Egmont Paper n°34:
Europe Rediscovers Peacekeeping? Political and Military Logics in the 2006 UNIFIL Enhancement
Author
Alexander Mattelaer - View the full report  .
Executive summary
The war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 came to an end when both conflict
parties accepted the plan of reinforcing the United Nations Interim Force in
Lebanon (UNIFIL) as a means to enable a ceasefire. In political as well as military
terms, European nations were the driving force behind this UNIFIL
‘enhancement’ – marking a difficult return to the UN peacekeeping system since
the debacles in the former Yugoslavia. This Egmont Paper explores both the
political and military logic underlying the UNIFIL enhancement. On the basis of
a detailed analysis of both the political decision-making process and the military
planning cycle of the operation it develops two interlinked arguments.
On the one hand, it argues that UNIFIL’s operational strategy relies on its threedimensional
presence as a security buffer, as a mechanism for de-escalation and
as an important actor in the local economy. On the other hand, it argues that
friction between the political and military levels is at the root of persisting problems
in terms of information management, organisational structures and the
conceptual foundations of operational planning. As such this Egmont Paper
assesses the strategic rationale of the operation, which is shown to be limited,
and accounts for a variety of practical problems that hamper an effective functioning
of the operation. On the basis of this twofold argument, three main
conclusions can be drawn.
Firstly, the enhancement of UNIFIL showed that the UN peacekeeping system
still constitutes a suitable platform for deploying European armed forces, but
under two specific conditions. On the one hand, the question under which
organisational flag troops are deployed was answered on a pragmatic basis. The
UN framework in this case was chosen because the host nation insisted on it.
The Lebanese government excluded the other options, whether NATO, ESDP or
an ad hoc multinational coalition. On the other hand, the European troop contributors
insisted on redesigning the organisational set-up for the operation,
both in terms of expanding oversight via the ad hoc established Strategic Military
Cell as well as introducing their own approach to planning operations.
Secondly, the inherent tension between intergovernmental political decisionmaking
process and integrated military planning that is natural to any multinational
operation was compounded by a mental gap between the UN political
staff and the NATO trained military officers from European contributors. This
mental gap boiled down to two competing views on how to manage operations.
The UN approach was characterised by a much higher level of political sensitivity
– with obvious implications for information management e.g. – and a decen
tralised approach to operation management. The greater political unity amongst
European troop contributors as well as the preference for more robust command
structures thus created a structural fault line in the mission set-up early
on. Interestingly, the confrontation between both worlds proved to be a learning
experience and tensions eased over time. Individual UN staffers came to see that
military planning doctrine as standardised by NATO had something to offer in
terms of making planning and management processes work smoothly. At the
same time, European troop contributors rediscovered UN peacekeeping ten
years after leaving it and found it could be made to work better than it had in
the past.
Thirdly, peacekeeping in a context such as Lebanon after the 2006 war is
fraught with conceptual problems when it comes to operational planning doctrine.
The UN’s approach to operations, which is procedurally flexible but
chronically under-resourced, is very light on the content of operational planning.
There is no real peacekeeping doctrine spelling out the causal reasoning
how the ambitious goals set out in the mandate can be achieved. Peacekeeping
thus relies on a more programmatic approach to planning operations, bringing
about conditions that hopefully lead in the right direction. If such hopes prove
to be idle, the operation simply goes on in time and becomes part of the scenery.
The NATO planning doctrine preferred by European troop contributors does
give planners the conceptual toolkit for designing operations, but this conceptual
toolkit is only fully applicable to missions with powerful political mandates.
Traditional planning concepts such as centre of gravity and end-state remain
useful as an intellectual compass, but in a peacekeeping context they lead planners
to think far beyond their mandate.
What can be made of the strategic effectiveness of the enhanced UNIFIL? The
most straightforward effect was that the enhanced UNIFIL made the ceasefire
on 14 August 2006 possible in the first place and contributed to maintaining it
ever since. The three-dimensional strategic role outlined in this paper does give
a coherent answer to how the operation can foster the intended effects. The
enhanced UNIFIL in this sense does harness the use of armed forces for political
ends. Yet it is equally true that such a strategy cannot achieve conflict resolution
– it can only enable the sort of conditions that make renewed hostilities less
likely. An operation with a limited political mandate can only achieve limited
objectives. In that sense, the enhanced UNIFIL cannot be strategically decisive:
it manages conflict on an interim basis, but does not make peace.
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