Review: Does Peacekeeping Work? <i>Shaping Belligerents' Choices after Civil War</i> , Un Peacekeeping in Civil Wars

DOES PEACEKEEPING WORK? Shaping Belligerents' Choices After Civil War Virginia Page Fortna Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. 232pp, $24.95 paper ISBN 9780691136714UN PEACEKEEPING IN CIVILWARS Lise Morje Howard Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 4i6pp, $36.99 paper ISBN 9780521707671The demise of the Cold War brought with it expectations of a new, less ideologically divisive world order based on international cooperation, the emergence of revived multilateral institutions, and a more promising future for the UN and peacekeeping. After years of near-paralysis, the time had arrived for a transformed UN to intervene in the broad interests of humanity rather than the narrow self-interest ofthe state. Much ofthe literature in recent years was inspired by that earlier sense of optimism. Assumptions were also made about the need to augment mechanisms of conflict resolution by shifting from traditional to peace enforcement. However, the upsurge of ethnic conflict in the wake of the disbanding of states such as the former Yugoslavia appeared to overwhelm what some saw as an increasingly irrelevant institution. Lise Morje Howard's UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars and Virginia Page Fortna's Does Peacekeeping Work? Shaping Belligerents' Choices after Civil War provide a timely new justification for and reasons for optimism about the UN's work in this area.In learning from previous UN attempts to manage civil conflict, Howard's study suggests that is most effective when peacekeepers take their cues as much from the local people as UN headquarters. Premised on the necessity of decentralizing UN authority, Howard's central argument is that the success or failure of multidimensional peacekeeping rests on the confluence of three conditions that distinguish her methodological approach: first, certain favourable 'situational factors' of the country emerging from civil war; second, consensual but only moderately intense interests of the powerful members of the Security Council; and finally, 'first-level' organizational learning on the ground, on the part of the UN mission (2). The critical role of organizational learning stands out as an innovative treatment of past and future operations.Howard deems six interventions - in Namibia, El Salvador, Cambodia, Mozambique, East Slavonia, Croatia and East Timor - to have been successful, while four others - in Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Angola - were failures. In applying her analytical parameters, Howard measures success and failure according to mandate implementation, as the UN secretariat interprets it (7). Howard exposes an important linkage between the secretariat and organizational learning as one ofthe key determinants of the success. By emphasizing the process of learning (especially in the field), she reminds readers that the effectiveness of such bodies as the secretariat depends on learning lessons from the field and implementing them in the UN's subsidiary organizations. Howard emphasizes that the UN is not a unified actor by citing examples of lower-level functionaries who seized the initiative and thereby contributed to their missions' success (15).In presenting the UN's failures in Somalia, Rwanda, Angola, and Bosnia, Howard isolates complex combinations of causal factors. These failures were not the result of the belligerents' lack of consent to a UN mission, or an absence of security council interest in the conflicts. Rather, Howard argues, organizational dysfunction within the UN secretariat was primarily to blame. In particular, by declining to stand up to the security council during the formulation and implementation of these mandates, the secretariat failed to fulfil its potential. Howard's negative assessment ofthe Bosnian intervention - especially the problems with UNPROFOR, the establishment of safe havens, and the fall of Srebrenica - may call into question the way she measures success. …

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