A Peacekeeping mission is a military and police intervention to support a political settlement. Such missions help to separate former combatants, build confidence, assist with power-sharing arrangements and institution building, and provide economic development assistance. Their troops – known as blue helmets – are usually unarmed, although they can use force to protect civilians and the peacekeepers themselves.
The UN has a long track record of peace operations, from small observation teams to large war-fighting interventions exemplified by the 20,000-strong African Union-mandated African Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). A recent study found that they tend to reduce violence between rival groups and improve the chances for a lasting peace settlement.
However, the founding principles of peacekeeping – consent of the parties involved and impartiality – no longer apply to most modern conflicts, which involve a wide variety of armed adversaries from identity-driven militias to criminal gangs to jihadist insurgents. These asymmetrical, highly partisan adversaries are often just as well-armed and capable as the government forces they confront.
In such a situation, peacekeeping needs to change. A new frugal mood in the Security Council, driven by budget pressures and President Trump’s distaste for multilateralism, has reduced the size of PKOs and led to a shift towards more limited mandates and less costly operations. These changes may have profound consequences. Our simulations show that, for example, if the DRC had received a PKO with a transformational mandate at its peak deployment in 2013 (S4), it would have reduced the risk of conflict by more than one-fifth of what it was counterfactually – and this effect would persist after the mission left.
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