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MILITARY PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS 237

The major military conflicts of the twenti- conflicts, while Chapter VII allows the
eth century were conventional wars between Security Council to take military action to
nations or coalitions of nations, represented intervene in conflicts if diplomatic efforts
on the battlefield by military forces acting as fail. The UN did develop a system for deal-
agents of their states. Military forces of other ing with international conflict that began
nations, primarily drawn from the ‘middle with the deployment of unarmed military
powers’, such as Canada, the Netherlands, observers to the United Nations Truce
and the Nordic nations (Moskos, 1976), have Supervision Organization (UNTSO) in 1948
been involved in trying to control these (Fabian, 1971). From that point until
inter-state conflicts through participation in December 2004, there were a total of 60 UN
multinational peacekeeping operations for peacekeeping operations, two-thirds of
over a half-century, first under the auspices which were initiated in 1991 or later, after
of the League of Nations, then of the United the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the
Nations, and for the past two decades, under Security Council was no longer constrained
the auspices of new international entities, by the Cold War bipolarity.
such as the Multinational Force and
Observers (MFO) in the Sinai (Segal and
Gravino, 1985).
The first recorded multinational peace oper- THE CHANGING NATURE OF
ation under the auspices of an international CONFLICT
organization was a ‘peace force’ of over 3,000
military personnel from the United Kingdom, Much of classical sociological theory, such
Sweden, Italy, and the Netherlands, formed by as the writings of Comte and Spencer, ideal-
the post-World War I League of Nations to istically postulated a social evolution from
maintain regional security for a plebiscite in societies characterized by warfare to peace-
the Saar Basin in 1934 (Lewis, 1992). The ful societies characterized by industrial and
League subsequently used other multinational economic relations (Gobbicchi, 2002). This
forces to mediate disputes upon request of evolution did not take place. On the contrary,
member nations. The constraints under which while the nature of war has varied greatly
this model of peacekeeping was applied con- over the course of human history, social
tributed to the League’s inability to prevent change has brought us to a stage in which
World War II. ‘war has tended to spread more rapidly, to
After World War II, the United Nations destroy larger proportions of life and prop-
developed a new peacekeeping system that erty, and to disorganize the economy of states
was constrained by the Cold War. The antag- more than ever before’ (Wright, 1965: 7).
onisms of the bipolar international system, Armed conflict remains a serious social
dominated by the tensions between NATO problem (Gleditsch et al., 2002).
and the Warsaw Pact, and represented among War existed among primitive people, but at
the permanent members of the UN Security low levels of lethality given primitive tech-
Council by the United States and the Soviet nologies. Economic development did not
Union, made it unlikely that consensus and eliminate war, but rather produced a congru-
cooperation on peacekeeping could be ence between civilian and military facts of
achieved in the Security Council. The UN material life (Keegan, 1976), such that as
Charter contains no reference to peacekeep- society became industrialized, so too did mil-
ing, let alone a formula for its performance. itary technology, increasing its lethality.
Former UN Secretary-General Dag Battle progressed from using agricultural
Hammerskjold described peacekeeping as implements (axes and knives) in hand-to-hand
‘chapter six and a half’ in the UN charter: combat, through single use weapons that
chapter six calls for peaceful resolution of could be used at a distance (arrows, spears),