The Challenge of Successful Post-Conflict Nation- and Peace-Building: NATO's Role and Potential
Friday, September 1, 2006 at 3:02PM The following analysis was published by the Duesseldorf Institute for Foreign and Security Policy (DIAS), a foreign policy think tank at the Heinrich Heine University of Duesseldorf, on 9/1, 2006. Please see: DIAS-online.org
The Challenge of Successful Post-Conflict Nation- and Peace-Building: NATO's Role and Potential
This paper explores NATO’s increasing role in post-conflict peace- and nation-building, a process that started in the 1990s with peacekeeping missions in the Balkans (IFOR, SFOR and KFOR). At the beginning of the 21st century, that process has continued in the form of out-of-area missions in Afghanistan and a common NATO role for Iraq. The paper also takes into account NATO’s humanitarian operations, be they logistical support for the African Union (AU) in Darfur, Sudan, or flying aid to Kashmir in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake.[1] Does NATO have the potential to steadily develop into a permanent stand-by force to the United Nations for UN peacekeeping based on chapter 7 of its charter?[2]
Another important aspect refers to the theoretical challenges for successful nation- and peace-building after both, man-made and natural disasters.[3] Important questions in that regard are how to create lasting stability?[4] How to enable a viable peace, and thus ‘win the peace’?[5]
1. The Theory of Peace- and Nation-Building: ‘Old Issues’ Re-Visited
Which lessons should and could have been learned from post-conflict peacekeeping and peace-building in the Balkans in the 1990s?[6] Jock Covey, Michael Dziedzic and Leonard Hawley observe that the commanders of the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) believed it to be “essential to the effectiveness of their mission and the security of their own troops that the former warring parties see the international military as an honest broker aloof from politics”.[7] However, neutrality vis-à-vis all parties in a post-conflict situation seems to pose a dilemma, as NATO learned in the second half of the 1990s, especially when dealing with so-called obstructionists to a peace process.[8]
