International Peacekeeping in Ukraine: Irreal Future or Another Institutional Deadlock?
Although the global community, particularly the international bodies responsible for the promotion of peace and security worldwide, such as the UN and NATO, have already, for almost one year, been confronted with the atrocities of the Russian-initiated war in Ukraine, the odds of the UN establishing its peacekeeping operation within the conflict area are indisputably low. The following piece aims to address the contentious question of why UN peacekeeping in Ukraine is a rather irreal concept and what factors contribute to such a deadlocked state of affairs.
UN Peacekeeping
UN Peacekeeping is a tool used by the UN to facilitate a way for conflict-torn countries to peace and successful divergence mitigation and maintain international security. For the UN Peacekeeping mission to be deployed, the following three major criteria are to be fulfilled:
Consent of the parties. Well-defined approval from the parties is required for the UN to undertake any form of peacekeeping action, either political or physical. A mutually approved deployment of the UN peacekeepers in the Russo-Ukrainian case currently seems relatively distant given Moscow’s attitude, yet Kyiv has recently-expressed readiness for “peace, but peace for the entire country”.
Impartiality. The aspect of operational objectivity is crucial in dealing with conflicting parties. However, after realistically assessing the scale of aggression and the legitimacy of allegations toward the Russian Federation’s actions, it becomes challenging to assume that complete impartiality on the side of the UN peacekeepers would be possible if such a mission was ever deployed. The research on the impartiality of the UN missions unveils the numerous issues that were occurring throughout the peacekeeping missions before. It becomes difficult to maintain impartiality in a highly dependent and interconnected world and approach the unfortunate consequences of frequent institutional failures to provide adequate engagement and input into the facilitated process of conflict mitigation.
Non-use of force except in self-defense and defense of the mandate. Under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, peacekeeping operations can be conducted robustly, yet force is always considered a measure of last resort and its use needs to be adequately justified based on various factors related to the mission itself. Another disputable aspect under this aspect is an authorization of humanitarian intervention, understood as a use of force set off by violations concerning genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. A wider instrument, which besides the use of force also encompasses other measures to address the list of crimes mentioned before, is called The Responsibility to Protect, also known as R2P. Any such activities need to be authorized by the Security Council, which is given the power to block a decision with a veto from one of the permanent Council members.
With all the aforementioned criteria kept in mind, it is important to restate that every UN Peacekeeping operation primarily stems from the formal approval or request from the UN Security Council consisting of ten non-permanent and five permanent members, namely China, France, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russian Federation. These nations are given a very decisive veto power (under Article 27 of the UN Charter) that can prevent the adoption of a resolution or establishment of a peacekeeping operation. The permanent group is widely known for blocking comprehensive UN actions that undermine their (geo)political and economic interests. It was particularly obvious concerning the Russian Federation in the case of Ukraine when the Resolution calling upon Moscow to immediately discontinue the invasion of Ukraine was vetoed by the culprit state itself. The probability of the UN peacekeeping mission deployment in Ukraine reaches its lowest point given the awareness of the UN Security Council composition and the authorization power the permanent members are given in the matter of passing a resolution that would eventually establish a peace operation. Lately, it has caused a major institutional deadlock within the UN and raised public concerns related to the level of the UN’s compliance with its primary mandate – to maintain international peace and security.
“We are here to bring peace”
It is noteworthy to mention that, in the Russian political discourse, the ongoing offensive is framed as a peacekeeping operation and is a part of a wider and long-cultivated narrative. The nature of it emanates from the so-called peacekeeping operations in Georgia (Southern Ossetia and Abkhazia), Tajikistan and Moldova conducted in the early and mid-90s right after the dissolution of the USSR. Russian actions were understood as a part of a larger geostrategic policy to remain in control over the “post-Soviet space” and sometimes contribute to the conflict escalation to then act as a powerful intermediary. The international community observed a very well-familiar pattern back in 2014 with Crimea, and subsequently, Donetsk and Luhansk occupation, followed up by the February 2021 formal recognition of the aforementioned enclaves and mobilizing the “peacekeeping” operations once again, this time in Ukraine. Henceforth, even if the legitimacy of Russian commitment to establishing peace in Ukraine by proceeding with its aggressive actions is highly debatable, the possibility of the Kremlin contradicting its deep-rooted political agenda and ostentatious statements by allowing international peacekeepers in Ukraine seems exceedingly inconceivable.
To reiterate, the Polish proposal to NATO to organize a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine was sharply criticized by Russian higher executives and, as claimed by them, would potentially lead to a clash between the NATO forces and Russia itself. Even Kyiv expressed deep criticism of the proposal, raising the consent aspect and stating that another frozen conflict would contradict the Ukrainian vision of the possible resolution. The presented reasoning leads one to further reflection on the general perception of the efficacy and efficiency of the peacekeeping operations mostly conducted by NATO and the UN and serves a field of wider future research.
Concluding remarks
According to Zartman’s “theory of ripeness”, the parties are only willing to seek conflict resolution proposals when they are ready to do so, i.e. when the means of achieving the desired outcomes are blocked or have been so far exhausted. However, the most recent wave of airstrikes targeted at the Ukrainian energy infrastructure, which is, according to the official Ukrainian news outlets, considered one of the most intense since the beginning of the war, only proves the fact that the war is not over and the “ripeness” point will not come anytime soon.
From this might follow that the need for an immediate resolution is of higher importance not only for millions of Ukrainians suffering from the horrendous consequences of an ongoing military terror but also for the global community. The latter has already acknowledged the high price everyone to a greater or lesser extent is currently paying for the conflict that seems far to be resolved, given the power rivalry, political interdependencies, and institutional deadlocks that this analytical piece intended to only just unveil.