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Katharina P Coleman, Brian L Job, How Africa and China may shape UN peacekeeping beyond the liberal international order, International Affairs, Volume 97, Issue 5, September 2021, Pages 1451–1468, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiab113
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Abstract
UN peacekeeping became a flagship activity of the liberal international order (LIO) in the post-Cold War era, characterized by globalization, liberal norms and western leadership. Western states' diminished support for LIO UN peacekeeping has left it increasingly open to challenge, but significant changes are only likely if a strong group of states coalesces around an alternative model of UN peacekeeping. This article highlights African actors and China as well positioned to play pivotal roles in such a coalition. African states, who host the preponderance of UN missions and furnish almost half of the UN's uniformed peacekeepers, support globalized UN peacekeeping, show relatively weak support for the most liberal peacebuilding principles and assert the need for African-led solutions to continental crises. China's influence reflects its P5 status, financial and personnel contributions to UN peacekeeping and engagement with regional actors, notably in Africa. Aspiring to global leadership and a ‘new world order’, China endorses globalized UN peacekeeping but proposes a non-liberal (and non-western led) notion of ‘developmental peace’ to guide it. The complementarities between African and Chinese priorities raise the possibility of a profound challenge to LIO peacekeeping. Rather than heralding deglobalization, however, this challenge illustrates that post-LIO international institutions may instead be characterized by deliberalization and dewesternization.
This special issue investigates the relationship between deglobalization and strains on the liberal international order (LIO), envisioning increased resistance to global economic, social and political interconnectedness as both a cause and a consequence of contemporary challenges to the LIO. In this article, however, we show that external challenges to LIO institutions are not necessarily challenges to globalization. Instead, they may target the liberal content of these institutions and the dominant role western states play within them. Put differently, they may aim at deliberalization and dewesternization, not deglobalization.
We make this point by focusing on UN peacekeeping, which became a flagship LIO activity in the post-Cold War era but currently faces deep uncertainty. UN peacekeeping in the LIO is globalized, has liberal aspirations and has historically been dominated by western states. It is currently challenged both from within—by diminished western support—and from without, by increased contestation from non-western actors. Thus, UN peacekeeping is at an inflection point where substantial evolution away from the LIO model is possible.1
However, whether such an evolution occurs—and what direction it takes—depends on a sufficiently influential coalition of actors emerging to advance an alternative version of UN peacekeeping. We argue that the most likely scenario for such a coalition centres on African states and China. Both are increasingly pivotal to UN peacekeeping. They also have complementary, though not identical, interests in reshaping LIO UN peacekeeping. There is no evidence, however, that a Chinese and African-led coalition would challenge the globalized nature of contemporary UN peacekeeping. Instead, its reform proposals are likely to further target the most liberal democratic aspects of peacekeeping and seek to replace western dominance with increased regional influence over UN peacekeeping decisions in Africa and greater Chinese influence in and beyond the Security Council.
The article proceeds in five sections. First, it delineates the main characteristics of LIO UN peacekeeping and highlights its current decline. Second, it identifies China and African states as pivotal actors in any effort to reorient UN peacekeeping beyond the LIO model. Third, it argues that neither African actors nor China currently challenge the globalized format of UN peacekeeping. Fourth, it analyses African and Chinese positions on substantive peacekeeping principles and discerns a possible convergence on supporting less liberal democratic, more state-affirming peace operations. Fifth, it recognizes the complementarity of African and Chinese challenges to western states' dominance of UN peacekeeping. We conclude that some challenges to LIO institutions may transform rather than reverse globalization.
The rise and decline of LIO UN peacekeeping
UN peacekeeping emerged during the Cold War, which precluded its being anchored in any political ideology.2 Instead, UN peacekeeping was founded on the ideologically neutral core principles of host-state consent, impartiality and use of force only in self-defence. From the mid-1960s onwards, most operations were ceasefire monitoring missions that did not aim to address root causes of conflict or alter host-state institutions. Participation in UN missions was typically limited to relatively neutral middle powers and non-aligned states, with the permanent Security Council members (the P5) largely excluded. Superpower competition limited UN engagement in crises, so the years 1945–87 saw just 14 UN peace operations, most of them in the Middle East, with just one mission each in the Americas and Africa.3
The end of the Cold War launched the ascendancy of the LIO, and the subsequent two decades saw three key changes in UN peacekeeping. First, it became more globalized, expanding in geographical scope, participation and economic reach. Between 1988 and 2010, 52 operations were established: 27 in Africa, ten in Europe, six each in Asia and the Americas, and three in the Middle East.4 By December 2010, 115 states were contributing uniformed personnel to UN peacekeeping missions, compared to 46 in 1990. The UN's six largest missions (in Haiti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur, Liberia, Sudan and Côte d'Ivoire) each included troop and/or police contributions—from over 50 countries.5 Peacekeeping expenditures rose from US$141 million in 1985 to US$7.3 billion in 2010,6 funding both troop-contributor reimbursements—fuelling contentious charges of profit-making7—and payments to private contractors: by 2010, companies in 91 countries held peacekeeping-related contracts worth US$2.48 billion.8
Second, UN peacekeeping became increasingly aligned with liberal democratic norms and principles, asserting ‘an obvious connection between democratic practices—such as the rule of law and transparency in decision-making—and the achievement of true peace and security’.9 In operational terms, UN operations became multidimensional, growing in size and engaging in an expanding range of mandated tasks, including supporting elections, facilitating post-conflict peacebuilding, monitoring human rights, promoting the rule of law, assisting in combatant demobilization and, from 1999, prioritizing the protection of civilians.
Third, UN peacekeeping decision-making came to be dominated by western states. By 2010, France, the United Kingdom and the United States (the P3) were the ‘pen-holders’ on most peacekeeping-related Security Council resolutions.10 Industrialized liberal democracies assumed responsibility for 89.94 per cent of UN peacekeeping expenses; the US share alone exceeded 27 per cent.11 UN staffing also reflected western dominance. In the early 2000s, the UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations drew two-thirds of its staff from wealthy industrialized states.12 With the sole exception of the Ghanaian Kofi Annan (1993–96), only British and French nationals have headed the department. Within UN peacekeeping operations, western states exerted influence through highly strategic staff officer contributions and disproportionate representation in civilian leadership positions.13
While supported by many states and Secretariat officials, LIO UN peacekeeping was not universally embraced in the UN and thus depended in part on a continuing exercise of western states' power. Liberal peacebuilding norms never formally displaced the UN's foundational peacekeeping principles: the 2008 ‘Capstone Doctrine’ reaffirmed ‘consent of parties, impartiality and non-use of force except in self-defence and defence of mandate’ as basic peacekeeping principles, while linking electoral assistance and human rights tasks to case-by-case Security Council mandating decisions.14 Those decisions required the P3 to negotiate with other Council members, especially Russia and China, both of which had veto power. Moreover, the implementation of Council decisions relied heavily on non-western troop contributors, western states having drastically reduced their UN personnel commitments by the mid-1990s following peacekeeping failures in Bosnia and Somalia. Many troop contributors required (largely western-financed) UN reimbursements, and for some deployment decisions depended on financial incentives from western states.15
Challenges to LIO UN peacekeeping began to emerge in the 1990s and have gained momentum since. For this, western states themselves have been partly responsible. From the mid-1990s, they favoured non-UN operations—through NATO or ad hoc coalitions of the willing, ideally but not always with a UN Security Council mandate—to address crises where they perceived significant national interests to be involved. The geographic distribution of UN peacekeeping thus became restricted to regions considered by western states to be less strategically important.16 Western states also generated challenges to the liberal democratic principles of LIO UN peacekeeping. In some instances, they unintentionally undermined host-state democratization processes by demanding early elections,17 sidelining local communities,18 or failing to oppose authoritarian moves by incumbent governments.19 In the 2010s, moreover, western states progressively de-emphasized liberal democratic peacebuilding in favour of more ‘robust’ protection of civilian missions and stabilization and counterterrorist operations.20 Finally, western states' dominance of peacekeeping decision-making, refusal to deploy significant numbers of peacekeepers themselves and reluctance to increase reimbursement rates to troop- and police-contributing countries combined to generate resentment and charges of misusing UN peacekeeping to maintain western hegemony.21
In recent years, tensions over the power differential between ‘those who lead’ and ‘those who bleed’ have grown as the shift towards robust protection and stabilization increased the risk to deployed peacekeepers, with fatalities from direct hostilities increasing from under 20 annually in 2006–2011 to over 30 in 2013–2016 and spiking to 59 in 2017.22 Resentment was also fuelled by western states—led by the US Trump administration—seeking drastic reductions in their UN peacekeeping expenses. Mission closures and cuts to continuing missions brought total annual approved peacekeeping expenditures down from US$8.47 billion in 2015 to US$6.58 billion in 2021, a 22 per cent decrease.23 The economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic presage further financial austerity. Simultaneously, increasingly bitter divisions among the P5 have thwarted any meaningful response to ongoing human security crises in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Venezuela and Myanmar. The prevalence of deadly conflict has risen worldwide,24 but no major new UN peace operation has been created since 2014. Since 2015, the number of active UN missions has fallen from 16 to 12, and the number of deployed UN peacekeepers has shrunk by 31 per cent.25 In short, LIO UN peacekeeping is in sharp decline, raising considerable uncertainty about its future.
China and African states: pivotal actors
The UN Secretary-General's Action for Peacekeeping (A4P and A4P+) initiatives of 2018 and 2021 aim to re-energize LIO UN peacekeeping, which may also be bolstered if the US Biden administration lends its support. Given the challenges UN peacekeeping faces, however, it is more likely to emerge from its current decline in a reformed, post-LIO version.
Yet reinventing UN peacekeeping, like any UN reform, requires ‘a committed coalition of states willing and able to exert political pressure’ to overcome organizational inertia and state opposition to proposed changes.26 Whether a coalition seeking to move UN peacekeeping beyond the LIO will emerge is not yet certain. However, it is possible to identify two sets of actors poised to play pivotal roles in such a coalition.
First, China's rise as a global power and its unique position in contemporary UN peacekeeping make it an indispensable member of any coalition proposing an alternative to LIO peacekeeping. China is the only self-identified ‘developing state’ among the P5. It is the only P5 state among the top ten UN troop contributors, ranking ninth in February 2021 with 2,464 peacekeepers deployed.27 China is also the only top ten troop contributor among the major financial contributors to UN peacekeeping expenses, its assessment share having grown from 2 per cent in the early 2000s to 15.2 per cent in 2021. China's willingness to increase its financial contributions—and to pay its assessed contributions on time—has contrasted sharply with the US position in recent years.
African states constitute a second pivotal constituency for a potential shift away from LIO peacekeeping. Africa is not, of course, a monolithic actor; but, as we elaborate below, broad common trends are observable in the stances adopted by many African states, including the continent's largest UN troop contributors. Moreover, the African Union (AU) has advanced consolidated African positions that are bolstered by strong African solidarity norms.28 These positions carry weight for three reasons. First, Africa is the UN's largest troop-contributing region: in February 2021, African states provided 38,621 uniformed UN peacekeepers, 47.6 per cent of the total deployed. Thirteen of the UN's 20 largest troop contributing states were African, including four—Rwanda (second), Ethiopia (third), Egypt (seventh) and Ghana (tenth)—among the top ten. Second, most contemporary UN peacekeeping operations, including its largest missions, have been deployed in Africa. In January 2021, six of the UN's twelve active operations and 84 per cent of uniformed UN peacekeepers were deployed in Africa.29 Third, African regional organizations have become indispensable peacekeeping partners for the UN.30 African organizations often act as ‘first responders’ to regional crises: seven of 13 new UN deployments in Africa in 1999–2020 included ‘re-hatted’ personnel from regional peace operations.31 Other forms of cooperation include the hybrid AU–UN mission in Darfur (2007–2020), UN logistic support to AU operations (notably AMISOM in Somalia) and African deployments alongside UN missions (e.g. the G5 Sahel force in Mali).32 The Security Council has also acknowledged a vital role for African deployments in fighting ‘terrorism and violent extremism’ on the African continent,33 reflected in current operations in the Sahel and the Lake Chad basin.34
Both China and African actors have advanced proposals to reform LIO peacekeeping, and these provide the basis of our analysis below. We note that so far, neither has achieved more than incremental success—even China, despite its dramatically increased presence in UN peacekeeping.35 The resilience of LIO peacekeeping to date confirms that even at the current inflection point, only a concerted effort by multiple influential actors could effect a transition towards a post-LIO version of UN peacekeeping. In the following sections, we analyse the reform priorities China and African states have declared and/or revealed through their own peacekeeping and foreign policy activities to make two arguments. First, while China and African states do not have identical interests in reforming LIO UN peacekeeping, they do have sufficiently complementary positions to facilitate accommodation of and support for each other's key interests. A Chinese- and African-led movement to reconfigure UN peacekeeping is therefore feasible. Second, and crucially for this special issue, overlapping African and Chinese priorities do not challenge the globalization of UN peace operations; rather, their target is the liberal aspects of LIO peacekeeping and the dominant position western states hold within it.
No deglobalization challenge
Neither China nor African actors propose deglobalizing UN peacekeeping. Indeed, they agree on supporting continued globalized UN peacekeeping—alongside globally supported regional peace operations.
In the 1990s, African states and regional organizations did challenge globalized UN peacekeeping, advocating independent regional peacekeeping as an alternative to UN operations under the slogan of ‘African solutions to African problems’. Between 1990 and 1997, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) intervened in Liberia without prior Security Council authorization, thereby contravening Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. Another ECOWAS deployment, in Sierra Leone (1997–2002), reinforced the independent regional peacekeeping model, as did NATO's 1999 Kosovo campaign. The AU's Constitutive Act, adopted in 2000, declared the Union's right to intervene in member states against ‘war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity’ (para. 4(h)) without mentioning a UN mandate. Advocates of independent regional peacekeeping highlighted the UN's inability to address key crises of the 1990s. Reflecting on UN inaction during the 1994 Rwanda genocide, even the UN Secretary-General acknowledged that independent regional interventions to address atrocities could be legitimate.36 It is worth noting that China rejected this stance, insisting that regional organizations ‘must obtain Security Council authorization prior to any enforcement action’.37
Since the early 2000s, however, African actors have distanced themselves from long-term, independent regional peacekeeping, not least because of its heavy costs.38 African actors have come to favour interim, UN-mandated regional deployments followed by UN operations. In 2003, ECOWAS refused to deploy to Liberia until the UN committed to a follow-on mission.39 The AU similarly sought UN successor missions, unsuccessfully in Somalia (2007) but successfully in Mali (2013) and the Central African Republic (2014). Thus, far from rejecting the deployment of larger, globally staffed and funded UN missions, African actors currently embrace them—subject to leadership considerations (on which more below)—as ‘an exit strategy’ from costly regional peace operations.40 In seeking UN successor missions, moreover, African actors have emphasized that African conflicts are not solely ‘African problems’ but fall within the Security Council's ‘primary responsibility’ for international peace and security. Thus, African actors have become both pragmatic and principled advocates of globalized UN peacekeeping as a complement, not an alternative, to regional peace operations.
Indeed, African actors are demanding that one aspect of UN peacekeeping—its financial framework—should become more globalized.41 Stressing the need for more reliable and predictable UN support for UN-mandated AU operations, the AU proposed in 2015 that the UN should pay 75 per cent of these operations' costs. The AU contends, in effect, that UN-mandated AU operations should be financed as an extension of globalized UN peacekeeping: when it ‘intervenes in conflict and crisis situations on the continent, it is doing so on behalf of the UNSC and … therefore … the UN has a duty to provide UN assessed contributions’.42 This proposal has been supported by the UN Secretariat and France but opposed by the United States, and therefore has not (yet) been implemented.43 It remains a key AU priority.
China, while sceptical about UN peacekeeping during the Cold War, has since the 1990s supported the globalized trajectory of LIO UN peacekeeping. Politically, China voted with its P5 partners to mandate a rapidly growing number of missions with increasingly broad mandates in the 1990s and 2000s,44 abstaining rather than using its veto in the key instances of Rwanda, Bosnia and Somalia.45 Despite increasing levels of contestation in the Security Council, China has continued either to vote for or to abstain on resolutions dealing with ongoing UN peace operations.46
As for material participation, China has contributed personnel to 25 UN peace operations since 1990: three missions in Asia, four in the Middle East, one in Europe and 17 in Africa.47 As noted above, China is among the top UN personnel contributors, having progressed from a small military observer deployment to the UN Truce Supervision Organization in 1990 to a maximum of 3,045 deployed peacekeepers by the 2015 peak of UN peacekeeping. China also distinguished itself by committing 8,000 troops to a UN Rapid Reaction Force in 2015.48 With the subsequent contraction of UN peacekeeping, China's troop deployments have fallen less sharply than the overall reduction, down 17 per cent compared to the UN's total 20 per cent decline.49 In February 2021, China's 2,464 UN peacekeepers were deployed in eight UN missions, with substantial contingents in South Sudan (over 1,000 personnel), Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur (pending mission closure) and Lebanon. Beijing's troop contributions to UN missions send an important symbolic message about China's presence in globalized UN peacekeeping—to, among others, the developing-country members of the UN, notably African states. China's support for globalized UN peacekeeping—and its role as a global peacekeeping power—has been reinforced through major financial commitments. These include, in addition to its assessed contributions to UN peacekeeping expenses, Xi Jinping's launch of a ‘new era of peacekeeping’ by pledging US$1 billion over ten years to the UN Peace and Development Fund.50
Involvement in Africa and with African institutions has been a central component of China's international agenda since the early 1990s.51 China has supported globalized UN peacekeeping in Africa to complement regional efforts. It has endorsed the model of sequential regional and UN missions, consistently voting to mandate both AU and UN successor operations. China has developed strong relationships with the AU, notably through regular meetings of the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), as well as ministerial and summit encounters. Established in 2000, and coming to prominence in the past decade, FOCAC provides the ‘omnibus “organizational” umbrella around which China's engagement with the AU is anchored’.52 Within FOCAC, China has highlighted both its contributions to UN peacekeeping operations in Africa and its support for African regional peace operations. In 2015, China pledged US$100 million over five years to reinforce African peacekeeping capacity-building,53 a commitment reaffirmed in the 2017 FOCAC three-year action plan and China's 2020 white paper on peacekeeping.54 The white paper further noted that from 2016 to 2019, the China–UN Peace and Development Fund had financed 23 projects, costing US$10.38 million, in support of UN peace operations.55 Finally, China has expressed its support for more predictable and reliable UN funding to UN-mandated AU operations, indicating its willingness to accommodate a key AU demand in reforming LIO UN peacekeeping.56 In the context of this special issue, it is important to recall that this proposed reform extends rather than challenges the globalization of UN peacekeeping.
Deliberalization
China and major African UN troop contributors find substantial common ground in: (1) challenging the most liberal aspects of LIO UN peacekeeping, while (2) supporting robust peace operations with a state-centric stabilization and counterterrorism focus. In this section we examine these two positions in turn.
China's support of UN peacekeeping is premised on adherence to the principles of host-state consent, impartiality, and use of force only in self-defence and in defence of the mission mandate.57 It has rejected the ‘liberal model of peace operations’, which it regards as ‘overly focused on institution building, on liberal values such as freedom and democracy, and on the imposition of a particular notion of good governance through the attachment of political considerations before assistance is offered’.58 China holds that human rights should be understood as socio-economic rights and the right to stable governance, these to be defined and implemented by sovereign states—not civil society—according to their unique national circumstances.59 China has therefore sought (often in cooperation with Russia) to curtail the human rights dimensions of UN peace operations by limiting the scope of mandates and by reducing mission capacities through budget cutting. In 2018, China and Russia (unsuccessfully) advocated deep cuts in peacekeeping work related to human rights.60 In 2019, China insisted: ‘The Security Council is not the appropriate forum to discuss human rights issues. The Council should abide by its mandate and focus on issues related to international peace and security.’61 China argued for confining the human rights discussion to ‘specialized bodies, such as the Human Rights Council’—where, in turn, China has engineered consensus statements reinforcing Chinese priorities, applied political and economic pressure to influence votes and built alliances to deflect criticism of its own human rights record.62 Western human rights observers view ‘the balance of advantage [in the HRC] as already having shifted towards China’.63
African states, in apparent contrast, have asserted their support for liberal democratic values, including through the AU's Constitutive Act, the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, the 2007 African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, and the 2015 Agenda 2063. Nevertheless, three factors indicate that liberal peacekeeping values have few champions in Africa. First, commitment to liberal democracy is shallow in many African states. In 2020, the US-based NGO Freedom House identified only eight of 54 African states as ‘Free’, compared to 21 ‘Not Free’ and 25 ‘Partly Free’ states.64 In 2019, 22 African states signed a letter to the Human Rights Council ‘commend[ing] China's remarkable achievements in the field of human rights … and China's contributions to the international human rights cause’.65 Second, few major African UN troop-contributing states promote liberal peacekeeping values. The three largest (Rwanda, Ethiopia and Egypt) were rated ‘Not Free’ by Freedom House in 2020; eleven of the 13 African states among the UN's 20 largest personnel contributors were ‘Partly Free’ or ‘Not Free’. The two ‘Free’ states were Ghana, which has not articulated a strong normative vision of peacekeeping,66 and South Africa, whose ‘anti-imperialist’ foreign policy limits its willingness to champion liberal democratic values in other African states.67 Other consolidated African democracies, including Cape Verde, Mauritius and Botswana, rarely participate in UN peacekeeping. Third, African-led peace operations reveal limited commitment to liberal peacekeeping. AMISOM, the AU's largest mission, is not mandated to promote human rights or democracy. Deployed since 2007, only in 2013 did it gain a ‘protection, human rights and gender’ section, which remains short-staffed—as does the cell created (under UN pressure) in 2015 to track civilian harm caused by AMISOM personnel.68 In Mali, the AU authorized the deployment of 50 human rights observers in 2013, but they were hampered by logistical and training limitations, and their ‘reports … seemed to vanish into a black hole’.69
By contrast, African actors have strongly supported the shift towards robust civilian protection, stabilization and counterterrorism within contemporary UN peacekeeping. The 1994 Rwanda genocide helped prompt a continental shift from the post-independence non-interference norm to the principle of non-indifference captured in the AU's ‘right to intervene’ against war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity in member states.70 Globally, the non-indifference norm was initially expressed by African support for the 2001 Responsibility to Protect report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which Rwanda and South Africa helped champion,71 and which was endorsed by AU members, albeit with an emphasis on African leadership to avoid neo-colonial interventions.72 African support for R2P has since waned, notably after the western-led Libya intervention in 2011. However, advocacy for robust peace operations is still significant. Southern African states were central to the creation in 2013 of a Force Intervention Brigade within the UN mission in Congo, authorized to protect civilians by ‘neutralizing’ armed groups. Rwanda spearheaded the 2015 Kigali Principles on the Protection of Civilians, which include a commitment ‘to be prepared to use force to protect civilians’.73 By April 2020, 15 African states had endorsed the Kigali Principles, including nine of Africa's 13 top 20 UN troop contributors. In Somalia, the Central African Republic and Mali, the AU has deployed stabilization operations ‘mandated to use force, including offensively, in the face of anticipated attacks’.74 African decision-makers have militarized the principle of civilian protection in both policy and practice.75 The AU has also endorsed counterterrorist interventions, mandating multinational African forces in the Lake Chad Basin (2015) and the Sahel (2017), and pressing for a counterterrorist force within the UN operation in Mali (MINUSMA).76
China's position on robust peacekeeping and stabilization operations is complex. China has historically been sceptical about the use of force in UN peacekeeping. Its bedrock principle is respect for state sovereignty; accordingly, Beijing vehemently opposed the 2001 Responsibility to Protect report as inviting ‘chronic unilateral intervention and international disorder’.77 Adopting a ‘norm-shaping’ rather than ‘norm-rejecting’ strategy,78 Beijing mobilized a coalition of like-minded states to rein in the emerging norm.79 Its impact was apparent at the 2005 World Summit and the 2009 UN Secretary-General's report, which reaffirmed states' primary responsibility to protect their citizens, constrained the responsibility of others to intervene and emphasized the minimum use of force.80
However, China has supported robust peace operations that do not challenge—and may extend—state sovereignty. It acquiesced in the increasingly robust protection mandates the Security Council created in the 2000s, though in key instances China's UN representatives had to exercise adroit diplomacy to justify facilitating missions that violated impartiality (Sierra Leone) or the minimal use of force (DRC), and even—in a resolution China subsequently protested was abused—proceeded without host-state consent (Libya).81 Moreover, China has participated in ten of the UN's twelve Chapter VII missions since 2004.82 In 2012 and 2013, Beijing contributed combat-capable troops to missions in South Sudan and Mali, breaking its previous policy of deploying only mission support personnel. In part, China's position was a strategic and pragmatic response to the protection crises of the 2000s, with the aim of preserving its standing as a ‘responsible’ power.83 China presented these decisions as ‘keeping pace with the times through reasonable and necessary reform and innovation’.84 Nevertheless, China's support for robust peace operations remains circumscribed: it has not signed the Kigali Principles, and rejected the 2017 Cruz Report calling for the proactive use of force to be legitimized.85
Crucially, China's stance is premised on its particular interpretation of the protection of civilians, which prioritizes norms of sovereignty, non-intervention and order provided by a strong state. China's model of peace operations—variously characterized as ‘Chinese Peace’, ‘security plus development’ and ‘developmental peace’86—emphasizes state security, development and stability. These are understood as prior to, and necessary for, the enjoyment of key socio-economic human rights. The endorsement of robust peace operations oriented towards establishing order and stability extends to support for counterterrorism, including in Mali. Regional analysts, including Cabestan, see ‘China … prioritizing regional stability and battling Islamic extremism on the continent and … [being] more willing to cooperate with France and other powers to achieve those goals’.87
Thus, African actors and China hold overlapping positions, de-emphasizing liberal democratic peacebuilding principles but supporting robust operations that reinforce host-state stability. Ironically, this resonates with the shift towards stabilization operations that some western states have also favoured, both in their UN-mandated NATO mission in Afghanistan (ISAF) and in Mali (MINUSMA).
The challenge to western dominance
African actors and China concur in challenging the dominant position western states occupy in LIO UN peacekeeping. Both seek greater influence over UN peacekeeping policy and practice; moreover, their demands are complementary and seek mutually compatible results.
African actors insist that crises on the African continent require African-led solutions. Their demand for ‘African ownership and priority setting on issues impinging on peace and security on the continent’ is an expression of African independence and pan-African solidarity against neo-colonial interference, bedrock principles undergirding contemporary African international relations.88 Uganda's President Museveni captured these principles succinctly: ‘I am totally allergic to foreign, political, and military involvement in sovereign countries, especially the African countries.’89 However politically motivated such statements may be, they also have deep resonance among African actors, both elite and non-elite.
However, African-led solutions are not necessarily African-only solutions: as noted, African actors advocate initial UN-mandated regional deployments and UN successor operations. Consequently, for African diplomats, ‘African-led solutions’ have to be extended beyond regional peace operations to encompass significant African influence in UN peacekeeping decisions relating to Africa, from Security Council mandates to operational leadership. This demand has not been met within LIO UN peacekeeping. In 2011, African actors felt ‘totally’ ignored when the Security Council (led by the P3) mandated the imposition of a no-fly zone in Libya seven days after the AU had rejected ‘any foreign military intervention, whatever its form’.90 During the 2013 transition from the African-led mission in Mali (AFISMA) to MINUSMA, ECOWAS unsuccessfully sought amendments to the (French-penned) Security Council resolution, and the AU denounced the resolution as ‘not in consonance with the spirit of partnership’ between the AU and the UN.91
African states have limited formal power in the UN peacekeeping architecture. They are minor financial contributors, collectively assuming responsibility for just 0.23 per cent of UN peacekeeping expenditures.92 There is no African permanent member of the Security Council. Africa's three non-permanent Council members (A3) have at times dissented from western states' positions,93 and have achieved small mandate concessions.94 However, the A3 lack veto powers and cannot match the political influence of the permanent Council members. Nor do they always act in unison,95 or in accordance with AU priorities. In 2011, all three voted for imposing the no-fly zone in Libya, partly owing to heavy lobbying from western states. Discrepancies also occur because the A3 are not necessarily members of the AU Peace and Security Council, and may not be fully briefed on its positions on current continental situations.96
In addition to persistently seeking permanent African representation on the UN Security Council, African actors have thus sought to redefine the norms shaping the Council's relationship with regional organizations, advocating a move from hierarchy to more horizontal partnership.97 The AU has stressed ‘consultative decision-making’ and cooperation based on the ‘principle of comparative advantage’, highlighting not only the operational flexibility of regional organizations but also their greater ‘political legitimacy’.98 In 2015, the UN Secretary-General endorsed ‘close and consistent consultation mechanisms between the United Nations and regional actors’.99 However, permanent Security Council members reacted to the AU's 2011 challenge over Libya by distancing themselves from earlier promises of greater regional consultation,100 and reaffirming the Council's primacy on international peace and security issues.
For China, UN peacekeeping has become a symbolic benchmark in Xi Jinping's broader vision of a new world order.101 As noted, China has sought to project its status as a ‘responsible Great Power’ by underwriting globalized UN peacekeeping through its Security Council votes and personnel and financial contributions. It has followed a strategy of ‘shaping from within’:102 that is, strategically manoeuvring within the organizational structure and operations of the UN itself to advance its role in and influence on decision-making. The small but growing number of Chinese nationals appointed to higher levels of authority within UN bodies attests to these efforts.103 China has also enjoyed the privileges and powers that come with its permanent Security Council seat. To the extent that it seeks to preserve the Council's primacy—in 2020 it called the Security Council's primary responsibility for international peace and security ‘the sacred duty of all 15 members of the Council’104—it appears to be at odds with African states' insistence on a more equal relationship between the UN and regional organizations.
However, China has grown increasingly frustrated over the P3's continued dominance in the Council's functioning. In Council deliberations, it has repeatedly objected to pen-holders turning a ‘deaf ear to … constructive suggestions and China's legitimate concerns’, and in 2020 abstained on a US-drafted resolution on Haiti for that reason.105 China has become more assertive in seeking to constrain the UN Security Council,106 by methods including blocking issues from reaching the Council agenda; objecting to missions mandating action on human rights, gender issues and engagement with civil society; and threatening or exercising the use of its veto. However, this does little to positively advance China's interests, since its ability to shape peacekeeping missions remains subject to the P3's entrenched hold over the drafting of resolutions and the structural advantages of their representation in senior Secretariat positions. China failed to persuade the UN Secretary-General to appoint a Chinese rather than French under-secretary-general for peace operations in 2017, and its apparent efforts to become pen-holder on some peace operations have so far been unsuccessful.107
Chinese support for African actors' demands for greater influence over UN peacekeeping decisions related to Africa might shift the balance of power within the Security Council. It would also enhance China's own influence, given its increasingly close relationship with the AU and African regional organizations, and its aspiration ‘to build an identity as an economic partner and an ally in addressing the multifaceted security challenges on the continent’.108 In 2017, China endorsed ‘respecting African countries’ ownership to solve African security problems [a]s the precondition and foundation for supporting Africa-led peace operations'.109 In 2020, China called on the Security Council and the AU PSC to ‘enhance their level of cooperation’ and argued that, ‘when addressing African issues, the United Nations should respect the wishes of the African people, enlist the aid of the AU and other regional and subregional organizations and encourage and support Africa's own initiatives and solutions’.110
China's interests in empowering African influence over UN peace operations in Africa also serve its own broader positioning in global affairs. China has rapidly expanding material interests on the continent, both economically and demographically, with increasing numbers of Chinese citizens living there. However, China also seeks status and soft power by consolidating a partnership relationship with African actors. The ‘five-noes approach’ Xi Jinping articulated at the 2018 FOCAC summit—promising no interference in domestic affairs, no attachment of political strings to assistance, no interference in national development, no seeking of political gains and no imposition of China's will—served to reinforce Chinese–African alignment.111
Extending well beyond UN peacekeeping, this alignment serves China's broader ambition of reshaping the international order, shifting its centre of gravity away from the UN towards institutions whose norms are more compatible with Chinese values and whose memberships are responsive to Chinese influence.112 At the global level, China has shifted its attention to the existing groupings of the G20 and the BRICS, but has also created significant new institutions that leverage China's vast capital resources to facilitate economic growth and development.113 These include the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, established in 2015, and, significantly, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013. The scope and scale of BRI funding is immense; its impact and the associated influence generated for China seeks to shape both the political and the economic parameters of development in line with its non-western, non-liberal principles.114 Chinese funding is received favourably by many recipients for what western liberal critics regard as Beijing's ‘rights-free’ development policies and its willingness to turn a blind eye to recipient states' governance practices.115 At the global level, China under Xi Jinping also seeks a leadership role in addressing climate change and international public health governance.116 In short, China desires to be a global norm entrepreneur, successfully building coalitions with ‘other like-minded players [to] facilitate the incremental transformation of the western, liberal hegemonic order’.117 As de Coning and Oslaner conclude, China's ‘long term perspective [is towards] a collective approach, and a development-led peace’.118 In this endeavour, close cooperation with African actors is an important asset.
Post-LIO UN peacekeeping: globalized but less liberal and less western
The introduction to this special issue has highlighted the many contemporary challenges to the liberal international order and raised the prospect of deglobalization as this order erodes. The case of UN peacekeeping illustrates that some post-LIO international institutions may be characterized more by deliberalization and dewesternization than by deglobalization.
Under the LIO, UN peacekeeping was indeed globalized. The number, size and complexity of missions increased dramatically, as did the number and variety of their participants, their geographic scope and their financial impacts. Simultaneously, UN peacekeeping became more liberal democratic: its normative premises shifted towards liberal norms of state responsibility, democracy promotion, human rights and protection of civilians. LIO UN peacekeeping also became western-led, driven by P3 dominance of the UN Security Council and the prominence of industrialized liberal democracies in financial decision-making bodies.
Like many other LIO institutions, LIO UN peacekeeping now faces deep uncertainty. As the introduction suggests, it is challenged both from within and, increasingly, from without. This article has focused on China and African states as two (sets of) non-western actors poised to play a pivotal role in negotiating the future of UN peacekeeping beyond its current inflection point. Chinese and African strategic goals are not identical, but there are important complementarities in their respective positions. China challenges liberal democratic peacebuilding, which has few committed champions in Africa. African actors embrace robust protection, stabilization and counterterrorism activities, which China is willing to support within a ‘developmental peace’ framework, as long as state sovereignty is respected—priorities many African actors share. China and African actors share common interests in curtailing western dominance over UN peacekeeping decisions. African actors seek greater influence in peacekeeping decisions regarding Africa; China supports greater regional ownership as part of its own vision of an international order characterized by greater Chinese leadership within and beyond the UN.
The compatibility of Chinese and African objectives presages a significant challenge to LIO UN peacekeeping, especially given that other UN actors have also supported elements of their proposed reforms, including greater regional consultation (endorsed by the UN Secretariat) and a shift to stabilization (whose supporters include some western states). Whether a post-LIO version of UN peacekeeping emerges will nonetheless depend on the coherence and skill of both the actors advocating it and those seeking instead to reconsolidate LIO UN peacekeeping. Strikingly, however, the globalization of UN peacekeeping is not at stake: China and African actors endorse globalized UN peace operations as essential complements to regional peacekeeping. The challenge they pose is thus not one of deglobalization, but one that contests the nature and leadership of globalized institutions.
Footnotes
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We use the term ‘peacekeeping’ broadly to refer to the deployment of military (and often police and civilian) personnel to prevent or reduce armed conflict, support ceasefires and/or facilitate the implementation of a peace agreement. Operations that do not deploy military personnel are beyond the scope of this article.
Paul D. Williams with Alex J. Bellamy, Understanding peacekeeping, 3rd edn (Cambridge: Polity, 2021), ch. 3.
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Author notes
This article is part of the September 2021 special issue of International Affairs on ‘Deglobalization? The future of the liberal international order’, guest-edited by T. V. Paul and Markus Kornprobst. Many thanks to Markus Kornprobst, T. V. Paul, Andrew Dorman, Umut Aydin, Jozef Bátora and two anonymous reviewers for insightful and constructive comments. Thanks to Lauren Shykora (Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia) for her capable research assistance.
