLI CNDP CNP ConOps DDRRR DPA DPKO DRC ECOMOG ECOWAS EU FAR

Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (US) US Africa Command African Union Mission in Sudan African Union Mission in Somalia Armored Personnel Carrier African Standby Force African Union Cordon and Search Operation Civilian Police Officer (typically UN) Community Liaison Interpreter (DRC) Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (National Congress for the Defense of the People) (DRC) Congolese National Police (DRC) Concept of Operations Demobilization, Disarmament, Repatriation, Resettlement, and Reintegration Darfur Peace Agreement Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UN) Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa) ECOWAS (Ceasefire) Monitoring Group (Liberia) Economic Community of West African States European Union Forces Armées Rwandaises (Armed Forces of Rwanda, pre-1994) 329

330 FARDC

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Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo) FDLR Forces Démocratique de Libération du Rwanda (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) (DRC) FRPI Forces de Résistance Patriotique d’Ituri (Front for Patriotic Resistance in Ituri) (DRC) GAF Ghana Armed Forces GoS Government of Sudan HRW Human Rights Watch ICC International Criminal Court ICG International Crisis Group ICISS International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty IDF Israeli Defense Force IDP Internally Displaced Person IEMF Interim Emergency Multinational Force (DRC) IHL International Humanitarian Law ISAF International Security Assistance Force (Afghanistan) JEM Justice and Equality Movement (Sudan) KFOR Kosovo Force KLA Kosovo Liberation Army KPC Kosovo Protection Corps M23 March 23rd Movement (DRC) MARO Mass Atrocity Response Operations MINUSTAH Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en Haïti (United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti) MONUC Mission des Nations Unies en République Démocratique du Congo (United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) MONUSCO Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en République Démocratique du Congo (United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo) MOU Memorandum of Understanding NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Acronyms 331 NORDCAPS Nordic Coordinated Arrangement for Military Peace Support OAU Organization of African Unity OIOS Office of Internal Oversight Services (UN) ONUC Opération des Nations Unies au Congo (United Nations Operation in the Congo) ONUCI Opération des Nations Unies en Côte d’Ivoire (UN Operation in the Ivory Coast) PoC Protection of Civilians PKO Peacekeeping Operation PKSOI Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (United States Army War College) PRIO Peace Research Institute Oslo PSO Peace Support Operation PTSD Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder R2P Responsibility to Protect ROE Rules of Engagement RUD Rally for Unity and Democracy (Rwanda) RUF Revolutionary United Front (Sierra Leone) SEA Sexual Exploitation and/or Abuse SLA Sudan Liberation Army SNA Somali National Alliance SOFA Status-of-forces Agreement SOP Standard Operating Procedures SRSG Special Representative of the Secretary-General SSR Security Sector Reform TCC Troop-contributing Country TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission UK United Kingdom ULIMO United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy ULIMO-J United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy – Johnson UN United Nations UNAMID African Union/United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur UNAMIR United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda UNAMSIL United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone UNEF I First United Nations Emergency Force

332 UNEF II UNFICYP UNGA UNIBAM UNIFIL UNITAF UNMIH UNMIK

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Second United Nations Emergency Force United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus United Nations General Assembly United Nations Infantry Battalion Manual United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon Unified Task Force (Operation Restore Hope) United Nations Mission in Haiti United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo UNMIS United Nations Mission in Sudan UNOSOM I First United Nations Operation in Somalia UNOSOM II Second United Nations Operation in Somalia UNPROFOR United Nations Protection Force UNSC United Nations Security Council UNTSO United Nations Truce Supervision Organization US United States USLO United States Liaison Office (Somalia) USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics WWII World War II

APPENDIX B

INTERVIEWS

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Interview 14: Male Rwandan officer. Kigali, Rwanda. December 2009. Interview 15: Male Indian officer. Goma, DRC. November 2009. Interview 16: Male French member of MONUC civilian staff. Goma, DRC. November 2009. Interview 17: Male Rwandan officer. Kigali, Rwanda. December 2009. Interview 18: Two male Indian MONUC officers. Goma, DRC. November 2009. Interview 19: Male American member of MONUC civilian staff. Goma, DRC. November 2009. Interview 20: Male Pakistani member of DPKO staff. New York, US. May 2009. Interview 21: Male Rwandan officer. Kigali, Rwanda. December 2009. Interview 22: Male Ghanaian officer. Accra, Ghana. July 2009. Interview 23: Male Rwandan officer. Kigali, Rwanda. December 2009. Interview 24: Male Rwandan officer. Washington, DC. October 2009. Interview 25: Female American civilian member of AFRICOM. Stuttgart, Germany. July 2010. Interview 26: Male French member of DPKO staff. New York, NY. May 2009. Interview 27: Two male Ghanaian police officers set to deploy to UNAMID. Accra, Ghana. July 2009. Interview 28: Female Ghanaian police trainer. Accra, Ghana. July 2009. Interview 29: Male Liberian scholar and female German scholar. Monrovia, Liberia. June 2011. Interview 30: Male Ghanaian police officer. Accra, Ghana. July 2009. Interview 31: Male Ghanaian police officer. Accra, Ghana. July 2009. Interview 32: Female Liberian member of an NGO. Monrovia, Liberia. June 2011. Interview 33: Female Liberian member of an NGO. Congo Town, Liberia. June 2011. Interview 34: Female French member of MONUC civilian staff. Goma, DRC. November 2009.

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Interview 35: Female Liberian member of an NGO. Monrovia, Liberia. June 2011. Interview 36: Female Liberian police officer set to deploy to UNAMID. Accra, Ghana. July 2009. Interview 37: Female American member of DPKO staff. New York, NY. May 2009. Interview 38: Female Liberian member of an NGO. Monrovia, Liberia. June 2011. Interview 39: Female American member of an NGO. Monrovia, Liberia. June 2011.

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INDEX

Afghanistan, 301; see also counterinsurgency; ISAF African Union (AU), 7, 9, 13, 126, 138, 140, 145, 217, 242, 246, 253, 274 constitutive act of the, 9, 138 African Union Mission in Somalia see AMISOM African Union Mission in Sudan see AMIS African Union/United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur see UNAMID African Union – United Nations Mission in Darfur see UNAMID Agenda for Peace, An, 35 Aideed, Mohamed Farah Hassan see Aidid, Mohamed Farah Hassan Aidid, Mohamed Farah Hassan, 179–80, 208–10; see also UNITAF; UNOSOM I; UNOSOM II Amani Leo, Operation, 260, 276; see also Congo, Democratic Republic of; MONUSCO AMIS (African Union Mission in Sudan), 9, 30–1, 55–6, 63, 86–8, 113, 125–6, 139–41, 169, 171, 200, 246–7, 253; see also Sudan; UNAMID AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia), 9, 145 Andersen, Mary, 307 anger, 50, 58, 62, 64, 94, 152, 174–5, 179, 184–5, 204–7, 244, 263, 325; see also political physiology, trauma Annan, Kofi, 36–7, 42 appeal, 314–19 Arendt, Hannah, 198–9, 203–4 Artemis, Operation, 54–5; see also Congo, Democratic Republic of; MONUC attentiveness, 60–3, 98–9, 122, 125–7, 151–2, 174, 180–5, 225, 254, 283, 299, 308, 310 definition, 60 see also care ethics AU see African Union Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine), 50, 179 Autesserre, Séverine, 273, 277 Ban Ki-Moon, 42–3 Barrs, Casey, 290–2, 294, 307

Bellamy, Alex, 11–12, 27 Blahyi, Joshua Milton, 319 Blocq, Daniel, 61–2 Bosnia, 202, 241, 307 Srebrenica, 37, 167 see also UNPROFOR Brahimi Report (Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations), 37–8, 41, 108, 110, 111–12, 113 Braithwaite, John, 149–52 Butler, Judith, 206–7, 215, 230–1, 233, 317; see also mourning; precarity Cammaert, Patrick, 158–9, 172–3, 205; see also MONUC care ethics, 56–60, 66; see also attentiveness; creativity; Engster, Daniel; Held, Virginia; Slote, Michael; restraint; Ruddick, Sara; Tronto, Joan chapter “six-and-a-half” missions see Charter of the United Nations Chapter VI see Charter of the United Nations Chapter VII see Charter of the United Nations Chapter VIII see Charter of the United Nations Charter of the United Nations, 6, 9, 12, 34, 75, 104, 107–8, 110, 115 “chapter six-and-a-half,” 9 Chapter VI, 9, 12, 41 Chapter VII, 9, 10, 12–13, 39, 41, 103–4 Chapter VIII, 9–10 civilian protection see civilians civilians coercion of, 142–153 political agency of, 288–9, 293, 304, 311 protection of, 36–43, 103, 111–12, 137–8, 140, 215–320 protection-with, 97–8, 250–3 self-protection, 287–320 see also responsibility to protect CNDP (Congrès Nationale pour la Défense du Peuple), 182, 259–61, 265–6, 268, 271–2, 276, 278; see also Congo, Democratic Republic of

358

Index 359 Coady, C. A. J., 32–3, 121, 194, 306; see also jus ad bellum; jus in bello Colombia, 312 Congo, Democratic Republic of, 12, 16, 33, 54–5, 62, 145, 161, 181, 217, 241, 243, 258–84; see also Amani Leo, Operation; Artemis, Operation; CNDP; FARDC; FDLR; Kimia II, Operation; M23; MONUC; MONUSCO; ONUC; Umoja Wetu Congrès Nationale pour la Défense du Peuple see CNDP consent, 12, 14–15, 27, 34, 37, 40–2, 73–100, 118, 120, 122, 125, 126, 132–3, 149–50, 152, 163, 184, 188, 235–6, 247, 269, 275, 281–2, 305, 313, 324 definition, 73 see also deliberation; will of the people cordon and search operations, 8, 133, 142, 144–7, 149, 152, 224, 252 counterinsurgency, 26, 143–4, 177, 178, 269, 270–1, 274 courageous restraint see McChrystal, Stanley creativity, 14, 59, 63, 64–6, 84, 95, 98–9, 122, 151–2, 154, 174, 185–7, 219, 254, 283, 308–10; see also care ethics; moral imagination curfews, 133, 142, 144, 145–6, 148, 152 Dallaire, Romeo, 110, 111, 113; see also Rwanda; UNAMIR Darfur see AMIS; Sudan; UNAMID deliberation, 80–99, 125, 126, 149–51, 186, 236, 277, 279, 281, 305; see also consent; Pettit, Philip; Richardson, Henry; values; will of the people discrimination (distinction), principle of see jus in bello displaced persons, 86, 126, 172, 197, 200, 202, 233, 246, 291, 293 doctrine, 6, 7, 14, 16, 22, 26, 28, 42, 76, 81, 90, 92, 104, 108, 110, 114, 135–6, 138, 140, 141, 217, 292; see also mandate Doyle, Michael, 204 Durch, William, 13, 244–5 ECOMOG (Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group), 10, 62, 137, 138–9, 184, 218, 233, 243, 245, 294, 303–4, 318 Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group see ECOMOG Engster, Daniel, 57, 60–2; see also care ethics Enloe, Cynthia, 176, 241–2 ethics of care see care ethics ethnic cleansing see genocide EU see European Union European Union (EU), 7, 13, 54–5; see also Artemis, Operation evil, 5, 29–33, 38, 45–7, 50, 55, 62, 87, 113, 127, 161, 181–2, 210, 273, 282, 283, 302; see also impartiality; moral imagination

FARDC (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo), 55, 144, 158, 181–2, 210, 215, 258, 260–1, 264–6, 268–73, 275–8, 281–3; see also Congo, Democratic Republic of FDLR (Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda), 16, 125, 258–61, 264–73, 275–6, 278–9, 281–3; see also Congo, Democratic Republic of; Rwanda fear, 32, 50, 58, 62, 64, 66, 94, 152, 174, 176, 179, 184–5, 193, 196, 197–9, 202–3, 205–7, 208, 226, 263, 325; see also political physiology; trauma Findlay, Trevor, 134 force protection see use of force Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo see FARDC Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda see FDLR Gandhi, Mahatma, 165–6, 173, 176, 179 General “Butt-Naked” see Blayhyi, Joshua Milton Geneva Conventions, 155 genocide, 9, 24, 25, 28–9, 31, 36, 38, 42, 47, 104, 138, 181–2, 195, 216, 235, 240, 251, 258, 259–64, 268, 270–1, 273, 278, 299, 314 Ghana, 139, 172, 177 Goodin, Robert, 222–5, 235, 237–9, 244, 247–9, 290; see also vulnerability graduated force see use of force Hague Conventions, 157 Haiti, 4, 147, 216, 299, 310; see also MINUSTAH; UNMIH Hammarskjöld, Dag, 6, 16, 34, 75, 103–4, 106–7, 118, 133–4, 136, 142, 166–7 Hedges, Chris, 202 Held, Virginia, 57–8, 60; see also care ethics Holt, Victoria, 39, 216, 218, 221 human rights, 3–4, 8, 26, 29–30, 33, 36, 37, 39–41, 42–6, 49–50, 54, 61, 73, 94–5, 98, 103, 108, 110, 112–13, 114, 120, 124, 126–7, 137, 215, 222, 245–6, 258, 268, 275, 278, 282, 287, 288–9, 295–6, 301–3, 317, 323, 325; see also evil; responsibility to protect; values humanitarian intervention see responsibility to protect ICC see International Criminal Court IDF see Israeli Defense Forces IDPs see displaced persons impartiality, 4, 15, 34, 37, 43, 75, 102–29, 170, 184, 220, 235–6, 268–9, 270, 281–2, 288, 297, 301–2, 308, 320 definition, 103–6 In Larger Freedom, 42 internally displaced persons see displaced persons International Criminal Court (ICC), 146, 155

360 international humanitarian law see Geneva Conventions, Hague Conventions International Security Assistance Force see ISAF Iraq, 4, 170, 240, 274, 325; see also counterinsurgency; Provide Comfort, Operation ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), 27; see also Afghanistan; NATO Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), 171, 186 Janowitz, Morris, 59 Johnstone, Ian, 89–90, 94, 96; see also consent jus ad bellum, 3, 5–6, 49, 74–5, 77, 160 consent as, 74–6, 77 just cause, 3, 49 see also jus in bello; jus post bellum jus in bello, 3, 10, 15, 20, 21, 23, 50, 74, 132, 146, 147, 153–4, 160, 178, 180, 240, 263 consent as 74–6 discrimination (distinction) 3, 64, 132–3, 142, 146–8, 164, 263 due care 154–6 proportionality (narrow) 142, 154, 156–68, 181 proportionality (wide) 154–6, 162 right intention as an element of 49–50 see also Augustine of Hippo; Coady, C. A. J.; jus ad bellum; jus post bellum; McMahan, Jeff; Pfaff, Tony; Walzer, Michael jus post bellum, 21; see also jus ad bellum; jus in bello just war see jus ad bellum; jus in bello; jus post bellum Kalyvas, Stathis, 198, 262–5, 314 Kant, Immanuel, 14, 21, 24, 46–8, 51 KFOR (Kosovo Force), 4, 56; see also Kosovo, NATO Kimia II, Operation, 258–84; see also Amani Leo, Operation; CNDP; Congo, Democratic Republic of; FARDC; FDLR; MONUC; Umoja Wetu Kleinig, John, 148; see also police Korsgaard, Christine, 21, 43, 48–53, 58, 61; see also reciprocity; respect; values Kosovo, 4, 33, 37, 56; see also KFOR, UNMIK Kosovo Force see KFOR Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), 56; see also Kosovo KPC see Kosovo Protection Corps Lederach, John Paul, 25, 31, 64, 250, 254, 287, 308, 311; see also moral imagination Leitenberg, Milton, 240–1 Liberia, 138–9, 184, 187, 229–30, 232–3, 243, 245, 289, 291–8, 303–5, 309, 311, 314–20 women’s peace movement, 232, 289, 291–6, 303–4, 309, 313, 314–16, 318 see also Blayhyi, Joshua Milton; ECOMOG; UNMIL

The Morality of Peacekeeping M23 (March 23rd Movement), 261, 272–3, 278, 281; see also CNDP; Congo, Democratic Republic of; MONUSCO McChrystal, Stanley, 177–8; see also Afghanistan; restraint MacIntyre, Alasdair, 237; see also vulnerability MacKinnon, Catherine, 229; see also sexual exploitation and/or abuse McMahan, Jeffrey, 142, 154, 156–7, 160–2, 165, 181; see also jus in bello Malaya, 143–4; see also counterinsurgency mandate, 5, 7, 9–11, 13, 32, 35–6, 38–9, 44–5, 75–7, 102, 104, 107–11, 113, 115–16, 120–3, 135–8, 141–2, 145, 158, 167, 188, 216–18, 220–1, 223–4, 244, 266–9, 274, 314, 324–5; see also Charter of the United Nations; civilians; use of force March 23rd Movement see M23 MINUSTAH (Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en Haïti), 147; see also Haiti Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en République Démocratique du Congo see MONUSCO Mission des Nations Unies en République Démocratique du Congo see MONUC Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en Haïti see MINUSTAH MONUC (Mission des Nations Unies en République Démocratique du Congo), 62–3, 112–13, 125, 134, 135, 136, 144, 158–9, 241, 243–4, 258–84, 304–5; see also Artemis, Operation; Cammaert, Patrick; Congo, Democratic Republic of; Kimia II, Operation; MONUSCO; Umoja Wetu MONUSCO (Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en République Démocratique du Congo), 12, 144, 217, 260, 261, 276–7, 278; see also Amani Leo, Operation; Congo, Democratic Republic of; MONUC moral imagination, 25–6, 29, 31, 64, 95, 170–1, 179, 187, 205, 254, 283, 308–9, 318; see also creativity; Lederach, John Paul More Secure World, A, 41–2 Moskos, Charles, 59–60 mourning, 194, 207–11, 233, 316–18; see also Butler, Judith; moral imagination Mozambique, 275 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), 4, 36–7, 56, 307; see also ISAF; KFOR North Atlantic Treaty Organization see NATO OAU see Organization of African Unity ONUC (Opération des Nations Unies au Congo), 10, 11–12, 35, 216; see also Congo, Democratic Republic of Opération des Nations Unies au Congo see ONUC

Index 361 Organization of African Unity (OAU), 139; see also African Union Pakistan, 176, 210 Pape, Robert, 180–1 peace enforcement, 4, 6, 7, 10–13, 20, 27, 54, 139, 274, 325 peacebuilding, 6, 11, 313 peacekeeping definition, 6 see also consent; doctrine; impartiality; mandate; peace enforcement; peacebuilding; peacemaking; use of force peacemaking, 6, 298 Pettit, Philip, 79–81, 89–92, 149–152; see also deliberation; will of the people Pfaff, Tony, 154–8, 162–5; see also jus in bello police, 8, 15, 33, 63, 83, 86–7, 88, 126, 142, 144, 147–9, 151, 162–5, 316 political physiology, 199–203, 205; see also anger; fear; Protevi, John; Scarry, Elaine; trauma post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) see trauma Pouligny, Béatrice, 216, 239, 302, 306, 309, 310 precarity, 230–1, 233–7, 240, 243, 247, 250–2, 254, 259, 262, 280–1, 288, 299, 308, 317, 324; see also Butler, Judith; vulnerability proportionality see jus in bello protection of civilians see civilians; responsibility to protect Protevi, John, 200–1; see also political physiology Provide Comfort, Operation, 170; see also Iraq PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) see trauma R2P see responsibility to protect rape see sexual exploitation and/or abuse Rawls, John, 18 reciprocity, 48–54, 57, 61, 121, 124, 150, 153, 199, 225, 233–4, 238, 247, 251, 310, 318, 324; see also Korsgaard, Christine; respect; values refugees see displaced persons Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations see Brahimi Report respect, 14, 43–6, 49, 51–4; see also Kant, Immanuel; Korsgaard, Christine; reciprocity responsibility to protect, 3, 36, 39–45, 48, 50, 73, 104, 135, 222, 325 2005 World Summit, 42 see also civilians; use of force Restore Hope, Operation see UNITAF restraint, 59, 63–4, 65, 66, 98–9, 127, 151–2, 154, 174–80, 183, 185, 188, 254, 282–3, 308; see also care ethics, use of force Richardson, Henry, 83–90; see also deliberation Ruddick, Sara, 62–5, 175–7, 197, 202, 204–7; see also care ethics; restraint Rwanda, 33, 36–9, 41, 113, 135, 216, 251, 260, 266–7, 269, 270–3; see also Dallaire, Romeo; UNAMIR

St. Augustine see Augustine of Hippo Sambanis, Nicholas, 204 Scarry, Elaine, 194–6, 198, 206; see also political physiology; trauma; violence SEA see sexual exploitation and/or abuse Sen, Amartya, 225–6 sexual exploitation and/or abuse, 63, 228, 241–3 by peacekeepers 241–3 Seybolt, Taylor, 168–71 SGBV (sex and/or gender based violence) see sexual exploitation and/or abuse Sierra Leone, 122, 291, 292, 294; see also UNAMSIL Slote, Michael, 60–1; see also care ethics Somalia, 10, 11–12, 37, 119, 122, 135–6, 145, 179–80, 208–10, 251, 301–2, 306; see also Aidid, Mohammed Farah; AMISOM; UNITAF; UNOSOM I; UNOSOM II spoilers, 7, 8, 22, 28–33, 41–2, 43, 45, 55, 61–2, 73, 82–3, 92, 99, 105, 114, 122, 133, 144, 161–2, 164, 168–70, 172, 174, 181–2, 184–6, 203, 205, 207–8, 210, 252, 270–5, 278, 280–4, 312, 323–4 definition, 28 total, 28–33, 270–5 see also evil; Stedman, John Srebrenica see Bosnia Stedman, John, 28–9, 31; see also spoilers Sudan, 9, 30, 55–6, 88, 96, 113, 126, 139–41, 200, 223 Darfur, 30, 55–6, 86–8, 96, 126, 139–41, 171, 200, 242, 246, 253 see also AMIS, UNAMID, UNMIS trauma, 47, 60, 161, 181–2, 194, 196–7, 200–1, 203, 206, 208, 211, 226–7, 317, 325 PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), 161, 181, 197, 226 see also also anger; fear; political physiology; violence Tronto, Joan 3–4, 32; see also care ethics Umoja Wetu, 260; see also Congo, Democratic Republic of; FARDC; FDLR; MONUC; Rwanda UNAMID (African Union/United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur), 96, 126, 139, 172, 217; see also AMIS, Sudan UNAMIR (United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda), 36–7, 110–11, 113, 171, 172; see also genocide; Dallaire, Romeo; Rwanda UNAMSIL (United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone), 39, 137, 217–18; see also Sierra Leone UNEF I (First United Nations Emergency Force), 6, 34, 74–5, 103, 106–7, 118, 134, 136 UNEF II (Second United Nations Emergency Force), 134 UNFICYP (United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus), 60, 134

362 Unified Task Force see UNITAF UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon), 185–6; see also Israeli Defense Forces UNITAF (Unified Task Force), 179–80, 208–11; see also Aidid, Mohammed Farah; Somalia; UNOSOM I; UNOSOM II United Nations General Assembly, 9, 40 Security Council, 9, 108, 134–5, 137 see also Charter of the United Nations United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda see UNAMIR United Nations Emergency Force see UNEF I; UNEF II United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo see UNMIK United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon see UNIFIL United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus see UNFICYP United Nations Mission in Haiti see UNMIH United Nations Mission in Liberia see UNMIL United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone see UNAMSIL United Nations Operation in Somalia see UNOSOM I; UNOSOM II United Nations Mission in Sudan see UNMIS United Nations Operation in the Congo see ONUC United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo see MONUC United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo see MONUSCO United Nations Protection Force see UNPROFOR United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti see MINUSTAH United Nations Truce Supervision Organization see UNTSO UNMIH (United Nations Mission in Haiti), 216, 310; see also Haiti; MINUSTAH UNMIK (United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo), 56, 240; see also Kosovo UNMIL (United Nations Mission in Liberia), 303; see also Liberia UNMIS (United Nations Mission in Sudan), 223; see also AMIS; Sudan; UNAMID UNOSOM I (First United Nations Operation in Somalia), 11–12, 119, 136, 179–80, 208–10; see also Somalia; UNITAF UNOSOM II (Second United Nations Operation in Somalia), 11–12, 135, 208–10; see also Somalia

The Morality of Peacekeeping UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force), 12, 36–7, 144; see also Bosnia UNTSO (United Nations Truce Supervision Organization), 34 use of force, 4, 7, 8, 12–13, 21–2, 34–5, 36–9, 41–2, 47, 54, 59, 63–6, 75, 80, 102, 105–8, 112–13, 132–211, 215–18, 225, 252–3, 258–60, 274–5, 282, 284, 299, 318–19, 324–5 defense of mandate, 135–7, 158, 188 graduated, 159, 164, 172–3, 174, 181, 183–4, 188, 208 non-initiation, 133, 142, 153–73, 183–5 self-defense, 34, 36–7, 134, 136–7, 145, 158, 167 see also civilians; responsibility to protect; restraint; violence Utas, Mats 292–3 values 21, 24, 43–4, 46, 48, 50–3, 58–9, 64–5, 67, 80–1, 84–7, 89–92, 95, 97–8, 100, 115, 121, 124, 125–6, 150–1, 153, 181, 184, 227–8, 233–6, 246, 248, 250–1, 254, 296, 301–2, 305, 317, 324–5 intersubjective/shared 21, 44, 50–4, 58, 61, 64, 67, 80, 84–5, 87, 89, 91, 97–8, 100, 118, 150–1, 225, 227, 229, 231, 233, 234–5, 246, 248, 250–1, 254, 288, 296, 305, 317, 324 publicly avowable 80, 92–3 see also deliberation; Korsgaard, Christine; Pettit, Philip; reciprocity; respect violence, 5, 8, 11, 13–14, 28, 31, 39, 44, 47, 50, 54, 55, 63–7, 73, 80, 92, 93–4, 98, 107, 111–12, 114, 121, 122, 124, 126, 127, 132–3, 136, 141–2, 146–7, 148, 160, 164, 166, 169–70, 172–9, 181–3, 185, 188, 193–211, 215, 217, 218–19, 228–31, 233, 240–1, 243, 249, 250–2, 258–67, 270–3, 276, 282–3, 288–92, 294–99, 301–2, 305–6, 308–10, 314–19, 324–5; see also mourning; Scarry, Elaine; trauma; use of force vulnerability, 58, 64–5, 152, 168, 197, 205–7, 210, 215–55, 290, 295, 298, 302, 310–11, 317 definition 222 see also civilians; Goodin, Robert; precarity Waldheim, Kurt, 134 Walzer, Michael, 22–3, 26, 142, 156, 157, 194; see also jus in bello will of the people, 78–95; see also deliberation; values Williams, Paul, 11–12, 27 Wills, Siobahn, 221 Yoder, John Howard, 65, 176