The End of the Liberal World Order and the Future of UN Peace Operations: Lessons Learned
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Author | Katelyn Cassin,Benjamin Zyla |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12993 |
The End of the Liberal World Order and the
Future of UN Peace Operations: Lessons
Learned
Katelyn Cassin
University of Ottawa
Benjamin Zyla
University of Ottawa, and
Harvard University
Abstract
Global conflicts are becoming increasingly transnational and often involve non-state actors. These trends mirror the diffusion
of power that has resulted from globalization and the erosion of liberal hegemony since the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Though projections vary among scholars, the future international system is likely to involve a diversification of actors exerting
influence in all policy spheres, including conflict-response and peace operations. The United Nations (UN) and other liberal
actors, historically dominant in peace operations, must adapt to remain relevant in a future where their governance of opera-
tions, and the underlying liberal democratic goals on which they are based, can no longer be assumed. In light of this waning
liberal international order, this paper examines the core lessons learned from the past 70 years of UN peace operations to
infer what future UN peacekeeping might look like and what adaptations will be necessary for this new environment. In so
doing, we prepare recommendations for a truly localized and contextualized approach to peace operations that is expansive,
representative and non-directive, ultimately necessitating the UN and other liberal actors to adopt higher risk tolerance and
relinquish exclusive control over conflict-response and peace.
Policy Implications
•The liberal democratic state can no longer be assumed as the end goal of peace operations, nor should it be.
•Incentivizing liberal reforms is not sustainable. External actors must support conflicting parties in non-directive ways. This
will require higher risk tolerance from interveners, as long-term effectiveness will likely mean short-term efficiency losses.
•In a multi-order world, social contracts and domestic institutions may be based on different values than those of the lib-
eral order. For international actors, this means compromising on what constitutes just and legitimate governance.
•Multi-order peace interventions will be multi-actor, with new partners from different orders. Coordination, policy coher-
ence and mandate clarity will be essential, as top-down, liberal templates are abandoned and a comprehensive approach
is embraced. This will require bureaucratic reforms to overcome the organizational constraints to such holistic, flexible and
context-sensitive planning, resourcing and working.
•Multi-order peace interventions will be locally-led. International actors must holistically support cross-cutting civil society
and social organizations, so that local partners are representative and legitimate, rather than convenient.
•Multi-order peace interventions will be international-local hybrids. Social and physical barriers between international and
local actors must be reduced to enable local knowledge transfer, accountability, exchange and dialogue.
•Linear conceptions of causality are incongruent with the complex, relational and systemic nature of conflicts and peace
interventions. Multi-order peace interventions will require complex understandings of effectiveness and change.
There is widespread understanding among scholars that the
current world order is changing and becoming more diverse
(de Coning et al., 2014; Peter, 2019). From this starting point,
we examine what such change in order would mean for the
future of UN peace interventions. The UN’s dominance in
and provision of governance for peace interventions over
the past seven decades can no longer be assumed to persist
unchanged in a ‘multi-order’world (Flockhart, 2016); nor can
the underlying liberal democratic goals of its interventions.
We suggest that this has far reaching implications for the
future of UN peacekeeping.
While ‘multipolarity’is more commonly used to describe
the present and future world order (de Coning et al., 2016;
Peter, 2019), we join Trine Flockhart (2016, p. 5) in
Global Policy (2021) 12:4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12993©2021 Durham University and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 12 . Issue 4 . September 2021455
Research Article
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