Western Soldiers and the Protection of Local Civilians in UN Peacekeeping Operations: Is a Nationalist Orientation in the Armed Forces Hindering Our Preparedness to Fight?

UN Secretary-General, "Comprehensive Review of the Whole Question of Peacekeeping Operations in All Their Aspects" (U.N. Doc. S/2000/809, A/55/305, 2000), par. 48-49 (hereinafter referred to as the Brahimi Report).

Ibid., par. 62.

The mandates of the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS 2005, UN S.C. res. 1590), the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL 1999, UN S.C. res. 1289), the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC 2000, UN S.C. res. 1291), and the United Nations Operation in Ivory Coast (UNOCI 2004, UN S.C. res. 1609) all provide that the respective missions are "authorized to take the necessary action . . . to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence."

UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, "Guidelines for the Development of Rules of Engagement for UN Peacekeeping Operations (Provisional)" (1 U.N. Doc. MD/ FGS/0220.0001) May 15, 2002, rule 1.7 (unpublished document, UN classified) (hereinafter referred to as Provisional Guidelines for UN Rules of Engagement).

The term responsibility to protect is drawn from a report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa, Canada: International Development Research Centre, 2001). That report focused on the right of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect human beings at risk in other states from a state perspective. This article draws on the same philosophy to protect but focuses on individual soldiers who must ultimately execute the "responsibility to protect."

The term soldier is used for military personnel irrespective of rank or branch. Armed forces are understood as the collective of soldiers and the organizing unit that trains soldiers.

"The renewed confidence of Member States in United Nations peacekeeping has led to a surge in demand, with the result that the United Nations now has more missions on the ground than ever before. The majority of these are in Africa, where-I regret to say-developed countries are increasingly reluctant to contribute troops. As a result, our capacity is severely stretched." UN Secretary-General, In Larger Freedom: Towards Security, Development and Human Rights for All, 2005, par. 111, http://www.un.org/largerfreedom (hereinafter referred to as In Larger Freedom).

D. Harland , "United Nations Peacekeeping Today: Current Challenges and Required Responses" (paper, UNITAR/IPS Conference, Hiroshima, Japan, March 28 to 29, 2005), http://www.peacekeepingbestpractices.unlb.org/PBPS/Library/Hiroshima%20Statement_March%2022_CG.pdf .

Brahimi Report, par. 105.

"The massacre provoked an eruption of public anger in the Netherlands. Both the press and members of the parliament began to ask embarrassing questions and attacked what they perceived to be the ‘passivity’ or even ‘cowardliness’ of the Dutch UN soldiers." L. Sion, "Too Sweet and Innocent for War?" Armed Forces & Society 32, 3 (2006): 457. See part IV for comments about alleged "cowardice" on behalf of Belgian peacekeepers in Rwanda.

See, e.g., Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, Srebrenica, een "Veilig" Gebied (Amsterdam: Boom, 2002); Herinneringen aan Srebrenica: 171 Soldatengesprekken, ed. H. Praamsma, J. Peekel, and T. Boumans (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, 2005); Thom Karremans, Srebrenica: Who Cares? (Nieuwegijn, Netherlands: Arko Uitgeverij, 1998); R. Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003).

The distinction that the author makes between Western and non-Western soldiers is not the result of an Occidental outlook but rather follows from (1) the fact the UN Secretary-General explicitly called on developed states to increase military contributions to UN peacekeeping operations and (2) the lack of indication of risk aversion on behalf of non-Western soldiers who already participate in post millennium peacekeeping operations.

I have adopted the term sentiment from Gellner, who explained, "Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent. . . . Nationalist sentiment is the feeling of anger aroused by the violation of the principle, or the feeling of satisfaction aroused by its fulfillment." As can also be seen in part III, I use the term nationalist sentiment in a broader manner, to include different types of nationalism. Sentiment is understood as a feeling pertaining to different kinds of nationalism, including but not limited to the type of nationalism that Gellner described. Gellner’s nationalism is, importantly, oriented outward, comparing different nations; I also include types of nationalism that are inward looking, focusing on the sovereignty of the people. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 1, 7.

By "not predicting," the author refers to the absence of probabilities with respect to the question of future (in)action. The preparedness to fight is a complex phenomenon that does not allow for probability statements.

Gellner explains that nationalism is based on the principle that the political unit-the state- and the national unit-the nation-should be congruent. Nationalism as a sentiment, he writes, is "the feeling of anger aroused by the violation of the principle, or the feeling of satisfaction aroused by its fulfillment. A nationalist movement is one actuated by a sentiment of this kind." Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 1-7. Although I follow Gellner’s definitions of nationalist sentiments and nationalist movements, as given above, I use these definitions in an inclusive sense. I refer to sentiments and movements resulting from both particularistic and nonparticularistic nationalism. See Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 8-9. Further explanation of my understanding of nationalist sentiments and movements will follow in part IV of this article.

The fact that nationalism as an ideological motivator is discussed in relation to Western armed forces does not imply that nationalism or patriotism is absent with non-Western armed forces. An investigation into the presence or absence of nationalism with non-Western armed forces, the different manifestations of nationalism and patriotism, and the position of such nationalism or patriotism in relation to emotional preparedness to fight in robust UN peacekeeping operations could be valuable for predicting Western soldiers’ behavior in the aforementioned operations. However, such an investigation is beyond the scope of this article.

H. McCoubrey and N. White , The Blue Helmets: Legal Regulation of United Nations Military Operations (Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth, 1996), 76.

Various authors will argue that self-defense-or better said "the use of force limited to self-defense"-constitutes a third principle of peacekeeping operations. The author argues that the degree of permissible force is fully dependent on the interpretation of the principle of neutrality in a given operation. Consequently, self-defense is not a principle as such but, like Sir Brian Urquhart explained, a "quality" of peacekeeping. B. Urquhart, A Life in Peace and War (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 178-79.

Preamble, UN Charter, 1945.

McCoubrey and White, Blue Helmets, 48-49.

Michael Pugh has claimed that peacekeeping during the cold war was "a vision-less response to international issues." Thus, contrary to conventional wisdom, Pugh does not believe that peacekeeping forces were sent out during the cold war with the intention of maintaining the status quo. Instead, Pugh considers that peacekeeping during the cold war was a matter of ad hoc problem solving. See Michael Pugh, "Peacekeeping as Constant Gardening by Other Means" (paper, British International Studies Association Conference, Cork, Ireland, December 18 to 21, 2006).

During the cold war, the United Nations tried hard not to demonstrate any kind of bias. Peacekeeping personnel have always been prohibited from taking a political stance in the conflict. Baarda described this type of neutrality as operational neutrality. The problem in UN peacekeeping is that neutrality went one step further, to include moral neutrality. Baarda explained this type of neutrality as an absence of judgment between morally good and morally bad behavior. The extreme desire to demonstrate neutrality, in the author’s words "perceived neutrality," at times seemed to lead the United Nations to go beyond the confines of operational neutrality, possibly becoming complicit in crime. T. A. van Baarda (2004), "Military Ethics in Peacekeeping and in War: Maintaining Moral Integrity in a World of Contrast and Confusion, The Journal of Humanitarian Assistance", http://www.jha.ac/articles/a129.htm.

Robustness "means bigger forces, better equipped and more costly, but able to pose a credible deterrent threat, in contrast to the symbolic and non-threatening presence that characterizes traditional peacekeeping. United Nations forces for complex operations should be sized and configured so as to leave no doubt in the minds of would-be spoilers as to which of the two approaches the Organization has adopted." Brahimi Report, par. 51.

Ibid., par. 62.

Ibid.

In this context, Jan van der Meulen and Joseph Soeters have examined the political considerations lying beneath the policy of "acceptable risks" in the Netherlands, which was said to reflect the "European mainstream over the last ten to fifteen years." J. van der Meulen and J. Soeters, "Dutch Courage: The Politics of Acceptable Risks," Armed Forces & Society 31, 4 (2005): 537-58.

Brahimi Report, par. 52.

Provisional Guidelines for UN Rules of Engagement, rule 1.7.

D. Blocq, "The Fog of UN Peacekeeping," Journal of Military Ethics 5, 3 (2006): 201-13. In "The Fog of UN Peacekeeping," Blocq discusses the ethical dilemmas that result from the authority to use force in relation to the ambiguous directives from politics and the controversy in international law.

The robust version of UN peacekeeping, as identified in this article, would be classified by some as peace enforcement instead of peacekeeping. When peace enforcement involves all operations beyond peacekeeping and the definition of peacekeeping is limited to operations involving neutrality, consent, and the use of force for self-defense of soldiers, then the robust postmillennium UN operations would indeed fall within the ambit of peace enforcement. To prevent confusion between the UN peace operations described in this article versus UN-mandated operations such as in Korea in 1950 and Iraq in 1991, which have also been described as peace enforcement-see, e.g., McCoubrey and White, Blue Helmets, 16-18-this article uses the term peacekeeping.

L. Elliott and G. Cheeseman , "Cosmopolitan Theory, Militaries and the Deployment of Force" (working paper 2002/8, Department of International Relations, Australian National University , 2002), http://rspas.anu.edu.au/ir/pubs/work_papers/02-8.pdf .

In Part III, I discuss nationalism more in depth and show that nationalism and cosmopolitanism do not necessarily conflict. A "narrow" or particularistic nationalist orientation would however be at variance with cosmopolitanism.

T. Woodhouse and O. Ramsbotham , "Cosmopolitan Peacekeeping and Global Security," International Peacekeeping 12, 2 (2005): 140-41.

Ibid., 141.

S. Peou , "The UN, Peacekeeping and Collective Human Security: From An Agenda for Peace to the Brahimi Report," International Peacekeeping 9, 2 ( 2002): 51.

Woodhouse and Ramsbotham , "Cosmopolitan Peacekeeping," 140-47.

Ibid., 150.

Ibid., 142-43.

E. Newman , "Human Security and Constructivism," International Studies Perspectives 2 (2001): 239-44.

D. Grossman , On Killing (New York: Little, Brown , 1995), 78.

Ibid., 88.

R. Norman , Ethics, Killing and War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 40-45, 47, 50-55.

S.L.A. Marshall , Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command ( Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 1947), 78

H. Born , R. Moelker , and J. Soeters , Krijgsmacht en Samenleving (Tilburg, Netherlands : Tilburg University Press, 1999 ), 258-59.

Marshall , Men Against Fire , 37.

The term motivation in combat motivation is a generic term, which may include any element in the social psychological process that precedes, leads to, and activates action. Since psychologists may disagree about the actual classification of certain elements of combat motivation within the psychological process, the author refrains from any particular psychological typology beyond the term motivation.

Fernando Rodrigues-Goulart , "Combat Motivation," Military Review 5 (2006): 93-96.

Ibid., 94. Rodrigues-Goulart does not mention money as a reason to fight. However, money has been a recurring reason to fight throughout history, as evidenced by the mercenary armies. See, e.g., G. Bryant, "Indigenous Mercenaries in the Service of European Imperialists: The Case of the Sepoys in the Early British-Indian Army: 1850-1900," Armed Forces & Society 7, 1 (2000): 2-28.

L. Mjøset and S. van Holde , "Killing for the State, Dying for the Nation ," in The Comparative Study of Conscription in the Armed Forces , ed. L. Mjøset and S. van Holde ( Oxford, UK: Elsevier, 2002), 15-16.

Some foreign members came from defeated troops who were subsequently enlisted by the victorious army. Ibid., 16.

Ibid., 16-19, 28.

Ibid., 30.

B. Posen , "Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power" International Security 18, 2 (1993): 82-83.

Ibid., 83.

Ibid.

Also see Mjøset and Van Holde , " Killing for the State," 30.

Posen , "Nationalism," 96-97.

Ibid., 97-99.

Ibid., 102. Also see Mjøset and Van Holde , "Killing for the State," 34-35.

Greenfeld, Nationalism, 371-78.

Also see Mjøset and Van Holde , " Killing for the State," 51.

M. Kestnbaum , "Citizen-Soldiers, National Service and the Mass Army: The Birth of Conscription in Revolutionary Europe and North America ," in The Comparative Study of Conscription in the Armed Forces , ed. L. Mjøset and S. van Holde (Oxford, UK: Elsevier, 2002), 117-39.

S. Huntington , The Soldier and the State ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967).

Ibid., 11-18.

Ibid., 31.

Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 24-29.

The question has often been raised whether industrialization, specialization, and the mass army preceded nationalism or vice versa. Like Bary Posen, Daniele Conversi suggests that the creation of the mass army led to nationalism, which, subsequently, was a key influence in the homogenizing nationalism that Gellner discussed in his monumental work Nations and Nationalism. See D. Conversi, "Homogenisation, Nationalism and War: Should We Still Read Ernest Gellner?" Nations and Nationalism 13, 3 (2007): 371-94.

Huntington, Soldier and the State, 35 (emphasis added).

P. Feaver , "Crisis as Shirking: An Agency Theory Explanation of the Souring of American Civil-Military Relations," Armed Forces & Society 24, 3 ( 1998): 407-34.

The idea about the social constructability of nationalism is not shared by all. See, e.g., A. Smith , Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History ( Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2001), 78-84.

Greenfeld , Nationalism, 8-9.

As may be clear, I use the term sentiment in an ordinary sense, which does not necessarily comply with the meaning that Gellner attached to the term nationalist sentiment. For lack of a better alternative, I have used the same term as Gellner but wish, once again, to stress that this usage does not imply that I follow his theory of nationalism. While I do not disagree with his theory, I believe it is more fluid.

E.g., F. Battistelli, "Peacekeeping and the Postmodern Soldier," Armed Forces & Society 23, 3 (1997): 467-85; also see, e.g., P. Manigart, "Risk and Recruitment in Postmodern Armed Forces: The Case of Belgium," Armed Forces & Society 31, 4 (2005): 559-82; also see, e.g., M. Tomforde, "Motivation and Self-Image among German Peacekeepers," International Peacekeeping 12, 4 (2005): 576-85.

UN S.C. res. 1565 (2004), par. 4(b) (emphasis added).

UN S.C. res. 1671 (2006), par. 8(b) (emphasis added). The wording of the-Security Council-mandate for the European Union Force clearly created more distance than the wording of the-Security Council-mandate for MONUC.

L. Wong , T.A. Kolditz , R.A. Millen , and T.M. Potter , Why They Fight: Combat Motivation in the Iraq War ( Carlisle , PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2003), http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub179.pdf .

Ibid., 18.

A thorough psychological analysis of motivations and actions would include a social psychological classification of the elements that were identified by the authors of Why They Fight. A categorization of motivations into needs, higher order goals, desires, and incentives would accordingly have to be made. See P. M. Gollwitzer and G. Oettingen, "Psychology of Motivations and Actions," in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. J. Smelser and P. B. Baltes (Oxford, UK: Elsevier, 2002), 10105-9. For the purpose of this article, it suffices to note that ideology, and nationalism in particular (see part IV), plays a role in the psychological process that influences a soldier’s preparedness to fight. The exact magnitude of that role is dependent on various factors and can unfortunately not be determined-and neither can the exact magnitude of the role of comradeship be assessed. However, historical and sociological analyses do indicate that the role of ideology can be considerable (see part IV). In line with the former remarks about the complexity of social psychological analyses on actions, the author wishes to emphasize that the elements that have been identified by the U.S. Army researchers are parts of a highly complex process, including many more elements. A discussion of all those elements would go beyond this article.

Wong et al., Why They Fight, 6-9.

Ibid., 9-14. Robert MacCoun, Elizabeth Kier, and Aaron Belkin strongly criticized the U.S. monograph for (1) conflating social cohesion-the bond between soldiers-and task cohesion-the commitment toward a shared mission-and (2) for defying rules of accurate social scientific research. The authors raised questions about statistical representativeness, bias of researchers, and presence or absence of causal relations. R. MacCoun, E. Kier, and A. Belkin, "Does Social Cohesion Determine Motivation in Combat? An Old Question with an Old Answer," Armed Forces & Society 32, 4 (2006): 646-54.

Wong et al., Why They Fight, 17.

Ibid.

S. Razack , Dark Threats & White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004).

Dallaire, Shake Hands With the Devil, 183.

Ibid., 193.

See note 11.

M. Janowitz , The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait ( New York: Free Press , 1960), 6.

Blocq, "Fog of UN Peacekeeping."

McCoubrey and White, Blue Helmets, 153-73.

UN General Assembly res. 217 A (III) (1948), art. 2.

C. Gourlay , "Partners Apart: Managing Civil Military Cooperation in Humanitarian Intervention," Disarmament Forum 3 (2000): 35.

Volker Franke examined the social identity of West Point Cadets but did not get to fully analyze the attitude of the cadets toward international operations. Mindful of those operations, Franke admitted, "Given increasingly complex global security demands, these findings prompt the need for further research on the attitudes of military professionals toward expanding roles and widening mission requirements." V. C. Franke, "Duty, Honor, Country: The Social Identity of West Point Cadets," Armed Forces & Society 26, 2 (2000): 195.

Meulen and Soeters, "Dutch Courage."

Sion, "Too Sweet."

M. Tomforde, "Motivation and Self-Image."

P. Manigart, "Risk and Recruitment."