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The Use of Force in UN Peacekeeping Operations

Mats Berdal & David H Ucko

To cite this article: Mats Berdal & David H Ucko (2015) The Use of Force in UN Peacekeeping
Operations, The RUSI Journal, 160:1, 6-12, DOI: 10.1080/03071847.2015.1016718

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03071847.2015.1016718

Published online: 13 Mar 2015.

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 THE RUSI JOURNAL

THE USE OF FORCE IN UN

PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS
PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS
MATS BERDAL AND DAVID H UCKO

Although the demand for UN peacekeepers shows little sign of abating, a sense of
uncertainty and malaise continues to colour discussions about the future of UN
peacekeeping. Of the many issues facing the UN High-Level Independent Panel on Peace
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Operations that was set up in 2014, the use of force by UN peacekeepers is likely to
attract particular attention. It is also likely to prove divisive, both among member states
and within the Secretariat. While steps can be taken to strengthen the capacity of the
UN to mount and conduct field operations, Mats Berdal and David H Ucko argue that the
way forward does not lie simply in entrusting UN forces with ever-more ‘robust’ war-
fighting mandates. Instead, more systematic attention needs to be given to strategically
linking UN peacekeeping activities to political processes aimed at bringing violent conflict
to an end. This will require far greater honesty from member states regarding their own
responsibility in enabling the UN to do what they ask of it.

W
hen Boutros Boutros-Ghali set
out his vision for a revitalised
UN after the Cold War in
An Agenda for Peace in June 1992, he
offered a definition of UN ‘peace-keeping’
in which the insertion of one innocent-
sounding word appeared to herald a
new era. ‘Peace-keeping’, the then UN
secretary-general probingly stated, ‘is
the deployment of a UN presence in
the field, hitherto with the consent of
all the parties concerned’.1 Catching the
attention of UN officials, academics and
governments at the time, the reference to
‘hitherto’ was deemed highly significant.
It seemed to imply that the tried and
tested principles of UN peacekeeping –
its reliance on the principles of consent,
impartiality and minimum use of force
except in self-defence – might now, in
the post-Cold War era, give way to a more
expansive role for UN military forces,
one that would likely involve taking the
initiative in the use of force.
The idea that UN peacekeeping
might evolve in new and more ambitious
ways reflected the optimism of the
times – an optimism grounded in part
in the very real achievements that UN
peacekeeping had stacked up over the
previous four years, most notably in
Namibia but also in Central America.
More generally, An Agenda for Peace
captured a widespread sense that with
the end of the Cold War an ‘opportunity
[had] been regained to achieve the
great objectives of the Charter’.2 UN
peacekeeping, it was widely felt, offered
the most promising of areas in which
member states could build on established
practices and, in doing so, help carve out
a more central role for the UN in the field
of peace and security.
There was, however, a further
reason for revisiting the established
principles of peacekeeping. By mid-1992
it was already becoming clear that the
changing context and scope of post-Cold
War peacekeeping – specifically the focus
on internal or intra-state conflict, and the
assumption of new and multiple tasks by
peacekeepers – were not only placing the
UN machinery for peacekeeping under
growing strain, but were presenting
peacekeepers with far more complex
challenges than that which had become
the norm in more ‘traditional’ operations.
Just how complex would become
painfully evident over the following three
years. Indeed, by early 1995 the mood
had changed dramatically and as the UN
prepared to mark its 50th anniversary, its
peacekeeping activities were seen to be
in a state of acute crisis.
Reeling from the impact of events in
Angola, Somalia, Rwanda and the former
Yugoslavia, the secretary-general decided
to issue a Supplement to An Agenda for
Peace.3 The Supplement – intellectually
more coherent and rigorous than its
parent document – struck a sober and
self-consciously ‘realistic’ tone. It drew

© RUSI JOURNAL FEBRUARY/MARCH 2015 VOL. 160 NO. 1 pp. 6–12 DOI: 10.1080/03071847.2015.1016718

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A UN helicopter circles overhead as UN peacekeepers from Uruguay patrol in Goma, eastern Congo, July 2013. Courtesy of AP Photo/Marc Hofer.
attention, in ways that the original
document had not, to the very different
challenges facing peacekeepers deployed
in the context of an ongoing civil war
from those charged with patrolling
and monitoring ceasefire lines along
international borders. In particular,
the secretary-general now expressed
scepticism about pushing traditional
peacekeeping in more robust directions.
‘Nothing is more dangerous for a
peacekeeping operation’, the Supplement
observed, ‘than to ask it to use force
when its existing composition, armament,
logistic support and deployment deny it
the capacity to do so’.4 Crucially, it added,
combining peacekeeping with elements
of enforcement in one and the same
operation had proved deeply problematic
because ‘the logic of peacekeeping
flow[ed] from political and military
premises that are quite distinct from
those of enforcement; and the dynamics
of the latter are incompatible with the
political process that peacekeeping is
intended to facilitate.’5 The Supplement
was less of a call for a return to ‘classical’
peacekeeping than a demand for greater
honesty and clarity about the limits of
RUSI 160_1 TEXT.indd 7
peacekeeping in civil-war situations
where member states were not prepared
to provide the means for the desired
ends.
While all of this, undoubtedly,
needed restating, it also, inevitably, left
tensions unaddressed and other questions
unanswered. For one, it appeared to
assume that there was always a ‘political
process’ in place for peacekeepers to
facilitate, yet that is very far from being
the case. Indeed, the central dilemma
facing UN peacekeepers in Bosnia until
the summer of 1995 was precisely the
absence of a meaningful political process
that could provide the mission with
strategic direction. The resulting paralysis
provided part of the background to the
horrific and defining climax to the crisis
of UN peacekeeping, some seven months
after the Supplement was presented:
the fall of the so-called UN ‘safe area’ of
Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia.
The record of UN peacekeeping
between 1992 and 1995 led, not
surprisingly, to a temporary retrenchment
of UN field operations. The Rwanda
genocide and the Srebrenica massacre
also, however, fed a strong and
understandable sentiment of ‘never again’
and a concomitant determination to learn
lessons with a view to strengthening the
UN’s capacity for peacekeeping.6 Over the
following years, attempts to distil those
lessons were made in a series of reports
and doctrinal statements prepared by the
Secretariat as well as by individual member
states. One lesson, above all, appeared
to enjoy broad support, at least as far as
the general principle was concerned: UN
peacekeepers would henceforth need to
prepare for, and be ready to engage in,
more ‘robust’ or ‘muscular’ peacekeeping.
Since UN peacekeeping picked up again,
beginning with the Mission in Sierra
Leone (UNAMSIL) in October 1999, this
emphasis on ‘robustness’ – and along with
it a greater readiness to use force – has
gained greater prominence, a function
in part of the continuing instability and
the persistence of high levels of violence
affecting many countries to which
peacekeeping missions are now deployed.
Despite an uneven record in such
settings, the call for UN action in the
face of armed conflict and instability – to
protect civilians, to shore up struggling
peace processes and, even, to extend
04/03/2015 11:35:11
 THE USE OF FORCE IN UN PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS
‘State authority and [the] preservation
of territorial integrity’7 – looks unlikely to
wane. Indeed, in April 2014, the Security
Council – notwithstanding formidable
logistical challenges and deeply fraught
relations among its permanent members
over Ukraine and the Middle East – voted
unanimously in favour of establishing
a new and large-scale peacekeeping
operation for the Central African Republic,
under Chapter VII of the Charter. It did so
partly in response to ‘multiple violations
of international humanitarian law and
widespread human rights violations and
abuses’, and it placed the protection
of civilians and the extension of state
authority at the centre of the mission.8
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These trends and the experience of
using military force in UN operations
since the early 1990s raise a number of
questions, regarding the role of the use
of force in such UN operations; the best
practices from which one can learn; and
the structural and political constraints
that must be considered in operations
to come. Most pressing, perhaps, is the
question of how best to translate tactical-
and operational-level successes, brought
about through the ‘robust’ use of force,
into lasting political gains.
Two Sets of Constraints
In discussing the role of military force
in UN operations – whether one is
examining the historical record or
assessing the prospect for more ‘robust’
contemporary operations – it is helpful
to distinguish between two sets of
constraints. The first of these may be
described as resource constraints; the
second has to do with the clarity of
political and strategic purpose under
which the forces operate.
Resources and Capabilities
Resource constraints cover all those
factors that impede the ability of the
UN as an intergovernmental body to
generate, mount and sustain military
forces in the field. This is not merely a
question of funds and force generation
but also, crucially, about the enabling
systems and arrangements – from
command, control and effective
communications to intelligence and
logistic support – that allow different
national contingents to operate as a
© RUSI JOURNAL FEBRUARY/MARCH 2015
RUSI 160_1 TEXT.indd 8
more-or-less cohesive force. Obstacles
in the way of achieving such integration
have long bedevilled UN peacekeeping
operations, as evidenced most acutely
by the near collapse of the then newly
established peacekeeping mission in
Sierra Leone in May 2000, following a
relatively minor challenge by local forces.
An internal UN fact-finding mission led
by Manfred Eisele, formerly assistant
secretary-general in the Department
for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO),
uncovered a litany of problems: poor
standard of many of the military
units deployed; ‘critical deficiencies’
in communications, transport and
intelligence; and, above all, the absence
of unity of command caused, in
significant part, by the frequent refusal of
contingent commanders to accept orders
through the UN chain of command.9
Anyone familiar with the history of
UN peacekeeping will recognise these
challenges. Critically, such constraints
will pose a far greater threat to military
effectiveness when the operational
setting is volatile or, to borrow the
jargon, non-permissive. An insecure
environment, moreover, has tended to
make the task of attracting well-equipped
military and civilian personnel from risk-
averse troop-contributing countries
all the more difficult.10 Going further,
the requirement to secure contested
territory or act against irregular armed
groups and spoilers will also call for
more advanced assets commonly in
short supply: specialised military and
police units; aviation support; robust
all-terrain vehicles; as well as intelligence,
reconnaissance and surveillance (ISR)
assets, including remotely piloted
systems. Filling such requirements has,
and will continue to, put added stress
on a UN system that struggles with
force generation even for ‘traditional’
peacekeeping.
Indeed, despite several rounds of
reform,11 the DPKO still has no systematic
approach to tracing the capabilities
offered by member states and matching
them to mission requirements. In part,
this enduring limitation is unsurprising,
given the challenges involved in generating
capability even before a mission has been
authorised or its mandate finalised. Yet
the weakness relates also to a continued
reliance – due to a lack of resources
perhaps, but also of strategic creativity
and engrained politico-bureaucratic
obstacles – on the ‘typical peacekeeping
mission template’, which is then adjusted
proportionally to whatever troop
number is authorised rather than to the
operational requirements on the ground.12
In theory, resource constraints of the
kind identified above could be addressed,
and it is true that serious efforts have been
made at UN headquarters since the late
1990s to mitigate the impediments to
greater effectiveness. In the meantime,
within individual missions, focused efforts
to overcome deficiencies and resource
constraints can and have made a major
difference. In the case of Haiti and the
UN operations of 2005–07, the mission’s
Joint Military Analysis Cell – in effect its
intelligence branch – was able to develop
actionable tactical and operational
intelligence that would facilitate the
destruction of the ‘gang structures’ in Port-
au-Prince.13 Also critical in Haiti was the
professionalism and specialisation of the
forces assigned to the mission – a coalition
of Brazilian troops, Bolivian special forces,
and Chinese and Jordanian specialised
police units – and their productive
partnership with Haitian special weapons
and tactics (SWAT) teams.14 Although
the case of MINUSTAH (the stabilisation
mission in Haiti) is in some ways unique
– and the record of Joint Military Analysis
Cells elsewhere is certainly more uneven
– the example nonetheless shows that
under the right circumstances and with a
properly equipped and commanded UN
force, it is possible to undertake coercive
operations with decisive effects at the
tactical and operational level; that is, UN
forces can be used to ‘threaten, coerce,
remove, suppress and destroy sources of
instability’.15
Another approach to circumventing
the specific resource constraints that
bedevil UN peacekeeping missions has
been to rely on the military forces of the
UN’s more powerful member states, to
assist UN operations facing a threat to
the mandate or a sudden deterioration
in the security environment. In recent
years, many sub-Saharan conflict zones
in particular have witnessed the swift
deployment of Western quick-reaction
forces that have played this role, all
04/03/2015 11:35:11

within the broader context of a UN
peacekeeping effort. To some observers,
this division of labour provides an
appropriate model, playing to the
respective strengths (and mitigating the
respective weaknesses) of all parties
involved. Western militaries are subject
to fewer of the resource constraints that
are said to hamstring UN peacekeepers,
while the UN – with its mandate of
peacebuilding and growing list of
related competences – offers a way out
for Western governments who may be
willing to intervene for short periods of
time or in a limited capacity but whose
appetite for more drawn-out and costly
engagement in peacebuilding has – post-
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Afghanistan – nearly entirely dried up.
The British military engagement
in Sierra Leone in 2000, in support of
the beleaguered UN mission and the
country’s government, represents
something of a standard-bearer for this
particular approach. With the Sierra
Leone government facing an imminent
threat of collapse due to a renewed
offensive of the Revolutionary United
Front (RUF), the British military provided
a rapid and credible intervention force
that was able, through limited yet critical
armed confrontations, to check both
the RUF and other armed groups in the
country. Having asserted dominance,
the British government then enabled a
successful transition of responsibilities
to the rapidly reinforced UN mission and
to the security sector of the Sierra Leone
government. To the British government’s
Select Committee on the European
Union, the intervention demonstrated
that ‘a relatively small number of forces
can have a significant effect in a short
period of time, provided they can be
deployed rapidly with the appropriate
support’.16 It was also widely recognised
in the UN Secretariat at the time that
the British intervention had bailed out
a failing UN mission and, with it, the
Government of Sierra Leone.17
Yet if the experience in Sierra Leone
provided a helpful illustration of what
can be achieved through ‘contingency
operations’ in support of the UN, it was
also a forceful reminder of what typically
has been required for such partnerships
to work. The benefit of these types of
operations is that by partnering with other
RUSI 160_1 TEXT.indd 9
institutions, whether it be the UN, regional
organisations or host-nation security
forces, the intervening power is able to
focus on only one phase of the campaign
and thereby limit its exposure and
obligations. Yet by the same token, these
arrangements rely on the ability to transfer
demanding follow-on responsibilities to
competent partners with greater staying
power.18 The British government secured
such a transition through the training
and assistance provided not only to the
bailed-out UN operation on the ground
but also to the host-nation government
and security sector it was there to support.
A military advisory programme was set
up to rebuild the Sierra Leonean armed
forces; Commonwealth police officers
were deployed to reform the local police
force; and British civil-service advisers
were embedded within the Ministry of
Defence, and elsewhere, so as to give
long-term meaning to initial military
gains.19 Critical to long-term success
was also the fact that the UK’s military
intervention – sharp, but also short-term
and limited in scope – was followed by
diplomatic action, including a sustained
effort to galvanise others to contribute
to a beefed-up and reconfigured UN
mission. At the same time, and certainly
important for psychological reasons, the
British government made a long-term
commitment – a minimum of ten years
– to provide military and developmental
assistance to Sierra Leone.
In contrast, Operation Artemis in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo
(DRC) provides a more cautionary tale.
In response to a rapidly deteriorating
situation in the Ituri region of the DRC
during the first half of 2003, a French-
led Interim Emergency Multinational
Force (IEMF) deployed to Bunia to help
shore up security and get the local UN
peacekeeping mission (MONUC) back
on track. Per the conditions tied to
its deployment, the IEMF spent three
months in Bunia, during which time it
re-established security in the war-torn
city and drove out militia elements. It then
handed over responsibility to the newly
created ‘Ituri Brigade’, a 5,000-strong
unit within the UN force in the DRC. On
these merits, the operation was deemed
a success, yet the IEMF’s limited mandate,
temporally and geographically, meant
BERDAL AND UCKO
that its effects were transient. As a later
UN report found, ‘The strict insistence
on the very limited area of operations
– Bunia – merely pushed the problem
of violent aggression against civilians
beyond the environs of the town, where
atrocities continued’.20 Moreover, despite
the UN force’s expansion, it remained
undermanned and ill-equipped to sustain
the tentative gains of the French-led
intervention, casting doubt on its wider,
long-term significance.21 Although the
UN Ituri Brigade was conceived by troop
contributors as a force capable of more
‘robust’ action, its first commander,
Jan-Gunnar Isberg, would later write that
it still ‘lacked essential equipment for
intelligence, communications, protracted
operations away from … camps and
barracks, night operations and operations
in the Eastern lakes’.22
More recently, in Mali, there is no
doubt that the French intervention of
2013–14 to oust Islamist militants in
the north of the country was successful
in this initial aim. Again, as in Sierra
Leone – yet in contradistinction to what
the UN can typically muster – success
was achieved through the availability
of advanced troops and technology
and their prepositioning close by, in
Burkina Faso, Chad and Côte d’Ivoire.23
Yet in a Mali still reeling from internal
instability, deep poverty, socioeconomic
dislocation and the contradictions of
its own statehood, not to mention
Libya’s unravelling and the extensive
transnational crime and terror networks
in the region, it was always an open
question as to what would occur once,
inevitably, the French forces withdrew –
or at least scaled down. As it happened,
the 9,000-strong UN force (MINUSMA)
that replaced the French troops quickly
became the target of attacks by militants
and spoilers seeking to reclaim control.
The lack of a security presence in the
north, the unpreparedness of the Malian
security forces, and the ease with
which adversarial elements could cross
international borders have combined to
put the UN in the crosshairs. By October
2014, eighteen months into the mission,
thirty-one peacekeepers had been killed
and Mali’s foreign minister was making
calls for a new UN ‘rapid intervention
force’ to restore order.24 In other words,
04/03/2015 11:35:11
 THE USE OF FORCE IN UN PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS
the gravity of the situation far exceeded
the international efforts at capability-
building and political reconciliation that
followed the French combat operations,
pointing once again to the need for
longer-term engagement and a more
careful transition of authority and control
for contingency operations of this nature
to produce sustainable political results.
Political Purpose and Strategic
Direction
It would seem, therefore, that the
availability or non-availability of
resources really only begs a larger and,
ultimately, more critical question: namely,
how the use of force can be made to
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serve long-term strategic objectives.
This touches upon the second constraint
noted above: the political purpose and
strategic direction of the mission in
whose name the use of force is carried
out. For a variety of reasons, such clarity
has proved very difficult to obtain for
UN-authorised missions.
The French experience with
contingency operations is telling in
this regard. Drawing on its experience
in Bosnia and Rwanda in the early
1990s, the French military developed,
and has since continued to champion,
the idea of ‘peace restoration’
operations, introducing the notion
of ‘active impartiality’ as a means of
‘conceptualising the “grey area” of peace
operations between peacekeeping and
limited war’.25 The adoption of this model
has seen the French government pursue
an often welcome yet short-term and
‘robust’ military role in support of various
UN operations and stabilisation efforts.
However, as Thierry Tardy perceptively
notes in a recent analysis of the French
approach, much ‘less attention has been
paid to the ultimate purpose of the
use of force, i.e. what is to be achieved
through the recourse to force’.26 Thus,
‘while operations Turquoise [Rwanda],
Artemis, or Licorne [Côte d’Ivoire] may
meet the French requirements as defined
in the latest doctrinal papers, the extent
to which these operations have been
effective in supporting a broader political
agenda remains an open question’.27
The same question may well be
asked of other cases where the UN has
taken the initiative in the use of force,
© RUSI JOURNAL FEBRUARY/MARCH 2015
RUSI 160_1 TEXT.indd 10
often ‘robustly’. In Haiti in 2007, as
James Cockayne makes clear in another
recent work, ‘tactical success through the
use of force led to only limited strategic
payoffs in the larger state consolidation
mission, with MINUSTAH struggling to
integrate the use of force into a larger
project for Haitian political and economic
transformation’.28 The use of force was in
this context critical to enabling a political
process, by removing or deterring those
actors with whom no reconciliation or
compromise could be found, yet the
longer-term translation of operational
outcomes into lasting political gains has
been a tougher challenge to overcome.
Similarly, the offensive and robust
use of force by the UN in the DRC has
also resulted in tactical successes and
local victories, including in Bunia in 2003
and, more recently, the apparent defeat
of M23, a major rebel group in eastern
DRC, in 2013. In the latter case, defeat
came at the hands of a newly established
Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) set up
by the Security Council in March 2013
under the command of the MONUSCO
force commander. Created specifically
for the purpose of ‘neutralising armed
groups … and reducing the threat posed
by armed groups to state authority and
civilian security in eastern DRC’,29 much
was initially made of the FIB, especially
in the aftermath of its apparently
successful offensive against M23. Yet the
larger challenge of exploiting tactical-
and operational-level success to reach
broader political purposes remains.
Briefing the Council in March 2014,
the head of MONUSCO, Martin Kobler,
noted how the FIB had contributed to
‘the restoration of pockets of stability’
in eastern Congo.30 The wording here
is telling. As noted above, the city of
Bunia was also a ‘pocket of stability’
after the IEMF intervention in June 2003.
According to one early assessment of
FIB’s record, however, the neutralisation
of M23 still leaves more than ‘fifty
different armed groups ranging from
neatly structured militias to ragtag bandit
gangs’ operating across the eastern parts
of country.31 Unsurprisingly, the secretary-
general, reporting to the Security Council
in mid-2014, could only conclude that
while ‘some progress’ had been made in
tackling ‘the recurring cycles of violence
in eastern Congo’, it was ‘still too slow
and remain[ed] extremely fragile’.32
Viewed as a whole, then, the record
of robust peacekeeping in the DRC
remains decidedly mixed, underscoring
the lesson that tactical and operational
successes, while necessary for creating a
secure environment in which constructive
political processes can thrive and gains
can be consolidated, are by themselves
no substitute for progress in addressing
the underlying causes of violence. In a
thoughtful analysis of UN engagement
in the Congo – covering, significantly,
both the experience of ONUC (the UN
Operation in the Congo) in the 1960s and
that of MONUC since 2003 – Alan Doss
rightly concludes:33
When the terms of engagement are
clear and the resources are in place,
UN peacekeepers can use force with
the desired impact … Even so, the use
of force – for protection or other aims –
should always be framed as an enabling
component of a political strategy not as
an end in itself.
To students of strategy reared on
Clausewitz these observations are likely
to appear self-evident. The question
they raise, of course, is why, in practice,
UN peacekeepers have so often been
forced to operate without a meaningful
political strategy to guide and shape
considerations regarding the use of
force. The answer to that question says
something about the inherent limitations
of UN-authorised peacekeeping
operations.
The Security Council – consisting
at any time of five permanent and
ten non-permanent members – is the
intergovernmental body that approves
the mandate and, in theory, provides
political direction for UN peacekeeping
forces. One of the chief reasons for the
aforementioned optimism that animated
early post-Cold War discussions about
UN peacekeeping was precisely the hope
(strongly nurtured by the unity displayed
over the response to Iraq’s invasion of
Kuwait in August 1990) that the Council
would no longer be paralysed by rivalry
between its permanent members. It was
an understandable hope: the importance
of Council unity to the success of UN
04/03/2015 11:35:11

missions is indisputable, and several
post-Cold War operations have plainly
benefited from it, most notably Namibia
(1989–90), Mozambique (1992–94)
and Cambodia (1992–93). These cases,
however, have proved exceptions to
a pattern in which Council members
have found it much easier to agree
on a more limited set of objectives –
usually those pertaining to addressing
the humanitarian consequences of
a given conflict – than on an overall
political strategy aimed at resolving the
underlying causes and drivers of conflict.
It is also the case that UN member
states remain divided or, at the very
least, uneasy about the legitimacy of the
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use of force in peacekeeping operations
above and beyond the requirements of
self-defence. The ambiguity is reflected
in doctrinal statements and reports in
which the UN has sought to fit even its
more muscular and forceful missions still
within the category of ‘peacekeeping’,
as opposed to the more contentious
category of ‘peace enforcement’.
Thus, the UN’s 2008 capstone doctrine
on peacekeeping argued that ‘while
robust peacekeeping involves the use
of force at the tactical level with the
consent of the host authorities and/or
the main parties to the conflict, peace
enforcement may involve the use of
force at the strategic level’ – although
the report acknowledging that this
line ‘may appear blurred’.34 Similarly,
in 2009, the secretary-general’s report
on peacekeeping reform argued that
contrary to enforcement activity,
‘robust peacekeeping … operates
within the principles of United Nations
peacekeeping’ and involves ‘the non-use
of force except in self-defence or defence
of the mandate’.35
On a political level, these theoretical
distinctions may be seen as an attempt
to meet halfway the reservations of
generally risk-averse troop-contributing
countries. ‘Robust peacekeeping’, then,
serves the function of providing for the
possibility of having to use force while
retaining the traditional framework and
principles of classical peacekeeping.
In practice, however – particularly in
fluid and unpredictable operational
environments – constructs such as
RUSI 160_1 TEXT.indd 11
these often break down; elsewhere, the
attempts to bridge divides and respect
sensitivities, both cultural and political,
have come at the expense of mission
clarity. Indeed, where interventions
do take place they are seldom framed
in the potentially divisive language of
politics – that which is necessary for
strategic planning – but, ostensibly, as
more ‘limited’ exercises, concerned
merely with the support for humanitarian
relief and, increasingly since 1999, the
‘protection of civilians’ caught up in
armed conflict. While this increased
focus on humanitarian objectives reflects
a welcome shift in normative climate
after the Cold War, its central place in
peacekeeping mandates risks substituting
for an effective political response to
complex and deep-seated crises.
In the context of ongoing and
unresolved civil wars in particular, this
tendency carries very real risks for UN
peacekeepers and helps to explain why
translating security gains into strategic
objectives has proved so difficult.
Operationally, the mandate of protecting
civilians produces unrealistic expectations
on the part of war-affected populations,
who – as witnessed in the DRC and
elsewhere – will flock to under-equipped
and under-resourced peacekeepers for
a sense of safety.36 Strategically, the
emphasis on humanitarianism fatefully
denies the political essence of the
matter. As Cockayne notes with regard to
Haiti, MINUSTAH had ‘broken the gangs
… but the political objective – breaking
the connection between the gangs and
Haiti’s political-business elite – remained
unarticulated and elusive – and perhaps
ultimately unfeasible, given the necessity
of Haitian state consent for continued
UN operations in the country’.37 Since
robust peacekeeping is, in theory, reliant
on such consent, it is difficult to see how
it can achieve strategic success in any
conflict zone where, as is so often the
case, the government itself contributes
to the problem at hand. In the absence
of a closer political focus on the issues
that drive conflict, the UN’s armed
humanitarianism will only go so far.
The obvious requirement, it
would seem, is for greater honesty
among member states about their own
BERDAL AND UCKO
responsibility in enabling the UN to do
what is expected of it. However, signs
of progress in this respect remain, on
balance, elusive and disappointing.
Indeed, surveying many of the UN’s most
recently established operations, one is
reminded of an observation once made
by U Thant, the third secretary-general
of the organisation, after leaving office.
‘Great problems’, he wrote, ‘usually
come to the United Nations because
governments have been unable to think
of anything else to do about them’.38 
Mats Berdal is Professor of Security
and Development and Director of the
Conflict, Security and Development
Research Group (CSDRG) in the
Department of War Studies at King’s
College London. He is the author of
Building Peace After War (Routledge,
2009) and co-editor of UN
Interventionism, 1991–2004 (CUP,
2007).
David H Ucko is an Associate Professor
at the College of International Security
Affairs, National Defense University
(NDU), Washington, DC, and an Adjunct
Fellow at the Department of War
Studies, King’s College London. He is the
author of Counterinsurgency in Crisis:
Britain and the Challenges of Modern
Warfare (Columbia University Press,
2013), and The New Counterinsurgency
Era: Transforming the US Military for
Modern Warfare (Georgetown
University Press, 2009). The views
expressed are those of the author and
do not reflect the official policy or
position of the NDU, the US Department
of Defense, or the United States
government. Twitter: @daviducko
This article is a revised and extended
version of ‘The United Nations and the
Use of Force: Between Promise and
Peril’, published in the Journal of
Strategic Studies (Vol. 37, No. 5, 2014).
It draws on the findings of an ongoing
research project on ‘UN Peace
Operations and the Use of Force’
organised by the Conflict, Security and
Development Research Group at King’s
College London and supported by the
Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
11
04/03/2015 11:35:11
 THE USE OF FORCE IN UN PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS
Notes
1 An Agenda for Peace, Report of the
Secretary-General, A/47/277, 17 June
1992, paragraph 20 (emphasis added).
2 Ibid., paragraph 3.
3 Supplement to An Agenda for Peace,
A/50/60, 3 January 1995.
4 Ibid., paragraph 35.
5 Ibid.
6 See in particular ‘The Fall of Srebrenica’,
A/54/549, 15 November 1999; Report
of the Independent Inquiry into the
Downloaded by [193.90.12.88] at 04:27 15 March 2016
Actions of the United Nations during
the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda (the
‘Carlson Report’), 16 December 1999,
S/1999/1257; Report of the Panel on
UN Peace Operations (‘Brahimi Panel
Report’), S/2000/809, 21 August 2000.
7 S/RES/2149, 10 April 2014, Central
African Republic, paragraph 30(b). See
also mandate for MINUSMA in Mali,
which similarly includes support for the
‘re-establishment of State authority
throughout the country’, S/RES/2164
(2014), 25 June 2014, paragraph 13(c).
8 S/RES/2149, 10 April 2014. The new
mission, UN Multidimensional Integrated
Stabilisation Mission in the Central
African Republic (MINUSCA), which
began deployment in September 2014,
has an authorised strength of nearly
12,000 peacekeepers.
9 ‘DPKO Assessment Mission to Sierra
Leone, 31 May – 8 June 2000’ (the ‘Eisele
Report’).
10 Thierry Tardy, ‘The Reluctant
Peacekeeper: France and the Use of
Force in Peace Operations’, Journal of
Strategic Studies (Vol. 37, No. 5, 2014),
p. 786.
11 See the ‘New Horizon’ process
launched in July 2009 by the DPKO and
Department of Field Support (DFS),
<http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/
operations/newhorizon.shtml>, accessed
28 January 2015.
12 Adam C Smith and Arthur Boutellis,
‘Rethinking Force Generation:
Filling the Capability Gaps in
UN Peacekeeping’, Providing for
© RUSI JOURNAL FEBRUARY/MARCH 2015
RUSI 160_1 TEXT.indd 12
Peacekeeping (Vol. 2, 2013),
pp. 9–10.
13 James Cockayne, ‘The Futility of Force?
Strategic Lessons for Dealing with
Unconventional Armed Groups from the
UN’s War on Haiti’s Gangs’, Journal of
Strategic Studies (Vol. 37, No. 5, 2014).
14 Michael Dziedzic and Robert M Perito,
‘Haiti: Confronting the Gangs of Port-au-
Prince’, United States Institute of Peace
Special Report, No. 208, September
2008, pp. 4–5.
15 Cockayne, ‘The Futility of Force?’
16 ‘Annex A: Battlegroup Concept’, in Fourth
Report of the UK Select Committee
on European Union, 2005, <http://
www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/
ld200506/ldselect/ldeucom/16/16100.
htm>, accessed 28 January 2015.
17 To Kofi Annan, in his autobiography, ‘the
UN Operation was saved … in large part’
through British intervention. See Kofi
Annan, Interventions: A Life in War and
Peace (New York, NY: Penguin, 2012),
p. 117.
18 Draws on David H Ucko and Robert
Egnell, Counterinsurgency in Crisis:
Britain and the Challenges of Modern
Warfare (New York, NY: Columbia
University Press, 2013), pp. 161–62.
19 Jonathon P Riley, ‘The UK in Sierra
Leone: A Post-Conflict Operation
Success?’, Heritage Foundation Lecture
958, 15 June 2006, p. 2.
20 Peacekeeping Best Practices Unit
(Military Division), ‘Operation Artemis:
The Lessons of the Interim Emergency
Multinational Force’, United Nations
Department for Peacekeeping
Operations, October 2004, p. 14.
21 Mats Berdal, Building Peace after War
(Abingdon: Routledge for International
Institute for Strategic Studies, 2009),
p. 112.
22 Jan-Gunnar Isberg and Lotta Victor
Tillberg, By All Necessary Means:
Brigadier General Jan-Gunnar Isberg’s
Experience from Service in the Congo,
2003–2005 (Stockholm: Swedish
National Defence College, 2012), p. 31.
23 François Heisbourg, ‘A Surprising Little
War: First Lessons of Mali’, Survival
(Vol. 55, No. 2, 2013), p. 12.
24 Sherwin Bryce-Pease, ‘Forces in Mali
Not Operating in a Peacekeeping
Environment: UN’, SABC News,
9 October 2014, <http://www.sabc.
co.za/news/a/58dca90045c3d1c6
8daf8f90ca3f4715/Forces-in-Mali-
not-operating-in-a-peacekeeping-
environment:-UN-20140910>, accessed
28 January 2015.
25 Tardy, ‘The Reluctant Peacekeeper,
p. 781.
26 Ibid., p. 788.
27 Ibid., p. 789.
28 Cockayne, ‘The Futility of Force’, p. 738.
29 S/RES/2098, 28 March 2013,
paragraph 9.
30 Security Council 7137th Meeting,
14 March 2014, S/PV.7137, p. 2.
31 Christoph Vogel, ‘Islands of Stability or
Swamps of Insecurity?’, Africa Policy
Brief (No. 9, 2014), pp. 1–2.
32 S/2014/450, paragraph 86.
33 Alan Doss, ‘In the Footsteps of Dr.
Bunche: The Congo, UN Peacekeeping
and the Use of Force’, Journal of
Strategic Studies (Vol. 37, No. 5, 2014),
p. 730.
34 United Nations Peacekeeping
Operations: Principles and Guidelines
(Capstone Doctrine), UNDPKO, January
2008, p. 19.
35 United Nations General Assembly,
Report of the Special Committee on
Peacekeeping Operations (A/66/19),
11 September 2012, p. 6.
36 Doss, ‘In the Footsteps of Dr. Bunche’,
pp. 727–28.
37 Cockayne, ‘The Futility of Force?’, p. 738.
38 U Thant, View from the U.N. (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday & Co, 1978), p. 32.
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