Problem 1:
There are wars in the world. Insurgencies, revolutions, conflicts both frozen and hot, juntas, and a constellation of other not-quite-synonyms for things that are not peaceful. Hopefully there will come a day in human history when such occurrences have been banished for good, and the inevitability of constant fighting has disappeared. That day is not now, and no matter how many conflicts are brought to a close (see Northern Ireland; Syria, perhaps), like rhizomes the sins of hate and violent anger arise again. Any ‘end of history’ narrative has been proved beyond delusional; and we cannot sanely imagine that bringing peace to current hotspots like the Levant or Donbass will eliminate war for good. It sounds pessimistic, but war is as close to a constant in history as you can get, and we must have a sustainable, effective, and mutually acceptable way of combatting it.
Problem 2:
We haven’t meaningfully thought about how to deal with the problem of conflict for at least two centuries, probably more. In the 19th century, wars were settled by Great Britain’s titanic commercial, naval, and military power. If your conflict affected Britain’s interests, which, by virtue of half the world lying between Britain and India, and the other half lying between India and Britain, pretty much any conflict did, then overwhelming British power would finish the conflict. A similar pattern was adopted by the US in the second half of the 20th century. Thus, the ‘great nation’ theory of international peacekeeping became entrenched because it was so effective that alternatives did not need to be discussed: one power in the world, with supreme politico-economic power, would deploy its resources in order to stop, prevent, and solve the world’s conflicts. A Faustian bargain was quietly, unknowingly struck without discussion, without anyone’s explicit approval: that one nation would be allowed to accumulate hard and soft power beyond what was reasonable to defend strictly their interests, in return for their unwritten guarantee that they would use those powers to maintain global peace as best they could. With great power comes great responsibility, etc etc.
No longer, however, after Iraq and Afghanistan, do large swathes of the world trust US intervention to be for the right reasons: so much so that 32 UN members abstained on a resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine and demanding Russian withdrawal- including such populous and powerful countries as China, India, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ethiopia. Such is the loss of trust in the status quo of international peacekeeping that mutually hostile nations like India and Pakistan will vote the same way; that countries with a combined population of over 3 billion have effectively expressed a vote of no confidence in the US as global peacemaker. Protesters in countries across the ‘coup belt’ of West Africa now raise the Russian flag, and newly-installed military governments expel French and American troops engaged in the war on Islamic extremist groups across the Sahel almost as an initiation ritual.
Problem 3:
Don’t get me wrong- this collapse in the current system is not due to a decline in the US’ capabilities. However, they clearly don’t want to uphold their end of the bargain anymore. US voters and politicians from both parties, feeling that they are no longer reaping the economic rewards of being the global hyperpower, have voted consistently to rid themselves of their global responsibilities.
Obama withdrew from Iraq, and refused to meaningfully engage in Syria even after the use of chemical weapons. Trump arranged, and Biden orchestrated, the evacuation of all US troops from Afghanistan, knowing the cost to Afghans of allowing the Taliban to retake power. Now Trump has won a second term, at least partially on the back of his boast that he began ‘no new wars’ and intends to disengage the US from its involvement in Ukraine and the Levant. Since very little in the US has bipartisan support recently, this rare point of agreement represents an unequivocal abdication of the US from their role as the ‘great nation’ of international peacekeeping. They are being pushed, but they are jumping too.
Problem 4:
No clear replacement comes to mind. Even if we put aside any and all moral considerations (which we obviously shouldn’t for a role as important as this one), no candidates emerge. Russia’s military strength has been shown up by its terrible performance in Ukraine, and its economic strength is nowhere near robust enough to finance multiple global deployments when it can hardly manage one on its doorstep. The EU is far too disunified to have the operational control necessary for swift responses and coherent deployments- they’d demand 27 different commanders for each unit- and many member states are being plagued by anti-globalist populist parties.
That leaves China, which many saw as trying to audition for the role through the Belt and Road global investment scheme, in some ways a parallel of the American Marshall Plan that kickstarted America’s ascendancy. However, with significantly slower economic growth post-Covid, a military that is essentially untested, and a strong historical culture of isolationism, their credentials aren’t strong either. Their treatment of their Uighur population has sparked international condemnation, especially from Muslim states; their coastline is surrounded by states hostile to them; and their soft power projection is embryonic compared to their Japanese and Korean neighbours.
The Moneyball Solution:
A similar problem was faced by the Oakland Athletics’ General Manager Billy Beane. His solution was so clever that they made a film about it starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, and his sabermetrics techniques have revolutionised baseball (and indeed general sports) management. However, we are not interested in the detailed maths of sabermetrics, since we are not trying to recruit baseball players out of college. What I’m interested in is one famous scene from the film, in which Beane and his assistant are attempting to identify a replacement for their star player Giambi, who racked up 38 home runs and 120 RBIs the previous season.
His scouts and assistants are suggesting alternative stars-in-the-making who they could get to replace him, but Beane tells them that they simply cannot replace him by finding someone equally as good. They have to think more creatively, and Beane suggests “what we might be able to do is recreate him in the aggregate”. They switch from trying to find a like-for-like replacement for the person, to trying to recreate that person’s output. Instead of finding the next Giambi, they try to find 38 home runs and 120 RBIs with an average on-base rate of 0.364, regardless of where that comes from. This leads them to recruiting three players, each neglected by other teams for their obvious flaws (weird pitching style; off-field issues; injury-prone legs), but who will, combined, produce the same output as one Giambi, for roughly the same cost.
This is the essential lesson that I think can be learned from the Moneyball philosophy. We are trying to replace the US like-for-like, and there is no one suitable to take over. But if we shift our focus, abandon the notion that we need a ‘star player’, abandon the ‘great nation’ theory of peacekeeping, and try to replace the US in the aggregate, far more attractive solutions open up. We should seek to lessen our dependence on one nation to preserve international peace: elevating another nation to the US’ level of military and economic dominance is unfeasible and probably also undesirable.
Who’s replacing Giambi:
We already have the basic infrastructure to effect this change, and the shining example is NATO and similar regional security alliances. There are a constellation of regional unions already- the EU, the African Union, ECOWAS in West Africa, the Arab League, MERCOSUR for South America, the Gulf Cooperation Council, ASEAN, and CARICOM are perhaps some of the most influential. Virtually every region of the world has at least one grouping, often more, and some of these are well-established, powerful bodies. Very many of these are strictly economic currently, some are merely diplomatic. However, they can provide the basis for security groupings that can be the future of international peacekeeping.
Indeed this model has a basis both in international law and precedent: the UN, aware of its own deficiencies in addressing conflicts and insurgencies (its peacekeepers have better success in monitoring ceasefires than intervening in active conflicts), has theoretically given itself the capability to delegate interventions to regional organisations.
Chapter VIII of the UN Charter explicitly deals with how regional organisations can help maintain international peace. Article 52(2 and 3) actively encourages regional groupings to find “pacific settlement of local disputes through such regional arrangements” both on those groupings’ own initiative, and through Security Council prompting. Most notably, Article 53(1) decrees that “the Security Council shall, where appropriate, utilise such regional arrangements or agencies for enforcement action under its authority”. Thus, the UN never gave itself a monopoly on peacekeeping authority, and always intended regional organisations to play a prominent role in peacekeeping, both under their own agency, and acting under the UN’s aegis.
Nor is this idea a relic of the immediate post-war aftermath: in 1992 Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali wrote in his new initiative An Agenda for Peace an entire chapter on the UN’s need to cooperate with regional organisations, noting that “regional action as a matter of decentralization, delegation and cooperation with United Nations efforts could not only lighten the burden of the Council but also contribute to a deeper sense of participation, consensus and democratization in international affairs”.
Moreover, this mechanism has been used in actuality in the 21st century to relatively successful effect: in 2011, the NATO-organised military intervention in Libya was authorised by UN Security Council Resolution 1973 with the language of Chapter VIII: "authorizes member states..., acting nationally or through regional organisations and arrangements, ... to take all necessary measures... to protect civilians... while excluding a foreign occupation force". Though there were many issues with this particular case (legal debates remain about whether NATO, as opposed to the Arab League, was the intended beneficiary), it proves that the UN is willing and ready to delegate security action to regional groupings where they are better placed to act.
In the case of Libya, enforcing a no-fly zone and conducting a bombing campaign requires strong air power, which NATO was able to provide, but which the UN Peacekeepers would obviously not have done. It is notable for this argument that the US did not make up the majority of NATO forces for this mission, and the initial mission was led and organised primarily by the UK and France. Thus if NATO have proved that they are willing and able to carry out such missions- especially without being dominated by the US- there is no overwhelming reason why other regional organisations can’t do the same.
How this could work:
The UN should develop its relationships with the most important regional groupings, granting each a defined area of operations, where if any peacekeeping or military intervention was necessary, they would work closely with the Security Council to address the issue as primary partner, with other organisations only brought in if extra equipment, expertise, or manpower were necessary.
A recent example of an economic regional grouping turning itself into a peacekeeping force was in the summer of 2023, as ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) issued an ultimatum to the military government of Niger that had come to power in a coup: if civilian President Bazoum was not restored to power, then they would intervene militarily. Though this threat was ultimately not successful, due to threats to defend Niger by fellow military governments in Mali and Burkina Faso, and opposition to the ultimatum from Algeria, it is a perfect example that economic groupings can easily convert to security ones to respond to regional crises.
Advantages of the Moneyball System:
One of the principal benefits of this more devolved system of peacekeeping is the one outlined by Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1992: that it will allow for greater perceived legitimacy in military interventions, thus solving some of the effects of Problem 2.
The participation, consensus and democratization that Boutros-Ghali wrote of in the 90s is crucial here. Many nations in the world feel excluded from deciding matters of international security. There is understandable frustration in New Delhi, Addis Ababa, Buenos Aires, Pretoria, to name just a few, that nothing they say can move Washington, Beijing, and Moscow from their course; that they have no influence over international peacekeeping, and as such are increasingly suspicious of the motivations of those who do. This has only been exacerbated by the weaponisation of language and use of state-level gaslighting with terms like ‘special military operation’ used to describe the invasion of Ukraine, and the sowing of ambiguity over ‘genocide’, ‘war crimes’ and ‘right to exist’ to justify breaches of international law in the Middle East.
By making multinational peacekeeping forces more common, the danger that mistrust of one nation jeopardises a mission is greatly diminished, especially as these forces will be fighting under a non-national flag.
Moreover, there is the simple fact that America (and NATO) will be far less involved in most peacekeeping operations, especially out-of-area. This goes a long way to addressing Problem 3, as the fewer conflicts America is involved in, the less war fatigue her citizens will get, the lower the cost to her treasury, and thus the more receptive she will be to the conflicts she is needed to manage.
Fewer out-of-area NATO missions and more local peacekeepers will also assuage the concerns of many developing nations that NATO is simply a proxy organisation for neo-imperialist aims by the West, and if NATO can rehabilitate its international reputation to be simply the security organisation for the North Atlantic and Europe, there is a strong chance it will receive more unanimous international backing for its operations, for example in Ukraine, where some countries currently see the conflict as morally-neutral and continue to trade with Russia.
By widening the range of actors in peacekeeping and counterinsurgency operations, there is less scope for one nation’s interests to dominate the direction taken, and more compromise and discussion will be needed. While there is the possibility that this initially slows down decisions such as the operation’s mandate and strategy, the rewards outweigh these concerns. Greater discussion might lead to greater transparency in the mission’s remit and withdrawal criteria, leading to greater buy-in from local populations, and eliminating the risk of Iraq-style interventions with no clear exit strategy. Thus, the added frictions between allies can be a net benefit to the operational success of these missions, and act as a circuit-break for misguided or ill-thought through unilateral actions.
More debate will also lead to a decision that is accepted by consensus or near-consensus, definitionally meaning it will be supported by a greater proportion of the international community than before, lessening the ability of peacekeeping operations to exacerbate existing fault lines in international relations. Greater public discussion also allows for greater transparency in these operations, hopefully reducing instances of human rights abuses, and leading to greater accountability for the nations involved.
By delegating peacekeeping operations primarily to the most relevant regional organisation(s), there are further benefits to be unlocked. In many cases, there will no longer be such an issue of the soldiers and personnel involved being culturally and linguistically alien to the area and sowing discontent and disillusion among the civilians in the area, which reduces the long-term effectiveness of peace-building operations. More culturally and linguistically relevant peacekeepers, under a non-national flag (stopping populations from seeing interventions as invasions from their neighbours), may be operationally far more effective in this regard, in being able to build structures more aligned with local customs. Similarly, the greater proximity of the military resources to the target location will likely bring cost-savings and reduce the logistical burden, making it easier for countries to commit to long-term missions without fearing backlash in their domestic politics, and gain the associated operation benefits of ironclad political backing for the mission.
The point that non-local peacekeepers might actually be less alarming is somewhat offset by the fact that we already have non-local peacekeepers in the form of American soldiers, and they are clearly not often received very well. While Americans now have negative connotations that, for example, Brazilians might not, is a fair point, however it must be remembered that they only developed these negative associations through their place in peacekeeping missions. Immediately after the World Wars, American intervention was seen as much preferable to British or French (the King-Crane commission conducting polling across the Middle East after WWI found that the locals would significantly prefer American mandatory rule to British or French, for example). Non-locals are only ever seen as better for a very short amount of time, and so on the whole the guaranteed benefits of culturo-linguistic similarities of local peacekeepers outweigh the potential short-term boons of a non-local force.
Moreover, aggregating international peacekeeping across many nations reduces the need for every nation to be effective in every aspect and allows for comparative advantages to be leveraged. Currently, the US must maintain a vast reserve of all types of equipment for every possible combat scenario in any area of the globe. That itself is a burden that very few, if any, other countries could handle. However, if peacekeeping tasks were spread across a much wider range of nations, each can maximise its own strengths in military capabilities, while the weaknesses would be less important, since they could be made up for elsewhere. Not every nation needs an aircraft carrier fleet so long as some do; and if one country is especially rich in e.g. helicopter units for jungle fighting, then these can be deployed where they are best suited, and in return other nations would be able to provide their own expertise. This further provides for cost-savings, once again shoring up domestic political support for this system.
The Case for Moneyball Peacekeeping, concluded:
There must not be a world elite, a nation alone entrusted with the mantle of world peacekeepers. This is not a healthy dynamic, nor, in the current climate, an effective one. The US doesn’t want to be the world peacekeeper; most of the rest of the world doesn’t want the US to be world peacekeeper either. Nonetheless, wars still go on, insurgencies arise, and we must find a solution for international peacekeeping, or face a world that will be far less secure than any time since the 20th century.
Of course, I have presented a highly idealised case. There are many obstacles to the real-world implementation of this. For one, the whole system requires a large degree of trust in the fellow members of each organisation, and while that has so far held in NATO, in many not in other regions. It is hard to see where Israel might fit into a Middle Eastern regional grouping, for example. Pursuant to this too is the undeniable fact that most conflicts and tensions are between neighbouring countries, and getting them to cooperate on issues where their interests are often mutually exclusive- indeed designed to weaken the other- might cause problems. Iran and Saudi Arabia are fighting a proxy war in Yemen- how then would a Middle Eastern grouping decide their approach to that conflict? Can we really imagine Pakistani and Indian troops fighting alongside each other anytime soon?
Then, of course, there is the issue of the ‘rogue states’. What do we do with North Korea? Do we allow her to have a say on East Asian peacekeeping missions? The same issue arises with Afghanistan: do we allow the Taliban to present their opinion on the Tajik-Kyrgyz border dispute if that heats up again? Can we trust Taliban troops to respect women’s rights in areas they are patrolling during a ceasefire monitoring mission? Finally, what of partially recognised states? What happens with Kosovo, or Taiwan, or Northern Cyprus?
I fear I can provide no foolproof systematic solution to these issues. Perhaps the most pragmatic route is simply a mixture of common sense and UN arbitration. Peacekeepers should not be from a nation that is actively involved in the conflict, involved in a different dispute with one of the countries, or themselves have a clear interest in the outcome. For example, a taskforce sent to monitor the Line of Control in Kashmir should obviously not contain Indian or Pakistani troops, but it should not have Chinese troops either, due to their ongoing border disputes with India. Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka might be encouraged to provide the bulk of the force for that example.
These safeguards would prevent the most obvious issues: China couldn’t use a mission to the South China Sea to further her own aims there; Iran and Saudi Arabia would both be excluded from intervention in Yemen, as would the UAE; Egypt would be prevented from arbitrating between Ethiopia and Eritrea. If this doesn’t stop all issues though, and one or more parties complains of a country’s involvement in the peacekeeping operation, perhaps the final recourse might be to the Secretary-General (not the Security Council, for obvious reasons).
Now this might drastically, if not completely, eliminate the number of regional actors who could assist in a particular conflict. Under these criteria, perhaps no Middle Eastern country could reasonably be part of a ceasefire monitoring group in Gaza, for example. In these scenarios, that’s when the previously mentioned mechanism of casting the net wider would trigger, and it might fall on NATO to once again act out-of-area. However, these cases should not be a dealbreaker for the overall ability of this model to produce real benefits to all parties. After all, if it reduces the proportion of conflicts that necessitate US involvement from close to 100% down to even 50%, then it can be deemed a better outcome than the status quo.
Moreover, success breeds success, and each successful mission carried out primarily by regional organisations can provide the lessons and impetus for further such missions to be even better, and more widely supported. Trust can be developed between national militaries, and there might even be a knock-on effect in bolstering regional diplomatic relations.
This ‘moneyball’ system of international peacekeeping, aggregating the strengths of many countries, while democratising and making transparent the motivations, mandates, and goals of peacekeeping missions, will result in interventions that are more legitimate, better planned, more widely supported, more accountable, more effective in peacebuilding, and will provide the foundation for the next generation of international peacekeeping efforts. Given the sheer scale of the problems with the peacekeeping system that we are facing, it would be ludicrous not to give it a try.
Recommended Further Reading:
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace, accessible freely here
“Why is America the world’s police?”, here: traces the history of America’s ascent to its position as the ‘great nation’ of peacekeeping
Polling data from 2012 showing a global decline in trust of the US, here
An examination of the theory behind Moneyball (as applied in baseball), here
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