Peace Operations from the Perspective of Strategy and Doctrine

Recent peace operations 1 demonstrated that traditional principles of peacekeeping require a significant interpretation to serve the needs of UN peacekeeping. There is a clear mismatch between doctrine and current practices. Furthermore, as many analysts point out, one underlying problem in peace operations lies in the lack of an overall strategy because any action in operations is as worthy as it supports the overall strategic objective. The authors argue that the current UN system is not capable to produce and maintain strategies, hence, strategic theory and doctrine can be useful in closing the gap between what is being asked and what UN peace operations can deliver. In this context, this paper examines the UN structure and peace operations from the perspective of strategy and doctrine. It provides proposals for each level of UN structure through the lens of strategic theory and discusses six main conceptual themes that need to be clarified in a new doctrine.