Rethinking the practices of UN peacekeeping operations in the early post-cold war era: The implications of the cases of Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo

This thesis examines the practice of UN peacekeeping operations during the first decade of the post-Cold War era, focusing on three cases: Somalia, Bosnia- Herzegovina, and Kosovo. During the early 1990s, the international community escalated its expectations of and demands upon the UN and its peacekeepers for massive and expanded interventions to deal with increased intra-state conflicts. In this sense, the interventions in Somalia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were the test cases of the UN's capabilities and the political willingness of the international community. Many believe that the peacekeeping experiences in both regions were one of the most important developments for the evolution of UN peacekeeping operations in the 1990s. This thesis argues that the operations in Somalia and Bosnia were not evidence of the evolution of peacekeeping, but were cases of the misuse of peacekeeping techniques, and furthermore that this misuse was the key reason for the failures of the operations. In other words, the deployment of UN peacekeepers to places where there was no peace to keep deeply affected the outbreak of the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia and the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia. The decision-makers of the UN and member states of the Security Council employed an inappropriate measure to tackle the crises that required well-prepared military enforcement actions in terms of planning and capabilities including structured command and control systems. As an agential factor of the failures in Somalia and Bosnia, the misuse of peacekeeping techniques was deeply affected by the structural features of the post-Cold War order: the increase of intra-state or regional armed conflicts with intense hostility on an unprecedented scale and the construction of an identity by Western governments to tackle conflicts stemming from the widespread belief of the `liberal triumph' in the early post-Cold War era. For the better performance of future peacekeeping operations, the Kosovo intervention has taught two useful lessons: the major involvement of regional military organization and use of air power.