How far has the UN been effective in its peacekeeping role?

While peacekeeping is not technically in the UN charter, it has become the primary way through which the UN has fulfilled its responsibility to maintain international peace and security. Peacekeeping is defined by the UN as ' a way to help countries torn by conflict create conditions for a sustainable peace'. It can also be defined as ' a technique to preserve the peace when fighting has been halted, to assist in implementing agreements achieved by peacemakers'

Essentially, peacekeeping occurs after a conflict and UN peacekeepers are often deployed after a ceasefire has been negotiated in an attempt to maintain the peace. Between 1948 and 2013, the UN has carried out 67 peacekeeping operations, and the 2012-2013 budget for UN peacekeeping operations was about $7.33 billion.

                                          THE CHANGING NATURE OF PEACEKEEPING

At first,  peacekeeping involved the placing of a UN force between the parties of a dispute once a ceasefire had been negotiated. Examples of this include 1948, when UN peacekeepers were used to monitor the truce after the first Arab-Israeli war, and in 1949 a UN military observer group was deployed to the Kashmir region to monitor the ceasefire after the separation of Pakistan and India and consequent large scale killings. 

However, the traditional approach to peacekeeping became increasingly unsustainable in the post cold war period due to the increase in peacekeeping operations. This has been caused by increased civil strife and humanitarian crises as a result of a lessened focus on 'the enemy ideology' and more on the internal ethnic divisions. Therefore the task of peacekeeping become more difficult as interstate war became less frequent and civil war more common - more conflicts are due to ethnic and cultural rivalries and endemic socio economic divisions. 

After the cold war peacekeepers were increasingly dispatched to areas where violence was an ongoing threat or a reality and  so there was a greater emphasis on robust peacekeeping (the use of military force), sometimes portrayed as peace enforcement. As conflict situations became more complex, there was a recognition that the focus of peacekeeping operations must change also. This led to multidimensional peacekeeping which along with the implementation of a peace agreement, includes the use of force to achieve humanitarians ends, the provision of emergency relief and steps towards political reconstruction.

                                                   DOES PEACEKEEPING WORK?
A 2007 study of 8 peacekeeping operations found that seven of them had succeeded in keeping the peace and six of them had helped to promote democracy. These included the Congo, Cambodia, Sierra Leone and El Salvador.

However, some major peacekeeping missions have failed.
UN peacekeepers were little more than spectators to the Rwanda Genocide in 1994 and UN backed US intervention in Somalia led to humiliation and withdrawal in 1995 and the conflict continued. Another failure saw the Bosnian-Serb military carry out the worst mass murder in Europe since the second world war in an area which had been under the protection of Dutch peacekeepers.

The UN's reliance on deterrence by presence has not worked in such cases, not to mention its reluctance to use force in the face of peace breakers who use force freely and criminally. The inconsistency in the success of peacekeeping missions can be explained by the varying quality of peacekeeping forces, and failings at a higher level are due to conflicting priorities and agendas in the security council and P5.

Further evidence that UN peacekeeping has not been effective can be seen in the 1992 UN report, 'An agenda for peace', which acknowledged that peacekeeping alone is not enough to ensure lasting peace. This is also reflected in the growing emphasis on peace building , which along with military force, uses economists, police officers, legal experts, electoral observers and human rights monitors to promote peace in peacekeeping operations.

Overall, while the UN has been successful in some earlier peacekeeping operations, more recently its operations have been in countries with civil war rather than conflicts between two states. This makes its mission more complicated and inevitably has led to some failures. While the UN has not been entirely successful in its peacekeeping role it has evolved to include peace building in its activities which has been and will likely continue to be more successful.

In what way did the war on terror affect US hegemony?

Since the cold war ended, America has become a global hegemon - however in recent years the war on terror has threatened its position as ideological leader. 

The war on terror was launched after 9/11, its first mission being the removal of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan (October 2001), which it accomplished in a matter of weeks. Shortly after, President Bush laid out his plans for the war on terror by identifying Iraq, Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Syria as the 'axis of evil' which, it was implied, America would confront. Controversy began when the US made plans for regime change in Iraq, leading to the 2003 Iraq war. The Afghan war had been regarded as self defence since Afghanistan had effectively provided al-Qaeda with a home base, and there were links between al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime, however in the case of Iraq, the war was justified using 'pre-emptive attack' which is seen as an illegal and illegitimate cause for a war in the eyes of the UN. 

Despite the disapproval of the UN after having waged an illegal war, the US managed to keep favour within the global community and remain a hegemon which presided over all other global actors. However, when it became evident that its strategy for the war on terror was not as foolproof as it had initially been thought, the US's image as the all powerful hegemonic hyperpower was threatened. The US had overestimated the efficiency of its military power - for its opposition in Iraq and Afghanistan, guerrilla tactics proved effective against a more powerful and better resourced enemy, resulting in an asymmetrical war which the US struggled to win. Suicide bombings and terrorism in these wars also drew attention to the limitations of the US' military power. These asymmetrical wars undermined America as a global hegemon as it looked to be unable to win wars using its military power. 

While its hard power has become useless in some instances, the soft power of the US has also been eroded. The use of military intervention in the middle east damaged America's soft power, reducing its ability to influence the will of other states, as well as damaging its reputation in the middle east, which was now wary of the oil plundering hegemon. In the fight against militant Islam, America has unintentionally alienated moderate Muslim opinion, not only in the middle east but also within itself. It could be argued that by waging the war on terror in the middle east, America has created the very arc of extremism it sought to destroy. The damage done to america's soft power means its hegemonic status is threatened since other states may no longer subscribe to its ideology willingly.

However, the US has been at least semi-successful in achieving its war on terror aims - it has imposed democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq to an extent, or in the very least toppled what it had seen as authoritarian or terrorist-harbouring regimes. The US' ability to go into less powerful states, change their entire structure and impose its own ideology makes it appear to be a far more powerful and threatening hegemon, prompting other states to support its actions. In this way it could be said that the war on terror has strengthened us hegemony. 

Additionally the war on terror has led the US to develop new ways of influencing other states. The Obama administration introduced 'smart power', This involves using soft and hard power, a more comprehensive approach to tackling global  terrorism. However some have seen need to combine different types of power as a weakness, ans a sign that US hegemony is coming to an end. 

The USA's foreign policy in recent years has caused other states to view it as a troublemaker, or a cause of terrorism in itself. After all, the 9/11 attack was a protest against US hegemony and Americanization - could it be that if America did not have such an aggressive foreign policy, there would be less instances of terrorism? Certainly, its actions in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as its support of Israel have strengthened support for militant Islam. 

Finally, the actions of the US have arguably led to it being seen as a malign hegemon (a source of chaos and injustice in the world). Anti-Americanism peaked in 2003 when the US decided to go ahead with the invasion of Iraq despite the lack of UN approval. Realists are able to explain the malign nature of the US as a hegemon in terms of its inevitable pursuit of power and concern for the national interest - critics such as Noam Chomsky would agree with this as they suggest the US entered into the war on terror not for the benefit of those under authoritarian rule but to gain resources such as oil and so its corporations could make money through extortionate defence contracts, boosting its economy. In Chomsky's radical realist view, the US is a rogue superpower and the principal source of terrorism across the globe. 

The war on terror has led  America's ability to exercise power to be questioned, as well as having damaged its reputation (so much so that it has been seen by some as a source of terrorism, and a malign, self seeking actor), suggesting that the war on terror has in fact weakened US hegemony. It could be that in the coming years, the US will no longer be considered a hegemon, but a terrorist state.