Weapons of Peace?

I’ve written recently how military technologies like drones are changing the temporal distinctions between war and peace. This past week, the trend developed even further with the recent request from the Ivory Coast that the United Nations provide drones as a way to supplement its peacekeeping force within the country.

The Ivory Coast currently has 9,500 peacekeepers operating in the country, of which 1,500 will leave in July. In return, the UN envoy of the Ivory Coast has requested the use of drones to supplement this year’s troop cuts and others currently planned for 2015.

As drones have become a more ubiquitous element of international security debates, a consistent justification for their use has emerged. They provide a cost-effective alternative to human forces that both minimizes the risk of human casualties and increases reconnaissance capabilities against enemy combatants.

France used this justification in Mali, the United States used it in Niger, and the Ivory Coast has used it now.

The argument, however, also blurs the distinctions of military involvement in a foreign conflict. For France, it simply acted as a prologue before a full French intervention into the conflict. For the United States, it remains unclear whether or not drone strikes on Islamic militants in West Africa actually occur within the jurisdiction of a war zone.

But this is what makes the argument compelling within the context of the United Nations, since peacekeepers already operate within a unique mandate. They are a military force that does not usually have the capability to actively engage an enemy in combat.

For this reason, UN peacekeeping operations have often failed. The main criticism of the UN, that it is an inanimate force without the ability to actually execute its mission and prevent mass atrocities, derives specifically from this legal paradox.

That paradox, furthermore, has directly manifested itself within the peacekeeping mission to the Ivory Coast. Despite 10 years of stabilization operations, the Ivory Coast remains a fragile state with significant security issues both internally and externally.

Last June, for example, militia attacks on a Southwestern village caused thousands to flee their homes and become internally displaced. It was only the most recent iteration of intermittent fighting that has occurred within the country for the past few years. Seven peacekeepers died in the attacks, which is only a fraction of the 107 total fatalities from the mission.

At the same time, the Ivory Coast retains porous borders in one of the most volatile regions in the world. It faces an Islamic insurgency on its northern border with Mali and a territorial dispute with neighboring Guinea that resulted in troop deployments. All of its other neighbors face similarly precarious security situations with significant levels of internal displacement and uncontrolled militant groups.

The situation may only grow more precarious following the reduction of peacekeeping forces in the next couple of years. The next national elections, which often serve as a significant catalyst for political violence, will occur in 2015. National elections in neighboring states that same year could also cause spillover effects. For the near future, then, regional security will remain volatile.

Yet, drones may actually serve as a solution to this problem. The blurred distinctions between war and peace that have distinguished recent drone operations perfectly match the blurred distinctions that define UN peacekeeping operations.

In this way, drones could actually restore some credibility to these operations. Surveillance, after all, is the drone’s biggest asset. Drones can continuously monitor an area for nearly two consecutive days. Unlike soldiers, they do not get distracted and they do not get bored.

As a result, they can fulfill one of the biggest aspects of peacekeeping operations, monitoring and surveillance, in a much more effective way than their human counterparts. Their value would only increase as election monitoring becomes a more important part of peacekeeping operations.

However, drones are only effective provided they have sufficient support from ground forces that can provide intelligence or secure an area. Peacekeeping forces can never prove effective without a significant physical presence.

These recent proposals will only prove effective, then, if drones serve as a supplement, rather than a replacement, for peacekeeping operations on the ground. If used properly, though, drones would provide a significant advantage to UN peacekeeping operations throughout the world.

Critics have rightly faulted peacekeepers for being ineffective due to their ambiguous military mandate. The ambiguous nature of drones, however, may provide the right opportunity to refute those claims. It would help to clarify the effective and proper use of drones as well as the effective and proper use of peacekeepers themselves.

Raul Quintana ’14, a Crimson editorial writer, is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. He is studying abroad at the University of Oxford this semester. His column appears on alternate Fridays.