Part of the reason for this failure is a lack of resources. It is hard to fault the UN for that, since it relies on contributions from its members. The larger problem, however, is a fundamental misunderstanding about what makes for a sustained peace. The UN’s strategy favors top-down deals struck with elites and fixates on elections. But that neglects what should be the other main component of their approach: embracing bottom-up strategies that draw on local knowledge and letting the people themselves determine how best to promote peace. [...]
The possibility of a veto meant that intervention was limited to places not caught up in the East-West rivalry, and as a result, peacekeeping missions were rare during the Cold War. Only 13 were set up between 1948 and 1978, and none at all between 1979 and 1987. The missions that did exist were fairly unintrusive. A small number of unarmed observers would monitor cease-fire lines and troop withdrawals, as in Kashmir in 1949, or lightly armed soldiers would try to insert themselves between national armies, as in Lebanon in 1978. Sometimes, the presence of UN soldiers helped prevent further conflict, while at other times, it did not. The 1973 Yom Kippur War embodied this mixed track record: UN peacekeepers succeeded in enforcing the cease-fire along the Egyptian-Israeli border in the Sinai, but they failed to do the same at the Israeli-Syrian border in the Golan Heights. Even though the UN peacekeeping forces were awarded the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize, their global impact remained limited. [...]
Despite all these supposed improvements, today, just like 20 years ago, peacekeepers often fail to meet the high expectations set for them. Experts all use different definitions of success and thus arrive at different conclusions, so whether or not a UN mission can be considered a failure is a matter of interpretation. Some scholars have arrived at positive assessments. Michael Gilligan and Ernest Sergenti, for instance, have calculated that 85 percent of UN operations have resulted in prolonged periods of peace or shortened periods of war. Page Fortna has determined that, all else being equal, the presence of peacekeepers decreases the risk of another war breaking out by 55–62 percent. Lisa Hultman, Jacob Kathman, and Megan Shannon have shown that the deployment of UN troops reduces both battlefield deaths and civilian killings. Other scholars have come to more dispiriting conclusions. Jeremy Weinstein discovered that 75 percent of the civil wars in which the UN intervened resumed within ten years of stopping. Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis studied 138 peace processes and found that roughly half of those that had peacekeepers failed to decrease the violence or further democracy. Roland Paris analyzed 11 UN missions in depth and found that only two were able to build a sustainable peace.
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