The Work of Peace: History, Imperialism, and Peacekeeping.

• Author: Thompsell, Angela
• Position: ARTICLE

Introduction

The end of the Cold War dramatically altered the landscape of international peacekeeping, particularly in Africa. In the four decades between 1948 and 1988, there were only thirteen United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions, two of which addressed African conflicts, whereas there have been 58 missions since that time, 30 of which were in Africa. (1) Many of those more recent missions have also been substantial, requiring thousands of personnel and massive financial outlays. The overall cost of African missions has been well in excess of $36 billion. (2) Peacekeeping is now "big business for the leading state funders of UN missions" (3) and, like international aid, has become an important axis for engaging with African countries and building regional connections.

The changing realities of peacekeeping have raised new questions about the intrusive nature of peacebuilding and its similarities to 19th and 20th century imperialism. Before addressing those connections, it is helpful to consider why peacekeeping changed in 1989. As the date suggests, the end of the Cold War was a critical factor, but the antagonism between the United States (U.S.) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) only made multilateral peacekeeping difficult, not impossible. (4) By way of comparison, there were seven missions to the Middle East between 1948 and 1988, and only three since. (5) To understand the remarkable uptick in the number and scope of peacekeeping missions in Africa specifically, one must consider the changing notions of state sovereignty and the nature of conflicts on the continent.

In 1963, once the majority of African states had gained independence, they formed the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and agreed to treat the boundaries drawn during the colonial era as inviolable, a policy very few states violated. (6) Consequently, most conflicts in Africa were internal affairs, at least when they began. In several cases, foreign states, such as the former imperial powers and the U.S. and the USSR, subsidized or armed factions that supported their competing agendas. Such interference extended and exacerbated these conflicts, but they were still considered to be civil matters. This classification placed such conflicts beyond the purview of the United Nations because its Charter explicitly states that the organization is not authorized to intervene in "matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state" except in the case of an "act of aggression" or "threat to the peace." (7) Before 1989, the international community did not consider intra-state conflicts or human rights abuses as qualifying for this exception to the policy of non-interference. (8)

That changed with the end of the Cold War, and just as multilateral operations became more feasible, many states embraced a post-Westphalian view of sovereignty that permitted interventions to protect human rights. (9) This shift was most evident among Western states, but African governments also loosened their stance on sovereignty and dissolved the OAU in 2002 to form a more interventionist body, the African Union (AU). (10) By that point, growing fears of international terrorism had further amplified the global community's willingness to intervene in intra-state conflicts, as they now saw embattled states as potential breeding grounds of extremism and thus grave threats to international peace.

For these reasons, the United Nations and other regional blocs began authorizing more peacekeeping missions and greatly extending their mandates. Unlike earlier peacekeeping missions that sought to secure and enforce ceasefires, todays peacebuilding operations aim to prevent future violence by supporting post-conflict reconciliations and encouraging democratization. Without doubt, the record has been mixed, but research shows that such missions increase the probability of a lasting peace. (11)

The new, extended parameters of peacekeeping operations have also led, however, to frequent comparisons between today's peacebuilding efforts and the "colonial occupations" of the early 20th century. (12) The macroscale similarities are striking. Like imperialism, peacebuilding in Africa has been traditionally spearheaded by Western nations and has entailed foreign experts working with African elites to restructure governments, bringing them more in line with Western norms. (By way of contrast, China, a relatively new actor in peacekeeping, promotes "cooperative" development and avoids efforts to liberalize or reform host countries' governments.) (13) The political economy of peacekeeping has also meant that Western countries, acting through the UN or European Union, have been the primary funders of missions, even those under the auspices of the African Union. While Chinas increased participation has altered the landscape, Western powers continue to exert significant influence over operation strategies and mandates.

These trends are in addition to the historical connections between imperialism and international peacekeeping. As Bruno Charbonneau recently argued, many of the structures, networks, and power dynamics of peacebuilding derive from colonial interactions. (14) The very ideas that shape interventions into collapsed states and disputed regions can also be traced back to an imperial precedent, the notion of trusteeship articulated at the Berlin West African Conference, which later evolved into the League of Nations Mandate system and United Nations Trust territories. (15) Peacekeeping and imperialism are not just analogous, they are deeply interrelated.

Yet what is perhaps even more remarkable is the casual way in which scholars tend to brush aside the "specter of imperialism" in peacekeeping literature. The overwhelming assumption has been that the multilateral nature and humanitarian aims of peacekeeping make it unambiguously distinct from imperial occupation, but to quote Philip Cunliffe, such "claims are unconvincing because they rely on under-theorized and historically impoverished understandings of empire." (16) Imperialism has been the straw man of peacebuilding.

This article expands on Cunliffes critique by bringing a historians perspective to bear on the question of African imperialism. The following discussion argues that the Scramble for Africa itself fits within the definition of multilateralism used in peacekeeping literature. The General Act signed at the Berlin Conference may have imposed few obligations or restrictions, but the agreement codified liberal principles that guided the colonization of Africa without respect to particular cases. It turned the imperialist claim that European conquest and rule was a humanitarian effort into an obligation that was enforced during the Congo reform campaign. There is little doubt that today's peacebuilding is very different from 19th and 20th century imperialism, but the distinctions are not as simple or clear-cut as the present literature suggests.

The aim of this analysis is not to delegitimize international intervention, but rather to show how a historical lens can add to the critical evaluation of and recommendations for peacekeeping practices. It also, therefore, does not seek to draw a new line in the sand between the two forms of intervention, but rather to initiate a more engaged discussion between the literatures. Better understanding the imperial past and its connections to the present will help peacekeepers avoid replicating imperial-esque approaches. The similarities between the two types of interventions also make the past a useful guide. Thus, after exploring the multilateral and humanitarian sides of imperialism, this article will consider how imperial history can inform one recent trend in peacebuilding practice, namely increased civic participation in conflict resolution. It will then close by considering why so many studies address peacekeeping specifically in Africa and how even something as simple as that categorization unintentionally reifies imperialist ideas and relations.

Multilateral Imperialism

The very term multilateral imperialism may seem like an oxymoron, particularly during the era of New Imperialism (c. 1870-1919), when European empires competed against each other in their efforts to assert dominion over nearly every part of the globe. Governments at that time saw imperial expansion as a zero-sum game, resulting in a rush for power and profit through formal conquest and other indirect means of asserting dominance over states. Yet as the following discussion illustrates, the Scramble for Africa occurred within a shared framework that the major empires saw as regulating their actions and guaranteeing their common security and which fits--if uneasily--within the definition of qualitative multilateralism famously advocated by John Ruggie.

During the era of New Imperialism, there were several inter-imperial coalitions, such as the Eight-Nation Alliance formed to fight the Boxer Rebellion in China. (17) Philip Cunliffe identifies this alliance as an example of imperial multilateralism, but it was only nominally multilateral. (18) The alliance involved eight governments united in a common goal, namely defeating the Boxers and protecting their economic and strategic interests in China. Such efforts may be the "historical precursors of peacekeeping," (19) but they were still alliances created in response to a particular, shared threat. It is precisely because such alliances--whether bilateral or multinational--can fit within a "nominal" definition of multilateralism that John Ruggie famously advocated for a tighter, "qualitative" understanding, which is used here to consider the nature of imperial relations in the conquest of Africa. (20)

As Ruggie defined it, qualitative multilateralism is "an institutional form which coordinates relations among three or more states on the basis of generalized' principles of conduct--that is, principles which...