When the average American thinks of UN peacekeeping operations, they tend to think of failures. Images of dead Americans being dragged through the streets in Somalia, Blue Helmets failing to prevent the Rwandan Genocide, and the failed safe zone in Srebrenica spring to mind. Younger generations might think about sexual abuse and exploitation scandals involving UN peacekeepers and a cholera outbreak caused by peacekeepers in Haiti. Empirically, a 2022 Gallup survey found that only 37% of Americans thought that the United Nations is doing a good job, compared to 58% of Americans at the turn of the millennium. In the American imagination, peacekeeping is an expensive failure.
The actual results could not be more different. UN peacekeeping is, in actuality, a highly effective institution that is capable of protecting civilians and building peace in post-conflict countries. This essay will try to debunk the common American perception of the success of UN peacekeeping, building on the existing scholarly literature. The essay will then conclude by examining how these different understandings of UN peacekeeping came to be, and why the misperceptions surrounding UN peacekeeping matter.
Let’s start at the beginning of a UN peacekeeping operation, its deployment. Despite popular perceptions of peacekeepers as cowardly or conflict-shy, the existing academic literature suggests that peacekeepers deploy to the most difficult combat zones, rather than the easiest. Hegre, Hultman, and Nygard 2019 find that UN peacekeepers tend to deploy to the most difficult conflicts with the highest casualty rates and weakest central governments. In these countries, such as the DRC, South Sudan, and the CAR, conflict is widespread and both governments and rebels frequently attack civilians. Within countries, peacekeepers will continue to put themselves at risk by deploying subnationally to the most dangerous parts of the country. Ruggeri, Dorussen, and Gizelis studied eight peacekeeping operations and found that peacekeepers deploy to areas, such as near international borders, where conflict is most frequent.
While getting peacekeepers to the right places is important, what matters more is what they do once they get there. After hundreds of thousands of civilians died under the UN’s watch in Rwanda and Bosnia, the UN developed a new doctrine known as the “Protection of Civilians” (POC). This task put direct protection of civilians, including the use of force to do so, at the center of modern UN peacekeeping operations. In doing so, it moved past a previous emphasis on neutrality and restraint that handicapped peacekeepers facing active atrocity situations. This new POC doctrine should on paper address many of the failures that occurred in the 1990s, where the Protection of Civilians was not part of the peacekeepers' toolkit. So, the question is: can peacekeepers protect civilians?
The answer is yes. Many studies, such as the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, have taken advantage of new data sets on violence against civilians to study what impact peacekeepers have had on violence against civilians in the areas they deploy in. The vast majority of these studies have found that the presence of peacekeepers has a statistically significant negative effect on violence against civilians. Phayal (2019) examined the UN peacekeeping in Darfur and found that the deployment of peacekeepers “restrains belligerents from targeting civilians.” While several mechanisms have been established to explain this, the most common has to do with the cost-benefit analysis of potential perpetrators. Although attacking civilians runs little risk and thus incurs little potential cost, attacking civilians protected by armed peacekeepers backed by the international community has a higher cost and is, thus, less likely to occur. Using a variety of different cases and methodologies, this same conclusion is found by Melander (2009), Hegre, Hultman, and Nygard (2019), and Kathman and Wood (2016).
In South Sudan, for example, as many as 200,000 civilians fleeing violence gathered in IDP camps around UN bases in late 2013, forming “Protection of Civilian sites.” UN peacekeepers have guarded those sites ever since, protecting those civilians from other larger ethnic groups in the region who had previously attacked them. At the same time, the UN has started to work to create the necessary conditions for civilians to return home and for the South Sudanese government to take over security provision.
While the literature shows that peacekeepers are able to successfully protect civilians in their areas of operations, there are a few key caveats to keep in mind. First, Payal and Prins 2020 found that, while peacekeepers are successful in preventing attacks by rebel groups, they are less able to protect civilians from government forces.5 Given the need for host state consent for most peacekeeping missions and the fact that most peacekeeping missions are mandated to support and improve the host government, this isn’t exactly surprising. We also have to consider the role of respective capabilities in protecting civilians. Di Salvatore (2018) found that peacekeepers were less capable of protecting civilians as power asymmetries grew. Conversely, however, Haass and Ansorg 2018 found that peacekeepers are better able to protect civilians when they are better equipped, funded, and trained. This makes logical sense, peacekeepers are more effective the better their advantage is over possible perpetrators, and vice-versa.
However, the Protection of Civilians is only a short-term objective. The long-run objective is to create a sustainable peace where peacekeepers are no longer needed. The evidence suggests that peacekeepers are able to accomplish this. Fortna (2008) analyzes the role that UN peacekeepers have in armed group decision-making during civil wars. She finds that the presence of peacekeepers alleviates mistrust and miscalculation and prevents escalations, thus leading to a higher success rate of peace implementation. Kathman and Benson (2019) provide empirical support for this idea. They found that the deployment of additional peacekeepers decreases the length of the conflict. Peacekeeping deployments can also prevent conflicts from spreading to other nearby countries. Beardsley (2011) empirically finds that “the risk of armed conflict onset increases by 71% on average when a neighboring state experiences a conflict without peacekeeping.”
An example of this can be seen in the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL). The mission was deployed in 1999 to replace a regional peacekeeping operation that had failed to contain the countries civil war. Following several high-profile failures including the kidnapping of peacekeepers and internal divisions, the mission was able to regain the trust of the public and create the necessary conditions for peace. They ensured the withdrawal of Liberian rebels across the border, disarmed local groups, and implemented national elections. The mission withdrew in 2005, and conflict in Sierra Leone has been minimal since. So we’ve seen that peacekeepers frequently accomplish their two primary objectives (protecting civilians and building peace). However, that’s not everything they can do. Reeder (2018) found that peacekeeping deployments are associated with better health outcomes, as quantified by vaccination rates. Reeder and Polizzi expand on this theme of service delivery in their 2021 article, where they found that peacekeeping deployment is associated with better education outcomes in their areas of deployment. In both cases, this is because peacekeepers help create a safer environment for other groups (such as government agencies and NGOs) to deliver services such as health and education. Finally, Bakaki and Bohmelt (2021) found that UN peacekeeping deployments increase the environmental quality in their areas of operation. The existing literature shows that UN peacekeeping is incredibly effective at a variety of different tasks across a variety of different countries, despite frequently deploying to the most dangerous combat zones. However, as mentioned earlier, this is not the perception that most Americans have of UN peacekeeping. There are several theories why this might be the case: the first has to do with media coverage. The failures of UN peacekeeping in the 1990s were highly publicized on major American news networks such as CNN. This is because often, such as in Bosnia and Somalia, they involved US forces. They also frequently deployed to geopolitical or human rights hotspots such as Rwanda. Times on the security council have changed since the 1990s, however. While peacekeepers still deploy to the most dangerous areas, they avoid the conflicts where great power competition is at its strongest (such as Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine). Instead, peacekeepers deploy to “under the radar” conflicts such as in the Central African Republic, Mali, and South Sudan. Peacekeeping’s success stories have received far less press coverage than its failures, and the end result is that peacekeeping is perceived as a failure by the media-consuming public.
Another potential cause of the gap in peacekeeping’s public perception has to do with the US’s perceived relationship with the UN and the idea of American exceptionalism. While the US government has always been a decently strong supporter of the UN, the US public has been less supportive. Part of this can be explained by the idea of American exceptionalism, the nationalist and widespread idea that American civilization is superior or exceptional to all others. In this context, the UN represents a threat: as an organization that could potentially overrule America’s sovereignty at home, such as the UN’s role in organizing climate change agreements, and decision-making abroad, such as the UN's refusal to authorize the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There’s a reason that the UN has emerged as a common actor in conspiracy theories, including those that deal with hot-button domestic topics such as gun confiscations. It’s no surprise then that nationalist Americans wouldn’t support UN peacekeeping because it can be construed as a threat.
This is unfortunate for two reasons. In the short term, some US politicians have decided they don’t need to support UN Peacekeeping. The Trump administration previously refused to pay its needed UN dues. Given that the US is the largest UN’s financial contributor, this had a significant negative effect on peacekeeping effectiveness. The Trump administration knew it could get away with unilaterally not paying its bills because the US public by and large doesn't care about peacekeeping. In fact, UN ambassador Nikki Hailey bragged that “Just 5 months into our time here, we've cut over half a billion $$$ from the UN peacekeeping budget & we’re only getting started.” The backlash was minimal and the US only started to fully pay its dues during the Biden administration.
In the long term, US distrust of the UN has limited the US military's ability to contribute. The US has remained mostly withdrawn from UN peacekeeping since the 1990s. Despite its large and effective military, the US currently contributes only 31 peacekeepers out of nearly 80,000 total. As the US withdraws from Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has a large number of effective units that it could contribute to UN peacekeeping operations (recall that better funded and equipped militaries, such as the US, are better capable of protection).
However, the idea of deploying US forces at any scale is ludicrous in the current environment given the American public’s current hostility to peacekeeping operations. The only way to improve that public opinion, and potentially awaken a sleeping giant in the form of the US military, is to begin to counter the incorrect narratives about peacekeeping that have sadly become commonplace amongst the American public.
References
Bakaki, Zorzeta, and Tobias Böhmelt. “Can UN Peacekeeping Promote Environmental Quality?” International Studies Quarterly 65, no. 4 (December 17, 2021): 881–890.
Beardsley, Kyle. “Peacekeeping and the Contagion of Armed Conflict.” The Journal of Politics 73, no. 4 (2011): 1051–1064.
Fortna, Virginia Page. Does Peacekeeping Work?: Shaping Belligerents’ Choices after Civil War. Book collections on Project MUSE. Princeton: University Press, 2008
Haass, Felix, and Nadine Ansorg. “Better Peacekeepers, Better Protection? Troop Quality of United Nations Peace Operations and Violence against Civilians.” Journal of Peace Research 55, no. 6 (November 1, 2018): 742–758.
Hegre, Håvard, Lisa Hultman, and Håvard Mokleiv Nygård. “Evaluating the Conflict-Reducing Effect of UN Peacekeeping Operations.” The Journal of Politics 81, no. 1 (January 1, 2019): 215–232.
Kathman, Jacob, and Michelle Benson. “Cut Short? United Nations Peacekeeping and Civil War Duration to Negotiated Settlements.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 63, no. 7 (August 1, 2019): 1601–1629
Kathman, Jacob D., and Reed M. Wood. “Stopping the Killing During the ‘Peace’: Peacekeeping and the Severity of Postconflict Civilian Victimization.” Foreign Policy Analysis 12, no. 2 (April 1, 2016): 149–169.
MELANDER, ERIK. “Selected To Go Where Murderers Lurk? The Preventive Effect of Peacekeeping on Mass Killings of Civilians.” Conflict Management and Peace Science 26, no. 4 (2009): 389–406.
Phayal, Anup. “UN Troop Deployment and Preventing Violence Against Civilians in Darfur.” International Interactions 45, no. 5 (September 3, 2019): 757–780.
Phayal, Anup, and Brandon C. Prins. “Deploying to Protect: The Effect of Military Peacekeeping Deployments on Violence Against Civilians.” International Peacekeeping 27, no. 2 (March 14, 2020): 311–336.
Reeder, Bryce W. “The Spatial Concentration of Peacekeeping Personnel and Public Health During Intrastate Conflicts.” International Peacekeeping 25, no. 3 (May 27, 2018): 394–41.
Reeder, Bryce W, and Marc S Polizzi. “Transforming Zones of Exclusion to Zones of Inclusion? Local-Level UN Peacekeeping Deployments and Educational Attainment.” International Studies Quarterly 65, no. 4 (December 17, 2021): 867–880.
Ruggeri, Andrea, Han Dorussen, and Theodora-Ismene Gizelis. “On the Frontline Every Day? Subnational Deployment of United Nations Peacekeepers.” British Journal of Political Science 48, no. 4 (October 2018): 1005–1025.
Salvatore, Jessica Di. “Obstacle to Peace? Ethnic Geography and Effectiveness of Peacekeeping.” British Journal of Political Science 50, no. 3 (July 2020): 1089–1109.