How UN Peacekeeping Operations Can Adapt to a New Multipolar World Order

Abstract

We are experiencing a momentous phase-shift with potentially significant implications for UN peacekeeping. The unipolar era is waning in the face of a significant increase in the economic and political influence of countries like China and India in the global system. It is still uncertain what may follow the unipolar era, but there are signs that the next stage will be a new multipolar era, in which several states–the United States, China, Germany, India, and Russia, to name a few–each have access to networks and forms of power sufficient to prevent any of the others from unilaterally dominating the global order. Another emerging characteristic of this transition is that several international and regional organizations, numerous large companies, and some non-governmental agencies, can exert significant influence on the global system on selected issues where they have a substantial capacity or competency. What implications will these changes at the global systems level have for UN peacekeeping operations? I will highlight three themes–strategic political coherence, the employment of force, and the outer limits of peace operations–that may suggest how UN peacekeeping are likely to adapt to a new multipolar world order.

How UN Peacekeeping Operations Can Adapt to a New Multipolar World Order