This book considers contemporary international interventions with a specific focus on analyzing the frameworks that have guided recent peacekeeping operations led by the United Nations. Drawing from the work of Michel Foucault and Foucauldian-inspired approaches in the field of International Relations, it highlights how interventions can be viewed through the lens of governmentality and its key attendant concepts. The book draws from these approaches in order to explore how international interventions are increasingly informed by governmental rationalities of security and policing. Two specific cases are examined: the UN's Security Sector Reform (SSR) approach and the UN's Protection of Civilians agenda. Focusing on the governmental rationalities that are at work in these two central frameworks that have come to guide contemporary UN-led peacekeeping efforts in recent years, the book considers: The use in IR of governmentality and its attendant notions of biopower and sovereign power The recent discussion regarding the concept and practice of international policing and police reform The rise of security as a rationality of government and the manner in which security and police rationalities interconnect and have increasingly come to inform peacekeeping efforts The Security Sector Reform (SSR) framework for peacebuilding and the rise of the UN's Protection of Civilians agenda. This book will be of interest to graduates and scholars of international relations, security studies, critical theory, and conflict and intervention.

As the antithetical relationships between the civilian and military agencies and components of modern peace operations are essentially cultural and are rooted in misinformation and prejudice; effective civil-military operations are needed from the outset of an operation.

The deployment of a large number of soldiers, police officers and civilian personnel inevitably has various effects on the host society and economy, not all of which are in keeping with the peacekeeping mandate and intent or are easily discernible prior to the intervention. This book is one of the first attempts to improve our understanding of unintended consequences of peacekeeping operations, by bringing together field experiences and academic analysis. The aim of the book is not to discredit peace operations but rather to improve the way in which such operations are planned and managed.

Since the end of the last century, UN peacekeeping has undergone a fundamental and largely unexamined change. Peacekeeping operations, long expected to use force only in self-defence and to act impartially, are now increasingly relied upon by the Security Council as a means to maintain and restore security within a country. The operations are established under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and some are empowered to use 'all necessary measures', language traditionally reserved for enforcement operations. Through a close examination of these twenty-first century peacekeeping operations - including operations in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, Haiti and the Darfur region of the Sudan - the book shows that they are, for the most part, fundamentally ill-suited to the enforcement-type tasks being asked of them. The operations, which are under-funded, under-equipped and whose troops are under-trained, frequently lurch from crisis to crisis. There is scant evidence, some 10 years on, that matters are likely to improve. The book argues that bestowing enforcement-type functions on a peacekeeping operation is misconceived. Such operations are likely to be unsuccessful in their enforcement-type tasks, thereby causing serious damage to the excellent reputation of UN peacekeeping, and the UN more broadly. In addition, because such operations are more likely to be perceived as partial, their ability to carry out traditional (non-forceful) peacekeeping tasks may be impeded. Finally, the Security Council's practice of charging peacekeeping operations with enforcement functions lessens the pressure on the Council to work to establish genuine enforcement operations - ie, operations that are considerably better suited to restoring peace and security. '...Dr Sloan is able to show, in knowledgeable detail, not only what has changed over the years, but also what has brought these changes about. His analysis leads him to offer not only well-informed insights, but critical observations, too...This book is a pleasing combination of detailed scrutiny of topics already familiar (provisional measures, consent, so-called 'Chapter VI1⁄2' action, implied powers) and a rigorous questioning as to their place in – or indeed, relevance at all to – militarised peacekeeping. The reader will find much new terrain traversed, and plenty of out-of-the-box thinking.' From the foreword by Dame Rosalyn Higgins

This is a new examination of Nordic approaches to peace operations after the Cold War and how they have remained relevant. They continue to have much to offer to both academics and practitioners in this particular field.