SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The thesis critically examines the advance of United Nations peacekeeping as an instrument for managing various facets of a post-colonial world order. The first part of the study explores the structural role of UN peace operations in a world of sovereign states as well as the internal political struggle to shape the parameters and direction of the UN's work. As far as the former is concerned, it is suggested that peace operations should be understood as very specific political activities that have been forged to provide for either a transition from one social system to another, or deployed to buttress a particular world social order. Concurrently, it is argued that the expansion of peacekeeping must also be seen in the context of the internal ideological and political battle to determine the orientation of the world body. While this has witnessed the organisation briefly challenged during the 1970s by Third World states determined to direct the UN's gaze onto the regulation of the private international economy, the matter has been settled (for now) in favour of the organisation directing its energies to advocating particular forms of liberal governance within Southern societies. Both dynamics-the wider structural role of peace operations and the narrower internal struggle to determine the content of the UN's work-are necessary in order to understand the political connotations of these practices and their predominance in the organisation's activities today. After analysing the political specificity of UN peace practices, the study moves on to look at their utilisation in the African context-in Angola, Rwanda, and Somalia-paying particular attention to the wider political transformations underway in each context and the role of the UN in pursuing such ends. The thesis concludes with a set of observations about the place of the UN in managing world order in the Southern hemisphere.