AFK-EuPRA – Panel 21:
Conflict Intervention Policies and Practices
The panel brings together different approaches that reflect up on the role, place and function of interventions in different contexts and from different theoretical perspectives. Stefanie Wodrig develops a heuristic analysis of the regional aspect of liberal peace interventions, which remains underdeveloped in the academic research. Interventions at the regional level are seen as a discrete set of discourses which practices especially in the African context remain inherently fragile and elusive. Oscar Hidalgo-Redondo investigates veto actors involvements in the case of the Basque conflict and their positive role in settling down the conflict and the effect of post 9/11 in this involvement. The experiences need to be object of scrutiny to underline the positive experience and identify its applicability in similar cases. Wolfgang Schreiber tackles the issue of European Intervention in the context of the European Security and Defense and Policy. The organizational structure, active members, and developing trends are inquired. As a whole the panel shades light on different aspects of humanitarian and liberal peace interventions that remain important in limiting violence, creating the necessary conditions for peace negotiations and laying the ground for peace building.
Chair: Enika Abazi (PRIP; University of Lille, France)
Presenters:
Wolfgang Schreiber (University of Hamburg, Germany): „European“ Interventions
Since more than two decades the EU is establishing a common European Security and Defense and Policy. This contribution wants to evaluate this ongoing process by analyzing the participation and commitment of EU member states in different missions and interventions outside the EU. Obviously there were different types of such participations from unilateral (but UN mandated) interventions to contributions in several organizational forms (UN, NATO, Coalition of the Willing or EU missions).
The questions of this contribution will try to answer:
- Is there a preferred organizational structure in which EU members operate?
- Are there differences in the participation of the EU members? Do some states contribute more than others which have at least similar capacities?
- Are there factors that determine in which organizational structure EU members make their contributions?
- Is there a recognizable trend to more common operations of EU members or at least a “core” of them?
Oscar Hildago-Redondo (University of Tampere, Finland/University of New York, Prague, Czech Republic): External Actors as Veto Players in the Basque Conflict
The proposed paper will study the impact of external actors in the history of the terrorist group with a special focus on the influence that external actors have had in the termination of the armed activity of the Basque terrorist group. The proposed research will analyse how the role of the external actors to the conflict has evolved becoming in the last stage of the history of ETA veto players pushing in favor of the termination of its violent activity. In the paper we will study the role that actors external to the Basque conflict had in pressing the group to give up its violence defence of the recognition of Basque people as subject of political rights as a nation. The paper will pay a particular attention to the influence that the September 11 attacks in United States in 2001 (and consequent the reaction to it of the international community) had in the difficulties that the Basque terrorist organization had to regenerate its operational structures that lead to its current situation.
Stefanie Wodrig (University of Kiel, Germany): Regional Intervention Politics in a post-Western World
This proposed paper aims to contribute theorising a phenomenon that has not received much attention from critical intervention scholarship yet, despite being very topical. Regional forces seem to perform interventions as much as the so-called wider international community does. On the African continent the African Union’s principle of African solutions to African problems testifies of this relevance. That said, as was noted elsewhere, ‘the regional aspect of liberal peace interventions has been under-researched’ (Richmond and Mac Ginty 2015, p. 183). This proposed paper develops a heuristic for analysing regional interventions as a discrete set of discourses and practices, without however essentialising this difference to a universalised peace, generally conceived of in terms of liberal peace. Instead, it conceptualises regional difference as inherently fragile and elusive. The added value of this heuristic is illustrated with examples drawn from the African continent.
Firuze Simay Sezgin (Koç University, Turkey): Initial Deployments of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and the Divide Between North and South
The first few months of the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations are critical stages for achieving stable peace, and the speed, size, and composition of the initial deployments have a vital importance for the UN to signal its commitment to the mission. This thesis is the first systematic analysis on the factors that determine the speed of forming resolutions and deployments, initial contribution levels, and composition of the UN peacekeeping operations. We tested hypotheses drawn from Realist and Liberal theories of international relations. We find that conflicts that pose a threat to international security are more likely to receive quicker deployments. For the Liberal accounts, we find recipient countries with long-standing intense conflicts are more likely to receive slower formed resolutions and slower deployments with lower participation rates. However, as a new measure to the literature, if a recipient country experiences a spike in deaths prior to the establishment of the operation, then this humanitarian crisis leads countries to contribute more with a prompt deployment. As a concluding critique to the operations, we show that while countries in Africa and South Asia provide the bulk of the personnel, advanced economies of the global North provide the financial support.
Bretterblog 