Kenkel Five generations of peace operations: from the “thin blue line” to “painting a country
blue”
Introduction
This article seeks to combine international practice and analytical contributions into a
presentation of the evolution of peace operations from their modern inception in 1948 to the
present. In doing so, peace operations’ progression is traced through five analytical
generations. Alongside concrete changes in mandates and tasks, progress through the
generations follows several axes, centered around the following factors:
● The state of the debate surrounding issues of sovereignty and intervention and the
accompanying change in missions’ propensity to use military force
● The UN’s attitude towards the conflict and the attendant type of peace, or form of
conflict resolution, being sought
● The concrete mandate and tasks that derive from the above factors
● The actors required to carry out the mandate
The historical progression of peace operations’ practice
Over the course of their existence, UN peace operations have undergone a series of
fundamental transformations. As these missions are firmly grounded in the practices of
international politics, they have to be linked firmly with both conceptual advances and
empirical events in international politics to fully understand them.
Changes to peace operations have followed a number of central axes of change. The
highest-order conceptual shift consists of what Bellamy and Williams have called a shift from
a Westphalian to a post-Westphalian approach to world order. This shift takes the form of a
number of progressive changes which have been echoed in the practice of peace
operations. The move to a post-Westphalian order is primarily paired with a reordering of the
relationship between two constituent elements of the principle of sovereignty: the rights of
states (non-intervention in internal affairs) and individuals’ human rights.
In keeping with the shift to a post-Westphalian order, peace operations have undergone a
three three changes:
● Collective security concerns grounded in the Westphalian order, and later
humanitarian preoccupations, were added to conflict resolution.
● They went from being a case-bound conflict resolution tool to becoming a key
element in the attempt to reconstitute the core organizing principle of Westphalian
sovereignty where crises and internal conflicts had cast its primacy in doubt.
● Human rights began to gain ground on humanitarian concerns. The distribution of
humanitarian aid emerged as a key justification and motivation for the dispatch of an
increasing number of peace operations.
It has become common to divide the evolution of the practice of peace operations into
subsequent generations. The next sections divide past practice into five distinct generations.
Generations are divided on the basis of three main factors:
● The level of force used by operations’ military pillar
● The type and depth of tasks conducted by its civilian pillar
● Increased UN load-sharing with regional organizations
As they have progressed through the generations, UN peace operations have moved from a
reactive stance that seeks to freeze or palliate conflict to one that is proactive and seeks to
influence its outcome. Additionally, changes in the nature of conflict (from interstate to
,intrastate) have significantly reduced the moral effect of the UN’s presence, leading to
increases in the use of force in the implementation of mandates.
First-generation peace operations: traditional peacekeeping
Peace operations originally evolved out of the legacy of conflict resolution mechanisms left
by the League of Nations. During the Cold War, UN missions engaged in what has become
known as ‘traditional’ peacekeeping. Peacekeeping only occurs where there is a peace to
keep. The hallmark activity of peacekeeping is the deployment of a buffer force between the
frontlines, diminishing the probability of escalation. Upon the attainment of a political
settlement, traditional peacekeeping missions are withdrawn.
First-generation forces typically possess a mandate under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, are
lightly armed and operate under strictly limiting rules of engagement. The interpretation of
state sovereignty that was prevalent during the Cold War era, which emphasized states’
rights, placed tight restrictions on the nature of peace operations. These crystallized into
three basic principles which guide peace operations to this day:
● The consent of the host nation(s), which is a prerequisite for avoiding the violation of
the host states’ right to non-intervention.
● Impartiality (equal treatment without discrimination) between the conflict factions,
which is necessary in order to assure the effective functioning of the mission due to
the maintenance of credibility with all sides involved.
● The non-use of force by UN troops, which reflects the idea that the UN is not a party
to a given conflict but rather a presence sent to assist in its resolution.
First-generation peacekeeping went through a distinct progression in terms of tasks and
force composition. This progression is not as firmly related to empirical developments or
theoretical advances in IR as is the case in subsequent generations due to the Cold War and
the lasting dominance of Realism.
UN practice continued to be heavily based on the notion of moral suasion (the idea that
parties would conform to the mandate and conduct themselves peacefully if the UN were
present). In practice, however, UN forces always had to deal with varying levels of consent
and had varying success in attaining the goal of true impartiality. Additionally, first-generation
peacekeeping has been accused of freezing conflicts and providing a disincentive to their
final resolution. The expansion of UN efforts into a second generation should be understood
in this context.
Second-generation peace operations: civilian tasks
The changes wrought in the scenario of international politics by the end of the Cold War led
to profound changes in the nature and extent of peace operations. Diehl has divided these
changes into supply and demand for peace operations.
● Shift in the nature of conflict:
○ Demand for peace operations increased following the end of the Cold War as
support for proxy wars on the African continent was withdrawn, requiring the
international community’s assistance in processes of political transition.
○ In the Northern hemisphere, ethnic impulses earlier held in check by now-
disintegrated Communist regimes led to destructive civil wars.
This shift in the nature of conflict to what has been labeled ‘new wars’, characterized
by internal rather than interstate conflicts, the deterritorialization of conflict and a
, focus on identity, created an international scenario unforeseen by the UN Charter’s
sovereigntist authors.
● The end of the Cold War led to an increase in the ‘supply’ of UN peace operations by
lifting the blockade on effective Security Council action imposed by the superpowers’
use of vetoes. Additionally, there was an increasing consciousness of the
international community’s responsibility to provide humanitarian aid to populations in
need following the highly mediatized famines of the 1980s. Accordingly, peace
operations became easier to dispatch, but they were sent to even more complex and
dangerous contexts. The results were more ambitious mandates and active
involvement not only in ‘freezing’ conflicts but also in assisting the transition to peace.
Second-generation peace operations are characterized by the addition of civilian tasks
related to political transition from conflict, without an accompanying increase in permission to
use military force. Bellamy and Williams attribute six distinguishing features to these
missions:
● They take place within a context of ongoing violence
● They take place in a context of ‘new wars’
● They take on new civilian tasks
● They must interact with an increasing number of humanitarian actors in complex
emergencies
● They often experience creeping shifts in their mandates
● They suffer from a considerable gap in the relationship between their means and
ends
Seeking to codify these changes in the international scenario, as well as potential UN
responses to them, Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali issued his Agenda for Peace in 1992.
In it he draws broad conclusions for the post-Cold War collective security role of the UN,
assigning a central role to peace operations. The document established a typology of five
types of activities that make up modern peace operations. The document uses a strongly
legalist framework, obliging it to distinguish between Chapter VI and Chapter VII activities.
The Chapter VI activities include:
● Preventive diplomacy: action to prevent disputes from arising, to prevent existing
disputes from escalating into conflicts and to limit the spread of the latter when they
occur.
● Peacemaking: action to bring hostile parties to agreement, essentially through
peaceful means as those foreseen in Chapter VI of the Charter of the UN.
● Peacekeeping: the deployment of a UN presence in the field, hitherto with the
consent of all the parties concerned, normally involving UN military and/or police
personnel and frequently civilians as well.
Chapter VII-based peace enforcement is mentioned as a subheading of peacemaking, and
UN officials tend to view it as an entirely different activity from peacekeeping. Typical
second-generation missions’ civilian tasks, added on top of classic first-generation military
mandates, include the organization of elections, humanitarian aid delivery and human rights
promotion. A further important development is the increasing deployment of police forces,
both as trainers and in units responsible for law and order, which are now considered a full
third pillar of peace operations.
The growing gap between the tasks and outcomes expected of UN operations and the
means placed at their disposal would lead to three devastatingly failed missions in the 1990s
, (Rwanda, Somalia and Bosnia) whose lessons would lead to a profound rethinking of UN
peace operations. These failures led to a new type of peace operation.
Third-generation peace operations: peace enforcement
Third-generation peace operations are characterized by increased permission to use force to
impose the aims of a mission’s mandate, without significant departure from the classic
transitional tasks of second-generation mandates. These missions are typically dispatched
under Chapter VII. The experiences from these missions had profound effects on peace
operations’ guiding principles:
● The operation in Somalia demonstrated that UN action with humanitarian aims might
be necessary in failed states where there was no government to give consistent
consent.
● The operation in Bosnia showed that consent for UN operations could be used to buy
time to rearm during a UN arms embargo.
● The Rwandan genocide revealed major issues with both impartiality and the non-use
of force. The concentration of perpetrators on one side of the conflict created a moral
dilemma for impartiality, which in moral terms later was deemed not to exist in
situations of blatant moral inequality between the parties as in the Rwandan case.
The UN’s response to these failures would center around the use of force:
● Initially this was due to the increasing realization of the role played by factions
refusing to collaborate with the implementation of the UN mandate.
● This was also a direct result of the moral aftermath of all three missions, which gave
impetus to a growing shift in the balance between the two components of
sovereignty.
The increased use of force and the increasing inclusion of humanitarian impulses in the work
of the UN would be codified in the Brahimi Report of August 2000. The Report makes
recommendations for improvements of UN peace operations. The debate over humanitarian
intervention and peace enforcement and the relationship between human rights and non-
intervention as components of sovereignty began in earnest in the late 1990s, and marked
the first time that an issue central to peace operations would spark substantial production in
the academic arena as well.
The new predominance of human rights earned the name ‘humanitarian intervention’.
However, the vast majority of the UN’s work is based on less strident attempts to balance
human rights with those of states. Attempts to find an equilibrium between non-intervention
and human rights reached their apex with the concept of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P).
The first third-generation intervention was NATO’s action against Yugoslavia in the Kosovo
conflict in 1999. This operation highlights an important characteristic of the carrying-out of
peace enforcement missions. Many of such missions are not carried out by troops seconded
to the UN itself, but by regional organizations or coalitions of the willing authorized under
Chapter VIII.
Fourth-generation peace operations: peacebuilding
The fourth generation of peace operations consists of robust peacebuilding operations that
combine elevated permission to use force with enhanced civilian tasks that are more
intrusive in terms of their effect on local autonomy than in the second generation. These
missions are sometimes described as peace support operations.
