This study challenges the easy assumption that peacekeeping as we've known it in the past will be the 'pill for every ill' in the future. A 'new world order' means new types of conflict breaking out almost anywhere in a world that is more volatile and less predictable than before. Contributors to this volume argue that we need to get back to basics; that there are sobering lessons to be learnt from Somalia, the Lebanon and Cambodia; that we need to ask some fundamental questions. Can peacekeeping be 'reformed' or must it be totally 'reinvented'? Are soldiers the best peacekeepers and, if not, who should replace them?

United Nations peacekeeping constitutes the second largest military deployment around the world, and the organization's flagship enterprise. Once responsible simply for the job of observing frontiers and monitoring ceasefire agreements, UN missions are now frequently charged with the far more daunting task of 'robust' intervention- penalizing spoilers of peace and protecting civilians from peril. Taking Sides in Peacekeeping explores this transformationand its implications through the first comprehensive conceptual and empirical study of impartiality, a norm long considered to be the bedrock of UN peacekeeping. It reveals how a change in the dominantunderstanding of impartiality has politicized peacekeeping and, in some cases, effectively converted UN forces into one warring party among many. The book incorporates a large body of primary evidence and draws on extensive fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, site of the biggest and costliest mission in UN history (1999-2015).

Dennis C. Jett examines why peacekeeping operations fail by comparing the unsuccessful attempt at peacekeeping in Angola with the successful effort in Mozambique, alongside a wide range of other peacekeeping experiences. The book argues that while the causes of past peacekeeping failures can be identified, the chances for success will be difficult to improve because of the way such operations are initiated and conducted, and the way the United Nations operates as an organization. Jett reviews the history of peacekeeping and the evolution in the number, size, scope, and cost of peacekeeping missions. He also explains why peacekeeping has become more necessary, possible, and desired and yet, at the same time, more complex, more difficult, and less frequently used. The book takes a hard look at the UN's actions and provides useful information for understanding current conflicts.

Providing Peacekeepers analyzes the factors which encourage (or discourage) states from contributing their soldiers to serve in United Nations peacekeeping operations. It focuses on the UN's experiences during the twenty-first century and does so through four thematic and sixteen case study chapters.

Facing threats ranging from Islamist insurgencies to the Ebola pandemic, African regional actors are playing an increasingly vital role in safeguarding peace and stability across the continent. But while the African Union has demonstrated its ability to deploy forces on short notice and in difficult circumstances, the challenges posed by increasingly complex conflict zones have revealed a widening divide between the theory and practice of peacekeeping. With the AU's African Standby Force becoming fully operational in 2016, this timely and much-needed work argues that responding to these challenges will require a new and distinctively African model of peacekeeping, as well as a radical revision of the current African security framework. The first book to provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of African peace operations, The Future of African Peace Operations gives a long overdue assessment of the ways in which peacekeeping on the continent has evolved over the past decade. It will be a vital resource for policy makers, researchers and all those seeking solutions and insights into the immense security challenges which Africa is facing today.

This edited volume offers a first thorough review of peacekeeping theory and reality in contemporary contexts, and attempts to align the two to help inform practice.

Whatever happened to multilateral peacekeeping? This is the central question Jean-Marc Coicaud explores in this penetrating scholarly examination of the period of robust UN-mandated peacekeeping missions in humanitarian crises. The most notable peace operations during this period were undertaken by the three leading NATO powers the United States foremost among them in the immediate post Cold War era. Yet, as Coicaud explains, the international democratic solidarity that unified their multilateral action against a Soviet threat was stretched thin in the post Cold War era, which manifested an entirely new set of threats to international security such as ethnic cleansing and failed states. The three leading Western powers were ill-equipped to handle them effectively in terms of the fundamental political theory and applied political philosophy that generally informed their traditional foreign policies. The book concludes with guidelines for more effective realization of international interests among the Western powers and an afterword on the book s lessons applied to Darfur."