Surveying the Middle Ground: Conceptual Issues and Peacekeeping in Southern Africa

The primary objective of the United Nations (UN) is to ensure peace among (and latterly within) the nations of the world

The primary objective of the United Nations (UN) is to ensure peace among (and latterly within) the nations of the world. Peace does not imply the absence of conflict, for conflict is generic to politics and is as ubiquitous as politics itself. It means, rather, the absence of violent means in the reconciling of such conflicts. The UN Security Council`s role in this endeavour is to reinforce or create a commitment to the non-violent resolution of conflict by disputing or belligerent parties.

From a moral point of view, the dilemma facing the international community seems to be the way in which a supra-national organisation, such as the UN, can influence recalcitrant member states (or parties) to honour an agreement to resolve conflict by non-violent means, when such influence may entail the UN having to resort to the use of armed force. For both moral and practical reasons, physical peace enforcement must always be regarded as the last resort.

Moreover, the actual employment of physical force usually signifies that a policy based on the threat of force has failed. Dahl concedes that the actual use of force may help to lend credibility to the threat, but also warns that if the threat must inevitably be carried out, coercion becomes self-defeating: "A thief may turn a live victim into a dead one, but a corpse cannot open the safe."  

Author

Mark Malan, Senior Researcher, Training for Peace Project, Institute for Defence Policy