The Soft Power Factor in United Nations Peace Operations: Cases of Lebanon, Kosovo, and Cyprus

The nature of modern international order has changed dramatically as a result of the developments that occurred with the end of World War II. Several decades later, the world witnessed the commencement of a new era in international relations especially after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was dissolved at the end of the Cold War and the distribution of power shifted towards a unipolar system. Thus, the scope of terms like power, peace, and security have been redefined constantly over time according to the developments that continue to occur in the international order. Despite the general understanding that the United Nations (UN) Member States are the main actors of international order, it is obvious that international organizations are as important as the states themselves in shaping international politics. Hence, the emergence of peaceful and stable international order can be achieved by international organizations pushing towards more cooperative relations among Member States, encouraging them to adopt common agendas and to create consensus on joint action plans to consolidate the rule-based international order. Generally speaking, international organizations, especially the UN, maintain international peace and security, strive to safeguard the current balance of power, pursue particular guidelines, and implement specialized programs in various fields including the deployment of peacekeeping operations and establishing special political missions. Over the past eight decades, the UN has carried out many preventive and interventionist activities in order to maintain international peace and security, as well as preserve the stability of the order, end wars among member states, and cease intrastate conflicts. That being said, UN Peacekeeping was born at a time when Cold War rivalries frequently paralyzed the UN Security Council. Peacekeeping was primarily limited to maintaining ceasefires and stabilizing situations on the ground, providing crucial support for political efforts seeking to resolve conflict by peaceful means. Over time, the UN Peacekeeping process has evolved along with the rapidly changing strategic environment. The scope of responsibilities of UN Peacekeeping have widened according to the changing types of conflict, shifts in relations among great powers, and the evolving structure of regional security arrangements. With the end of the Cold War, the number of international conflicts decreased yet, not surprisingly, the number of intrastate conflicts has been on the rise. In response, the strategic context for UN Peacekeeping has changed accordingly. The mandates of UN Peacekeeping have expanded beyond the classical pattern to include activities such peacebuilding and sustaining peace, which are often understood to be statebuilding and social engineering. Consequently, those mandates require full understanding of the nature of each conflict separately. In response, the UN shifted and expanded its field operations from traditional missions, involving observational tasks usually performed by military personnel, into complex multidimensional enterprises. These multidimensional missions are designed to ensure the implementation of comprehensive peace agreements and assist in ensuring the sustainability of peace processes. The building of liberal peace with modest or passive policies is no longer possible because the enterprise requires too much statebuilding and social engineering in too many places around the world. To address this concern, the UN developed new interventionist and preventive methods as an exercise of peace enforcement with the aim of maintaining security, stability and, most importantly, protecting the existing balance of power without violating the functioning principles of international law. Of particular priority is the protection of the principles of sovereignty and the unwavering right of independence for all Member States. Consequently, to balance an expanding mandate and the protection of international law principles, peacebuilding efforts have become the focus of UN's work in areas of conflict. The transformation of peacekeeping operations resulted in the expansion of mandates to cover fields such as disarmament/demobilization/reintegration (DDR), mediation, security sector reform, promotion of human rights, enforcing rule of law, encouraging social cohesion, facilitating dialogue among conflicted groups/parties, and having full authorization to use other instruments to build sustainable institutions for good governance. While military forces have remained the backbone of most peacekeeping operations, to accommodate the expanding mandate, there are now many faces of peacekeeping including: humanitarian crises workers, de-miners, administrators, economists, police officers, legal experts, electoral observers, human rights monitors, civil affairs and good governance specialists, as well as communications and public information experts. Notwithstanding its expanding mandates, UN Peacekeeping has faced various challenges, including obstacles to delivering on its most expensive and increasingly complex missions. In addition to the difficulties of designing and executing viable transition strategies for missions where a degree of stability has been attained, the challenges of preparing for an uncertain future and set of requirements have hampered the impact of UN Peacekeeping efforts. However, regardless of the perceived success of the UN's applied policies to maintain peace and security, it's clear that those efforts have significantly shaped the international political order. As observed in the three case studies presented in this dissertation, the UN peace operations' mandate to prevent social, economic, and structural destruction caused by conflicts, end humanitarian crises, and sustain peace and stability has consolidated the UN's legitimacy internationally, including in Lebanon, Kosovo, and Cyprus. The scope of the UN's actions in these states, including the use of soft power instruments, helped to maintain cease fire and eliminate potential threats that could lead to another outbreak of war or cause a recurrence of those conflicts. While pursuing the same overarching goal of achieving peace and security, it's important to acknowledge that the UN's efficiency and effectiveness in the crises of Lebanon, Kosovo, and Cyprus, along with its methods for tackling the peace process, has varied according to the security, political, social, and economic situations present within each country. Furthermore, the level of involvement of relevant local and international actors in peace talks is proportional to the actors' position or their soft power in the international order. In this regard, soft power is a new form of power that emerged simultaneously with the changes in peace operations after the end of the Cold War. American political scientist Dr. Joseph Nye explains soft power as the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a culture, political ideals, and policies. Hereby soft power, unlike hard power, uses the power of attraction to establish sustainable peace by demonstrating norms, values, principles, and cultures. Soft power is commonly associated with the foreign policy of states, however, in this dissertation, we seek to extend the association of soft power beyond the state to an international organization (UN). This dissertation uses a comparative case study of three countries, Lebanon, Kosovo, and Cyprus to explore the interconnectivity of soft power and peacekeeping concepts, and the impact of UN's soft power assets on its peacekeeping operations. Through this lens, this dissertation explores the progress and transformation of UN Peacekeeping operations and presents the relevant programs that examplify soft power instruments implemented to resolve conflicts and restore peace in Lebanon, Kosovo, and Cyprus. This work seeks to examine whether the UN Peacekeeping operations have obtained the necessary legitimacy to successfully handle the conflict resolution, preventive diplomacy endeavors, and peacebuilding processes fundamental to UN mandates. Furthermore, this work investigates how the UN utilized safety and security architecture reform to sustain peace in Lebanon, Kosovo and Cyprus. Finally, the dissertation assesses the level of success achieved for each peace operation through the trilateral comparison of dissimilar cases. The argument of the dissertation can be better understood through the following questions: (1) Do the UN Peacekeeping operations resort to soft power instruments to resolve conflicts in specific areas around the world?; (2) What are the existing linkages between peacekeeping, peace enforcement, and peacebuilding?; and (3) How were UN Peacekeeping operations implemented in the presented three case studies?