International interventions and the blurring of war and peace

Security Practices and Political Violence - Essay « West » : International interventions and the blurring of war and peace

« The fall of the Soviet Union has contributed to the end of armed conflicts in several countries, shaken by proxy wars. But for others, the end of the USSR and US support allowed internal conflicts to occur, particularly in the Third World. Nevertheless, the end of the Cold War gave the world some hope for peace, leading to the creation of the UN Agenda for Peace (1992) promoting liberal and democratic values through multilateral policies to build and keep peace. But how these interventions are efficient in order to secure the peace?

In their work about nonviolent movements, scholars argue for the strategic nonviolence as a rational and the only efficient way of being successful in term of imposing democracy. (Chenoweth & Cunningham, 2013) But, this rationale doesn’t take account for the role of constraints and influences from the international community in internal wars. (Elbadawi & Sambanis 2000; Sambanis, Skaperdas & als. 2017) «    Indeed, some authors as Luttwak talk about the damage caused  by foreign interventions generating longer wars and fragile conflict settlements whereas some others refer to the positive effects of the interventions.  » (Luttwak, 1999 in Hoeffler, 2014)

This essay takes hence an overview of some international interventions after the break up of the Communist bloc, highlights their dilemmas as well as risks involved during the process of peace-building, and explain the impact on internal conflicts as blurring the line between war and peace.

As Clausewitz says, the end of war is peace. (1918) Therefore, international organizations (IOs) have engaged in conflicts because they want a positive peace, based on absence of both physical and structural violence. (Galtung, 1971) Since the end of the 20th century, international missions carried out under UN supervision have, moreover, promoted a peace more imbued with liberal values. (Ibidem) Nevertheless, History has shown us that Peace Operations (POs) as well as, for instance, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Wold Bank (WB) structural adjustment programs (SAPs), haven’t always led to the expected outcomes. Indeed, the transformation from war to peace is never the simple transition from one to the other through the typical phases known in wars. (Gros, 2006) Illustrated by the Libyan case in 2011, Stedman highlights the risk of spoilers in peace-process by the dilemma for IOs between forgiving or prosecuting in order to put an end to a conflict. (1997) While NATO intervened against Kadhafi's regime using mass violence against the Libyan rebels, the Security Council (UNSC) had announced that it would sue him in the International Criminal Court for any crime committed during the conflict. However, the Treaty of Rome is based on victory and only the vanquished can be prosecuted. That’s the reason why Kadhafi has intensified violence to not lose the war, leading to the contrary of UN peace objectives.

Generally, the UNPO in Sierra Leone is presented as the typical example of successful peacekeeping. Nonetheless, Autesserre (2017) highlights the fact that the success of some peacekeeping missions at the macro-level doesn’t automatically reduce violence at the local one, sometimes provoking the opposite by domestic turmoils. (See Brosig & Sempijja, 2018)

In contrast, UNOSOM II in Somalia between 1993 and 1995 was largely cited as the archetypical failure to respect the ceasefire agreement, but also to achieve the goal of peace-building. Menkhaus blames, among other things, the ineffectiveness of external funding sources in stabilizing and assisting the country's development, as well as the fact that local politics are undermined in the process, leaving the country worse off than before. (2006)

Since that failure, there has been a general reluctance by the great powers to intervene in POs, described by many as the Somalia syndrome. Therefore, IOs have found other forces willing to engage in these new wars (Kaldor, 2012) to achieve UN goals. In his work on the Afghanistan case, (2016) Olsson expounds the emergence of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) emerging from local militias as an actor in a circular economy between IOs and Afghan politicians. Indeed, after the militias were banned by the government in order to legitimize their authority, these ones transformed themselves into PMSCs selling their services to the international coalition through Afghan politicians who are based on a patronage system. Some of these militias were linked to the Taliban, meaning that the international coalition indirectly funded the Taliban to fight them. This has fueled the insurgency, then has justified the presence of foreign forces and so on, creating an endless economic cycle.

As we can see, this so-called « economic accumulation » (Collier and Hoeffler, 2004) and, more broadly, the economic factor play a crucial role in armed conflicts. As these scholars noticed, civil wars are a rational mean of getting economic support from foreign countries, mostly on the part of west, but also on the part of international economic institutions. (2002) For instance, during the Algerian civil war, the incumbent government was threatened by a domestic Islamist insurgency. But, it has allowed the Algerian government to strengthen by international economic aid and the promotion of policies by the IMF and the WB. On the other hand, looking back the UNFICYP's intervention in the Cyprus case, these foreign interventions don’t incentivize the government working on patronage to find a peace deal with the rebels.

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