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Peacebuilding in the United Nations pp 119–152Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Origins of UN Peacebuilding (II): The Liberal Democratic Peace in the UN Milieu

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Part of the book series: Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies ((RCS))

Abstract

This chapter continues to trace the process through which a particular meaning of peacebuilding was constructed and became common currency in and around the UN in the early 1990s. It contends that once a simplified discourse about the relationship between liberal democracy and peace gained foothold within the highest levels of decision making in the Secretariat, purposive political individuals, especially the then Secretary-General, started to build upon this simplified discourse to advance a clear political agenda to support electoral processes and promote democracies in societies affected by armed conflict as a mean to achieving peace. Based on the research of UN archives previously unavailable to the public, as well as first-hand interviews with key Secretariat officials at that time, the chapter reveals that, throughout this process, a simplified and politicised version of theories about the liberal democratic peace emerged and provided meaning to the use of ‘peacebuilding’ in the political agenda of purposive individuals in the UN milieu.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    List of participants compiled from the documents cited throughout the section and from interviews with Álvaro de Soto (2012), Richard Thornburgh (2012), James S. Sutterlin (2012a, b), Tapio Kanninen (2012, 2013), Virendra Dayal (2012), and Boutros Boutros-Ghali (2013). Carl-August Fleisschhauer, head of the Office of Legal Affairs, was mentioned as possible participant of the Task Force in the initial note prepared by Aimé (1992). His name, however, never came up in any of the interviews or appeared in several memos and notes exchanged among the members of the Task Force at the time—the only exception is a memo sent to him by Petrovsky (1992a) requesting Fleisschhauer’s comments on a working draft of the report; I found no record of a response in the UN archives.

  2. 2.

    The Office was inter alia responsible for carrying out research in the Secretariat and producing analytical reports and statements to the Secretary-General (UN Doc. ST/SGB/225).

  3. 3.

    In addition to working drafts of what would later become An Agenda for Peace, Kanninen kept several of the notes exchanged among members of the Task Force, as well as between the Chair of the group and the Secretary-General. Those documents were used to keep record of past decisions and regularly brief Boutros-Ghali on progress achieved, which makes his files invaluable for reconstituting the process herein depicted.

  4. 4.

    According to Kanninen (2012), Boutros-Ghali provided handwritten comments to the drafting team in his own copy of the draft.

  5. 5.

    In his interview to the UNIHP, Dayal’s recollection is as follows: “We had some meetings, discussed some ideas, and all the rest of it. But you know how it is. Basically, someone has got to pick up a pen and start writing the wretched thing. So I rang my friend Jim Sutterlin. I said, ‘Jim, you and I have struggled along in this area terribly hard together. Why don’t we try and sit down, you and I, and put together some thoughts on this whole thing?’ Jim said, ‘Sure.’ So he and I sat down, and we said, ‘I think these are the ideas we have between us. Why don’t I write up some of them, you write up some of them, and then I’ll match them together and we will see if it makes sense. Let that be our first working draft’” (UNIHP 2007c: 36–37).

  6. 6.

    This version was not yet titled An Agenda for Peace.

  7. 7.

    In an editorial, the Washington Post (1992) ascertained that Boutros-Ghali’s report reflected the “can-do spirit of the day”, noting that the Council had requested the new Secretary-General to “outline the ways that the U.N., freed from a Cold War confrontation that [had] produced 279 council vetoes, could better contribute to peace”.

  8. 8.

    In 2008, the IPA was renamed International Peace Institute (IPI).

  9. 9.

    For more information on the Office, see Kanninen and Kumar (2005) and Ramcharan (1991).

  10. 10.

    The reports of the conferences held in Poland and Canada were published as Cox et al. (1989) and International Security and Arms Control (1989), respectively. Both reports include lists of participants and the former, in addition, contains the speech delivered by Petrovsky on the occasion. I am indebted to James Sutterlin for authorising and Jean Krasno for facilitating my access to their files on the War Risk Reduction Project.

  11. 11.

    They even co-authored journal articles about the United Nations, one of which appeared in Foreign Affairs about a year before the release of An Agenda for Peace (see Russett et al. 1996; Russett and Sutterlin 1991).

  12. 12.

    The record of Boutros-Ghali’s travels in the first half of 1992 also raises questions about the historical accuracy of this first view. According to those records (see Hill 2003: Appendix 2), Boutros-Ghali made only one travel in connection with the Central American peace accords in that period: he visited Mexico on 15–16 January 1992 to sign the Salvadorian peace accord, and then El Salvador, on 16–17 January 1992, to visit the headquarters of ONUSAL. He also travelled to Colombia on 7–10 February 1992 to meet President Gaviria in connection with the eighth UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which might have included considerations about Central American peace accords given Colombia’s position as a member of the Contadora Group. Whereas the first of those travels occurred before the Security Council meeting of 31 January 1992, the second took place shortly afterwards, so it is unlikely that the concept of ‘peacebuilding’ was carved in either one of those trips. Similarly, Boutros-Ghali only travelled to South America again in June: he went to Brazil for the opening and closing of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) on 1–4 June 1992 and 8–14 June 1992; and he paid an official visit to Uruguay between 4 and 8 June 1992. By the time of those travels in June, drafts of the report bearing the term and definitions of ‘peacebuilding’ had already been produced by both the Task Force (in April) and Dayal and Sutterlin (in May).

  13. 13.

    Galtung (2012) recalls that Boutros-Ghali helped to promote a community plan he had designed for the Middle East at the time. According to Venturi (2009: 290), Boutros-Ghali requested around that time permission to translate into Arabic an article in which Galtung argued for a two-state solution for the Arab-Israeli conflict. For Boutros-Ghali’s years at the University of Cairo, see UNIHP (2007a: 6, 11).

  14. 14.

    Kanninen does not recall any discussion about Galtung’s work within the framework of the Task Force and he does not believe that Galtung’s concept of ‘peacebuilding’ had any particular or direct influence on the Task Force’s thinking on ‘post-conflict peacebuilding’ (Kanninen 2013). Nevertheless, the fact that An Agenda for Peace addresses the ‘three approaches to peace’ outlined by Galtung (1976), including peacebuilding, is hardly a simple coincidence given the aforementioned personal acquaintances and Galtung’s reputation in academic circles at that time.

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  1. United Nations, Kabul, Afghanistan

    Fernando Cavalcante

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Cavalcante, F. (2019). The Origins of UN Peacebuilding (II): The Liberal Democratic Peace in the UN Milieu. In: Peacebuilding in the United Nations. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03864-9_5

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