Lost Blue Helmets in Wars Among People: Revitalizing UN Peace Operations for the Context of Modern Warfare
Lost Blue Helmets in Wars Among People: Revitalizing UN Peace Operations for the Context of Modern Warfare by Julian D’Souza - The Strategy Bridge
Since the end of the Cold War, the nature of warfare has changed. “What stands out in the 21st century is the lack of large-scale interstate conflict,” note Pettersson and Wallensteen. Contemporary warfare is predominantly comprised of civil or intrastate wars, where non-state actors play a significant role in asymmetric or irregular conflict that pits them against governments or other non-state actors. Often, states afflicted by these wars are characterized by conditions favouring insurgency, such as poverty, slow growth, large populations, and financial and bureaucratic weakness. Because these wars are fought by irregular or insurgent forces, authors such as Rupert Smith have come to call them “war among the people.” Mary Kaldor, a researcher who popularized the phrase new wars, argues “the risks or threats we face are less likely to come from authoritarian states but from failing states...[in which] violence is primarily directed against unarmed and unprotected civilians rather than against other warring parties.” Thus, in the context of contemporary warfare characterized by irregular forces and violence among civilian populations, whose causes are rooted in socio-political factors and state failure, this essay aims to engage with the following question: has the changing nature of warfare made UN peacekeeping outdated and can it be adapted to suit the conditions of contemporary war? In an effort to answer these two questions, this essay will be broken into two parts. In the first, it will study the concept of human security and what role it plays in understanding contemporary conflict. It will then review how UN peacekeeping has changed since the end of the Cold War and how these changes are reflected in UN peacekeeping doctrine. In the second part, the military doctrines of the United Kingdom and United States pertaining to counterinsurgency (COIN) and stabilisation operations published as a result of lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan will be studied in to understand how contemporary Western military doctrine perceives human security factors…