Читать книгу Understanding Peacekeeping - Alex J. Bellamy - Страница 23

Another approach to conceptualizing the relationship between peace operations and global politics draws on the power of cultural ideas and habits. Some analysts have suggested that, in its extreme form, foreign peacekeepers exhibit racist attitudes towards local populations, exemplified by the episode of Canadian peacekeepers deployed to Somalia in 1993 torturing to death a local boy (Razack 2004). More frequently, these approaches analyse how the design, methods and objectives of peace operations are shaped by the dominant culture(s) of the actors that authorize and conduct them. One prominent example was Roland Paris’s (2003) argument that the international normative environment – a ‘global culture’ comprised of formal and informal social rules that guide international life – shapes the design of peace operations in fundamental ways (see box 1.2). Global culture helps determine the sorts of activities that are considered appropriate for peace operations and rules out others, irrespective of whether or not they actually aid progression towards peace. For instance, despite its relatively good post-1945 track record, international trusteeship has been ‘disqualified’ as a policy tool because of its neocolonial overtones. Conversely, the dominance of liberal peace theories has sometimes pushed peace operations to implement hasty elections and economic liberalization despite evidence of their destabilizing potential. From this perspective, understanding the liberal global culture can tell us more about the shape of contemporary peace operations than lessons learned from past operations. Understanding how that liberal order is being challenged by populism and rising authoritarianism may also offer clues as to the future trajectory of peace operations and multilateralism more broadly (e.g. Welsh 2016). If, as Stephen Hopgood (2013) suggests, we are witnessing the ‘endtimes’ of human rights, global retrenchment of peace operations is likely.