WWI REDUX

Russian tactics lead to devastation in both Ukraine and their own land

Story by Przemysław Juraszek • 1d • 

The Russians bombed a school in Sudża.© Telegram, landforcesofukraine

Russians do not change their tactics of destroying cities, even if they are on their own territory. Guided FAB bombs are falling on Sudzha in the Kursk region, just like on Ukrainian cities. We explain what this weapon is.

As admitted by Ukrainians, Russians are bombing their own territory like any other, exemplified by the attack using a FAB glide bomb with UMPK modules on a kindergarten in Sudzha and numerous private homes.

The city, which had a population of about 5,000 people before the Kursk operation, has dwindled to about 200 residents. According to the Unian agency, Ukrainian soldiers are assisting. "They are destroying their own. Even though Sudzha is located in the rear, Russians are wiping it off the face of the earth: they are dropping guided bombs, shelling with artillery, and using kamikaze drones. On Friday, 30 August, a Russian bomb attacked the local kindergarten, and enemy planes struck homes in the private sector in Sudzha," reported the Ukrainian Armed Forces' Ground Forces on Telegram.
Russian guided bombs

Russian tactics for occupying territory in Ukraine and attempting to defend their own areas rely largely on aviation using guided FAB bombs with UMPK (Unified Planning and Correction Module) modules. They are highly effective because no field fortification can withstand their impact.

This forces Ukrainians to conduct a kind of mobile defence or stay under the umbrella provided by medium-range anti-air defence systems such as Patriot or SAMP/T, of which they have too few.

However, Russian tactics mean that every city they fight for quickly becomes a heap of ruins. It doesn't matter whether it's cities in Ukraine or in Russia itself, as seen in the case of Sudzha and other locations in the Kursk region.
FAB aerial bombs — simple but deadly weapons

In 2023, Russians began intensively using FAB aerial bombs with UMPK modules, which brought them many successes. The biggest was capturing Avdiivka with their help.

The FAB bombs with UMPK modules are a Russian copy of the American JDAM-ER glide bombs. They allow for the attack of targets more than 40 kilometres away from the drop point. This means that Russian planes can safely attack Ukrainian targets while staying out of range of numerous short-range air defence systems.

The UMPK modules contain foldable wings, a guidance section based on inertial and satellite navigation, and control surfaces. They are then mounted onto regular aerial bombs, creating precision weapons. Although Russian solutions are less precise than Western ones, they compensate for this drawback with greater destructive power.


Even if a bomb is missed by several dozen metres, the destructive effect of a bomb weighing 500 kg, 1,500 kg, or 3,200 kg is sufficient to destroy the target. The FAB-3000 variants containing just over 1,500 kg of TNT are particularly devastating, as the shock wave has an effective range of several hundred feet.

NUCLEAR FOOLS

Russia says it will change nuclear doctrine because of Western role in Ukraine

ITCHING TO USE TACTICAL NUKES


Euractiv.com with Reuters

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergei Ryabkov delivers his speech during a session of the Conference on Disarmament at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, 2 March 2023.

 [EPA-EFE/MARTIAL TREZZINI]
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Russia will make changes to its doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons in response to what it regards as Western escalation in the war in Ukraine, state media quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Sunday (1 September).

The existing nuclear doctrine, set out in a decree by President Vladimir Putin in 2020, says Russia may use nuclear weapons in the event of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.

Some hawks among Russia’s military analysts have urged Putin to lower the threshold for nuclear use in order to “sober up” Russia’s enemies in the West.

Putin said in June that the nuclear doctrine was a “living instrument” that could change, depending on world events. Ryabkov’s comments on Sunday were the clearest statement yet that changes would indeed be made.

“The work is at an advanced stage, and there is a clear intent to make corrections,” state news agency TASS cited Ryabkov as saying.

He said the decision is “connected with the escalation course of our Western adversaries” in connection with the Ukraine conflict.

Moscow accuses the West of using Ukraine as a proxy to wage war against it, with the aim of inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia and breaking it apart.

The United States and its allies deny that, saying they are helping Ukraine defend itself against a colonial-style war of aggression by Russia.
‘Red lines’

Putin said on day one of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that anyone who tried to hinder or threaten it would suffer “consequences that you have never faced in your history”.

Since then, he has issued a series of further statements that the West regards as nuclear threats, and announced the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

That has not deterred the US and its allies from stepping up military aid to Ukraine in ways that were unthinkable when the war started, including by supplying tanks, long-range missiles and F-16 fighter jets.

Ukraine shocked Moscow last month by piercing its western border in an incursion by thousands of troops that Russia is still fighting to repel.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the operation made a mockery of Putin’s “red lines”. He is also lobbying hard for the US to allow it to use advanced Western weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published on Sunday that the West was “going too far” and that Russia would do everything to protect its interests.

Ryabkov did not say when the updated nuclear doctrine would be ready. “The time for completing this work is a rather difficult question, given that we are talking about the most important aspects of ensuring our national security,” he said.

Russia has more nuclear weapons than any other country. Putin said in March that Moscow was ready for the eventuality of a nuclear war “from a military-technical point of view”.

He said, however, that he saw no rush towards nuclear confrontation and that Russia had never faced a need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

What are tactical nuclear weapons and why is Russia holding drills?

By Mark Trevelyan

June 11, 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in Saint Petersburg, Russia June 7, 2024. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov/Pool/File Photo

LONDON, June 11 (Reuters) - Russia and its ally Belarus are carrying out exercises to practise the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons.

What are these weapons, how might they be used and what do we know about the drills?

WHAT ARE TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND HOW POWERFUL ARE THEY?

Tactical nuclear weapons are intended for battlefield use, as opposed to strategic weapons designed to be fired across vast distances to wipe out enemy cities. The underlying physics is the same, using nuclear fission and fusion reactions to release vast amounts of energy. The destructive power of tactical nuclear weapons, while typically smaller than strategic weapons, is still comparable with the atomic bombs used by the United States to destroy the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War Two.

HOW MANY DO RUSSIA AND THE U.S. HAVE?

The United States has about 200, half of which are at bases in Europe. Russia has about 1,558 non-strategic nuclear warheads, experts at the Federation of American Scientists estimated, opens new tab in March. These could be delivered by different means including being dropped as bombs or fitted to a variety of missiles that are capable of carrying either nuclear or conventional warheads.

WHAT DO THE RUSSIAN EXERCISES LOOK LIKE?

Russia said the first phase, conducted last month, involved Kinzhal and Iskander missiles. It took place in the southern region of Akhtubinsk, according to geolocation confirmed by Reuters. Video released by the defence ministry showed convoys of vehicles transporting Iskanders and presumably the nuclear warheads intended to be fitted to them. The warheads were blurred in the video. It also showed a Tu-22M Backfire bomber plane and a MiG-31K fighter, both capable of carrying the hypersonic Kinzhal. Video of the second phase on Tuesday showed an Iskander system being driven into a field and the missiles raised into position, as well as MiG-31 supersonic interceptors and Tupolev Tu-22M3 long-range supersonic bombers.

WHY IS RUSSIA HOLDING THE DRILLS?

Russia says such exercises are normal practice but that they were made necessary by what it sees as hostile actions by the United States and its European allies. Moscow said last month it hoped the drills would cool "hotheads" in Western capitals, after French President Emmanuel Macron raised the possibility of sending European troops to fight with Ukraine against Russia and British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Kyiv was free to use Western-supplied weapons against targets on Russian territory. Western nuclear experts say Russia is sending a signal aimed at deterring NATO from wading more deeply into the Ukraine war.

WHAT WOULD BE THE AIM OF USING A TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPON?

Experts say the point would not be to capture territory, because the use of such a weapon would create a poisoned radioactive wasteland. Rather, some believe Russia might use one in a scenario where its troops were in retreat and facing a major defeat. In a report, opens new tab for the International Institute for Strategic Studies in January, former Pentagon and NATO official William Alberque said Russia might consider using a non-strategic nuclear weapon (NSNW) to "sober up" the West and coerce it into resolving a conflict on Moscow's terms, calculating that the U.S. would be unwilling to cross the nuclear threshold in retaliation. President Vladimir Putin said last week that Russia would be able to achieve victory in Ukraine without resorting to nuclear weapons.

HOW WOULD WE KNOW IF A TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPON WAS USED?

Experts say preparations to launch one would probably be visible to Western military intelligence satellites, as it would involve the kinds of steps seen during the exercises, including moving warheads from a central storage facility. These would take place over a number of hours, with Russian command and control centres being placed on high alert.
From the point of view of Russia's adversary, incoming missiles carrying tactical nuclear warheads would be indistinguishable from the types of missiles with conventional warheads that Russia has been firing at Ukraine for more than two years. But an actual nuclear strike would be clearly identifiable by the scale of destruction, the seismic shock and the massive release of radiation.

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Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Ros Russell

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab



Mark Trevelyan
Thomson Reuters
Chief writer on Russia and CIS. Worked as a journalist on 7 continents and reported from 40+ countries, with postings in London, Wellington, Brussels, Warsaw, Moscow and Berlin. Covered the break-up of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Security correspondent from 2003 to 2008. Speaks French, Russian and (rusty) German and Polish.

What are Tactical Nuclear Weapons?

Union of Concerned Scientists

Published Jun 1, 2022

The best thing we can do to reduce the danger of tactical nuclear weapons is to eliminate them.

Tactical nuclear weapons, also called nonstrategic nuclear weapons, are generally designed for battlefield use and have a shorter range than strategic, or long-range, nuclear weapons, which are designed to directly attack an adversary’s homeland.

Some analysts describe tactical nuclear weapons as intended to win a battle, while strategic weapons are intended to win a war. Russia’s 2022 war on Ukraine raised serious questions about these weapons, but the weapons themselves have existed since the beginning of the Cold War and their dangers are well known.

Tactical nuclear weapons can have lower explosive “yield” than strategic weapons, meaning they’re explosively less powerful. This may make them more militarily useful, and less politically objectionable, and thus more likely to be used. However, many Russian and US tactical weapons have yields far greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which instantly killed more than 70,000 people.

While long- and medium-range nuclear systems have been constrained or eliminated by arms control treaties, tactical nuclear weapons have never had verified limits. During the Cold War, the US and Soviet Union built up massive numbers of these weapons in their arsenals, many deployed in Europe. Today’s stockpiles are smaller but still capable of incomparable destruction.

Bottomline: there is no universal definition of tactical nuclear weapons. Indeed, then-US secretary of defense James Mattis declared in 2018 “I don’t think there’s any such thing as a ‘tactical nuclear weapon.’ Any nuclear weapon used at any time is a strategic game changer.”

Use of any nuclear weapon would break the “nuclear taboo” that has held since 1945, dramatically changing the course of history.

What are tactical nuclear weapons for?

Initially, tactical nuclear weapons were simply another weapon in the US arsenal. Dozens of types were designed and tens of thousands produced, some with very low yields designed to be fired by one soldier. Over time, as Soviet conventional forces expanded, US-aligned nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began to view nuclear weapons as an equalizer, allowing the alliance to compensate for numerical disadvantages in tanks and artillery.

As both sides developed a range of nuclear weapons, some theorists perceived a need to meet an adversary with equivalent force at every level. Their concern was that if a country only had strategic nuclear weapons, it might hesitate to use them to retaliate against a lower-level tactical nuclear attack because the response would be disproportionate and could lead to an all-out nuclear war.

According to this flawed and dangerous model, the United States needed a vast array of weapons to match every step in the so-called “escalation ladder.”

An even more troubling model relies on the idea of “escalation dominance.” This requires seeking such superior capability at any possible level that rivals are deterred because they see any battle as hopeless. This dangerous theory envisions the possibility of “winning” a nuclear war.

However, as President Ronald Reagan first declared in 1984 and the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom recently reaffirmed, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

What tactical nuclear weapons do the United States and Russia have?

The United States has about 200 tactical nuclear gravity bombs with explosive yields adjustable between 0.3 and 170 kilotons. (The yield of the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons.) The Pentagon deploys about 100 of those bombs, called the B61, in five European countries: Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Meanwhile Russia has nearly 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons with a broad range of yields, from very low to over 100 kilotons. These can be delivered by air, ship, and ground-based systems, some of which also deliver conventional weapons. For example, some of the missiles Russia has used against Ukraine can also carry nuclear warheads, increasing the potential for confusion.

Why are tactical nuclear weapons so dangerous?

The United States and Russia hold 90% of the world’s stockpile of almost 13,000 nuclear weapons. Neither has the capability to wipe out the other’s nuclear arsenal in an initial attack. Both countries understand that any use of strategic nuclear weapons would invite a nuclear counterattack, and the potential of a civilization-ending nuclear exchange.

Tactical nuclear weapons, however, introduce greater ambiguity, raising the possibility that a country might think it could get away with a limited attack, such as using a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon to strike an isolated military target where few civilians would be harmed. Another possibility is a demonstration strike, without any military utility. For example, Russia could explode a nuclear weapon over the Black Sea to warn NATO countries against aiding its adversaries, such as Ukraine.

Because tactical nuclear weapons are considered more “useable,” they increase the risk of nuclear war. US wargames predict that a conflict involving use of tactical nuclear weapons will quickly spiral out of control. A Princeton University simulation of a US-Russian conflict that begins with the use of a tactical nuclear weapon predicts rapid escalation that would leave more than 90 million people dead and injured.

Have there been efforts to control or eliminate tactical nuclear weapons?

As the Cold War ended, President George H.W. Bush realized that the huge US and Soviet nuclear arsenals created unnecessary risks, and that tactical nuclear weapons were particularly dangerous. In 1991, he announced the elimination of virtually all US tactical nuclear weapons, including all tactical nuclear weapons deployed on navy ships. Thousands of weapons were retired, and most were destroyed.

President Bush saw the danger as so great that he acted unilaterally, with no reciprocal commitment from the Soviet Union. However, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev did respond, retiring many types of tactical nuclear weapons and removing all tactical nuclear weapons from surface ships and multipurpose submarines

Explainer


No First Use Explained
What's a No First Use (NFU) Nuclear Policy and would adopting one make the United States safer?

What can we do to reduce the dangers of tactical nuclear weapons?

Until tactical nuclear weapons are eliminated, these immediate steps would help reduce the danger that they present:

• First, the United States can commit to not develop or deploy any new tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons, such as the nuclear sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) the Trump administration initiated.
• The US should withdraw the 100 tactical nuclear gravity bombs based in Europe. They have remained there for political reasons, to signal US commitment to NATO. If reassurance is needed, conventional forces would have more military utility.
• As soon as feasible, the US and Russia should negotiate a new treaty or agreement to control and eventually eliminate tactical nuclear weapons. An agreement to limit and control the types of weapons that each side finds most “useable” could reduce the danger of misunderstandings and potential for nuclear escalation in a crisis.
• Finally, the United States could implement a no-first-use nuclear policy, declaring that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons. Although this would not remove all the dangers of being drawn into an escalatory cycle if an adversary used a tactical nuclear weapon first, it would clarify that if an adversary did not cross that line, the United States would not be the one to start a nuclear war. This would be in the US interest, since its conventional military is the most powerful in the world.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has worked on nuclear weapons issues for more than half a century. We’re committed to a world free of nuclear risk—and you can help

BREAK WITH LEFT  UNITED FRONT

French Socialist party in disarray after Macron reveals possible socialist PM pick

By Théo Bourgery-Gonse | Euractiv
Sep 1, 2024



First Secretary of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure (front) speaks during a press conference, 14 June 2024. [Mohammed Badra/EPA-EFE]
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French President Emmanuel Macron will meet former Socialist behemoth Bernard Cazeneuve amid ongoing prime minister appointment talks on Monday (2 September), according to confirmation obtained by Euractiv.

Over the weekend, persistent rumours circulated that Cazeneuve could be Macron’s choice to take on the prime minister’s role, some 50 days into a deep political impasse that has left France without a coalition government.

It even shattered the Socialist Party’s united front at its ‘summer university’ – an annual gathering in rural Blois that marks the party’s political rentrée and which Euractiv attended – and revealed serious internal divisions on how to deal with the possibility that one of their own, despite having renounced his party membership in 2022, could get the top job.

Nemesis Cazeneuve

The nomination would officially end the slim possibility of nominating the little-known Lucie Castets, who has been the joint candidate of the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) since July. Earlier this week, Macron ruled out a coalition government with Castets, citing the risk that it would never survive a no-confidence vote.

Cazeneuve, for his part, has become a nemesis to a large swath of the party’s top leadership.

A former prime minister at the twilight of Hollande’s time in office, Cazeneuve held a series of ministerial posts under the Socialist administration (2012-2017), including for home affairs, budget and EU affairs.

Most importantly, he was a vocal critic of the 2022 left-wing NUPES alliance and its 2024 NFP spinoff – which, as an alliance between the Socialist Party, the Communists, the Greens and Jean-Luc-Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI), came out on top in July’s legislative elections, despite being 100 seats short of an absolute majority – blaming the socialists for giving in to LFI, deemed too radical.

In other words, Cazeneuve has become persona non grata for many leaders of the Socialist Party, who created and engineered the NFP, and for large sections of their electorate, who are ready to unite forces.

They see him as the man behind a right-wing shift in the Socialist Party’s doctrine under Hollande, which ultimately led to its defeat in the 2017 legislative elections.

A source briefed on the matter told Euractiv that Cazeneuve will be meeting with Macron on Monday, confirming media reports.

This means the socialists must decide between supporting a Cazeneuve government, hoping to influence policy priorities, breaking ties with the NFP, or remaining in opposition, even at the risk of appearing irresponsible.

French Socialists between a rock and a hard place amid country's ongoing political crisis

Divisions and frustrations are growing within France’s Socialist Party as it struggles to agree on whether to take part in future coalition talks in the hope of entering government, an approach that risks bringing down the left-wing union that got them elected.

It’s not who, it’s what

The official party line has always been to protect the left-wing alliance, but this is being challenged more than ever.

Party leaders say they are willing to give Cazeneuve a chance as long as key demands—the withdrawal of the now infamous 2023 pension law and an increase in the minimum wage—are considered.

“It’s not about who becomes prime minister, but instead what their priorities are,” MEP Aurore Lalucq, who is not a member of the socialist party but belongs to the same European S&D family, told Euractiv earlier this week.

Lalucq says she is open to talks with other parties, apart from the far right: “We can start negotiations, even if they don’t end”.

For S&D MEP François Kalfon, picking Cazeneuve is good news, making him one of several dozen senior party leaders to have come out in favour of joining future coalition talks.

“He may not implement 100% of the NFP programme [as part of a coalition government], but we can agree on key components,” he said, adding that “any compromise amounts to a trade-off.”

“It will be a genuine cohabitation government and a left-wing government,” Cazeneuve is quoted in Le Monde as saying about the prospect of getting the top job.

The source Euractiv spoke to confirmed that his appointment was on the cards: “Some MPs from the socialist party and the [centre-right] support him. But it’s far from a done deal yet,” the source said.

Kalfon calls on his political family to look at what happens in the European Parliament, where consensus-building is the norm, and adapt their thinking at the national level.

“A parallel can be drawn between the functioning of the Parliament vis-à-vis the European Commission and the political situation in France after the snap legislative elections,” Kalfon added.

While the absence of any viable coalition government in France, a situation lasting 50 days and counting, may be new for the French, it is not unusual in other EU countries. That said, the longer this continues, the more it stains Emmanuel Macron’s reputation on the EU stage.

Macron aims to “make political parties implode.”

Other party leaders warn that throwing its weight behind Cazeneuve would implode the NFP, frustrate the Socialists’ electoral base, and risk being associated with Macron and the right.

“If you want to govern without the NFP and with the right, you will become the right,” said the party’s top man Olivier Faure in Blois, denying any real internal “divisions”.

Current parliamentary arithmetic suggests that any coalition government would only remain in office if the far right abstained in a no-confidence vote unless the left lent its support: “We don’t want to govern with the benevolence of the far right, nor be Macron’s hostages,” Faure explained.

“Macron’s only aim is to make political parties implode,” a source close to Faure, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, told Euractiv.

“He did it with the right. He wants to do it with the left – that’s the whole logic behind the Cazeneuve rumours,” the source added.

More will be known after Macron and Cazeneuve meet on Monday.

Théo Bourgery Gonse reported from Blois. Laurent Geslin contributed to reporting.

[Edited by Daniel Eck]

Peacekeepers Need Peacemakers

What the UN and Its Members Owe the Blue Helmets

By Jean-Pierre LacroixSeptember 2, 2024



United Nations peacekeepers in Khiam, Lebanon, October 2023

Aziz Taher / Reuters

Peacekeeping missions are often criticized, but rarely do critics imagine what the world would be like in their absence. In fact, multiple studies have shown that peacekeeping missions are one of the most effective tools the UN Security Council has at its disposal to prevent the expansion of war, stop atrocities, and make it more likely that peace agreements endure. In a comprehensive 2021 meta-analysis of peacekeeping operations presented in this magazine, the political scientists Barbara F. Walter, Lise Morjé Howard, and V. Page Fortna found that “peacekeeping not only works at stopping conflicts but works better than anything else experts know,” and “at a very low cost. . . . Conflict zones with peacekeeping missions produce less armed conflict and fewer deaths than zones without them.” The “relationship between peacekeeping and lower levels of violence is so consistent,” the authors concluded, that it ought to be considered “one of the most robust findings in international relations research.”

Today, however, the challenges facing UN Peacekeeping are greater than ever. Currently, the United Nations has 11 peacekeeping missions deployed around the globe—missions that are making extraordinary contributions to containing violence amid a surge in conflict worldwide. In the Golan Heights and Cyprus, peacekeepers are monitoring and preserving cease-fires. In the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan, they are protecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable civilians. In the context of escalating exchanges of fire between Israel and Lebanon following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the UN Peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon has worked to help avert escalations beyond those that have occurred throughout the ten-month conflict. Preserving cease-fires, protecting civilians, and containing violence are among the intermediate goals of peacekeeping, which also include mediating local conflicts and strengthening local institutions.

But the ultimate objectives of all peacekeeping operations are political. Such operations’ primary goal is to resolve conflicts by helping quarreling parties to reach and implement the kind of agreements that help establish durable peace that outlasts the presence of peacekeepers. As the head of the UN’s peacekeeping efforts, however, I can attest that recent developments make it extremely challenging for UN Peacekeeping missions to accomplish these long-term goals. More and more, conflict is driven by armed groups that operate across national borders, weaponize cheap technologies such as improvised explosive devices, spew hate speech online, engage in terrorism and transnational organized crime, and often lack any political ambition beyond sparking disorder. Although the practice of peacekeeping must adapt to meet these daunting challenges, there is only so much peacekeeping can do on its own.

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The iconic blue helmets’ ability to successfully complete their missions also depends on the political will of the UN member states. And today, these countries are increasingly divided, their attention and resources split among multiple crises. Insufficient political support from UN member states has made enabling conflict to come to a lasting end a distant prospect for many UN Peacekeeping missions. Without more coordinated support from member states, missions are often limited to doing damage control—preventing conflicts from spiraling out of control rather than resolving them.

To empower UN Peacekeeping missions to move from managing to resolving conflicts, two changes must occur. First, the practice of peacekeeping will need to adapt more quickly to evolving threats that exacerbate conflict, such as transnational organized crime, climate change, misinformation, and digital technologies such as drones and AI. Second, and even more important, UN member states need to provide stronger and more unified support to peacekeeping missions—particularly to the peace processes that they seek to advance in the countries in which they serve. All UN Peacekeeping operations are designed to support peace agreements between parties to a conflict. But UN member states often need to exert their own pressure to encourage adversaries to reach or implement an agreement—especially as conflict flares anew worldwide.
DISTURBANCE OF THE PEACE

In 1948, just a year and a half after the UN itself was founded, the UN launched its first peacekeeping mission—to maintain the cease-fire that ended the Arab-Israeli War. The first armed peacekeeping mission came eight years after that, when the deployment of 6,000 lightly armed UN peacekeeping troops to the Egyptian-Israeli border helped end the Suez Crisis. In 1992 and 1993, the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia facilitated an end to the country’s devastating civil war, including by organizing a successful election. In Cote d’Ivoire between 2004 to 2017 and in Liberia between 2003 and 2018, UN Peacekeeping missions supported the end of civil war and a return to constitutional order.


Three major factors contributed to the success of peacekeeping in those countries. The first was strong leadership by the UN Security Council. That allowed for the creation of new peacekeeping initiatives such as a governance and economic management assistance program in Liberia, which sought to address the governance deficits at the root of the conflict, and a certification mandate in Cote d’Ivoire that helped bring a 2011 post-election crisis to a peaceful resolution. Both countries’ peace processes benefited from a coalition of international and regional partners working to end the conflicts. Peacekeepers had a designated role supporting the implementation of the political agreements. And the proactive efforts of Liberian and Ivorian leaders and citizens themselves were crucial: no peacekeeping operation or international partner can substitute for a host government’s determination to fulfill its responsibilities.

Over the past two decades, however, most UN Peacekeeping operations have also been hampered by a discrepancy between their capacities and what the Security Council and the host countries expect them to accomplish. Peacekeeping missions’ budgets often prove inadequate to achieve their mandated tasks. The $5.59 billion budget that the UN General Assembly approved for peacekeeping operations worldwide constitutes just 0.3 percent of global military spending. It is far less than the approximately $11 billion that New York City budgeted for its police department in 2024, even though UN Peacekeeping maintains 20,000 more personnel. These budgetary constraints mean that often, peacekeepers are also unevenly and inadequately trained and provisioned.

With conflicts increasing in number and severity, UN member states’ resources are understandably stretched. Despite these constraints, UN Peacekeeping has continued to deliver on its intermediate goals of preserving cease-fires and protecting civilians. But being confined to addressing intermediate goals means that peacekeeping operations now sometimes withdraw from a country before durable peace is achieved, which in some instances means leaving such countries vulnerable to tipping back into conflict. At other times, the missions remain in place with little prospect of establishing durable peace.

Peacekeeping missions in Africa are particularly impaired by the dangerous combination of very broad, detailed, and ambitious mandates paired with resource limitations and a lack of strong, unified UN member state support. Peacekeeping principles dictate that even when the Security Council mandates UN Peacekeeping missions to protect civilians, they may use force only in self-defense and defense of their mandate. But when a peacekeeping operation lingers in a situation that has little prospect of progressing politically toward peace, local authorities and populations tend to become less accepting of the peacekeepers’ presence. This frustration is ripe for exploitation by groups who benefit from instability and use disinformation as just one of many weapons against peacekeeping missions, as well as local populations.
RIGHT OF SUPPORT

The UN’s peacekeeping operations can only ever be as strong as the support of UN member states. But against a backdrop of rising geopolitical tensions as well as shifting global and regional alliances, peacekeeping operations are increasingly unable to rely on the UN member states to act in a unified manner to support peacekeepers’ political efforts. Many member states certainly are stepping up by actively encouraging the parties to a conflict to work toward a political settlement. And the large majority of UN member states continue to strongly support UN Peacekeeping writ large—support that was demonstrated at the 2023 Peacekeeping Ministerial Meeting in Ghana. The Security Council also continues to extend the mandates of peacekeeping operations, although with more limited unanimity.

Mostly absent, however, are the kind of broader coalitions of member states that would undergird UN peacekeepers’ efforts. In some cases, member states simply are not engaging enough to back the political processes that peacekeeping operations are mandated to support. Take South Sudan: the situation there is increasingly unstable, driven in part by the dire conflict in Sudan. At this fragile moment, UN member states need to send strong messages pressuring the political players to keep their commitment to the peace agreement.


In other cases, member states have been sending conflicting messages to the parties to the conflict. With respect to Mali, for example, Security Council member states were united for many years around shared political objectives for the country, including the ones that guided the UN peacekeeping mission’s mandate. Over the past several years, however, that unity frayed, and Mali became terrain where competition over strategy between the most influential member states prevailed. This only compounded the challenges that the peacekeeping mission already faced due to the increasing prevalence of terrorism in the region. The peacekeeping mission’s presence became untenable, and in mid-2023 the Malian government requested that the mission withdraw.

The extent to which these conditions impair peacekeeping from supporting durable solutions to conflict must not be interpreted as a failure of the tool of peacekeeping. Skeptics about the value and impact of peacekeeping must ask: Is there a realistic better alternative to securing peace? What would happen in regions wracked by conflict if peacekeeping operations were not there? Haiti’s tragic descent into chaos showcases how peacekeeping cannot accomplish its ultimate goals without a strong political process implemented in parallel—and demonstrates the dangers of withdrawing peacekeepers before durable peace has been achieved. The UN Peacekeeping mission deployed to Haiti between 2004 and 2017 had many serious shortcomings. But it successfully secured Haitians the most basic security. It also assisted Haiti to rebuild its infrastructure after its catastrophic 2010 earthquake. In 2019, peacekeepers had to withdraw. Since then, the world has sadly witnessed the country spiral into a multidimensional crisis, with devastating impacts on the lives of ordinary Haitian people.
STRENGTH THROUGH PEACE

Member states themselves must recommit to peacekeeping. Along with providing more realistic, focused, and prioritized mandates and peacekeeping budgets that match these mandates’ goals, member states must place diplomatic pressure on the parties to the conflicts.

For peace operations to remain a relevant tool in an increasingly chaotic age, peacekeeping itself must change, too. In 2018, UN Secretary-General António Guterres laid out a broad initiative, Action for Peacekeeping, to improve peacekeeping missions, including by monitoring troops’ performance and accountability, ensuring their safety, better integrating different mission components, enforcing zero tolerance of sexual exploitation, expanding the role of women in peacekeeping, and building new strategic communication capabilities such as fighting disinformation. Going forward, peacekeeping operations must develop stronger partnerships in the field, too—in conjunction with non-UN international and regional financial institutions, including the World Bank, as well as other UN agencies, funds, and programs. Some of the primary drivers of conflict, such as the impacts of climate change and the illegal exploitation of natural resources, are now regional and global, requiring peacekeeping missions to work with partners beyond the borders of the countries where they are deployed. These drivers could be addressed through initiatives such as a joint partnership between UN Peacekeeping, the World Bank, and other relevant entities to tackle the illegal exploitation of natural resources in Africa’s Great Lakes region.

The UN Peacekeeping mission currently deployed in Abyei, a small territory disputed by Sudan and South Sudan, offers a powerful example of what such partnerships can do. This mission’s efforts also show why it may be useful for outside observers to moderate their expectations of what peacekeeping can achieve in the current context. In Abyei, the mission is successfully striking local peace agreements among herders and farmers, who compete over increasingly scarce natural resources such as land and water. It has done so by working alongside UN and non-UN partners on the ground to facilitate a series of conferences ahead of cattle migration season, with the aim to prevent conflict and ensure a peaceful resolution to the disputes that frequently arise in this season. There has been little high-level political progress on the territorial dispute, but the mission has not been a failure. On the contrary, peacekeepers are protecting civilians by preventing conflict between communities and keeping the situation from deteriorating as the civil war in Sudan escalates. If outside observers’ expectations for peacekeeping missions are too grandiose, they can fail to see—and fail to support—these kinds of accomplishments.

Even peacekeeping has its limits. Missions can only operate in line with the three guiding principles of peacekeeping: the parties to a conflict consent to the presence of peacekeepers; the peacekeepers remain impartial; and the peacekeepers do not use force except in self-defense and defense of the mandate. UN Peacekeeping cannot engage in proactive, offensive warfighting operations. But peace can rarely be achieved with armed groups that have no interest in it, and sometimes, stronger so-called enforcement operations are required—operations that can only be carried out by partners outside the UN. The UN must therefore strengthen its partnerships outside the UN, with entities such as the African Union (AU). To be effective, however, these partnerships must be better supported, funded, and prepared, including to ensure their compliance with international humanitarian law. Crises are increasingly diverse; the tools for responding to them should be, too. In 2023, the UN Security Council adopted resolution 2719, which opened the door to directing UN funding to AU peace operations. Such support is critical to enabling the international community to enforce peace, and UN Peacekeeping is currently working with the AU to improve the readiness of AU-led peace operations.

But whatever form a peace operation takes, to be effective in the long run it must be anchored in and contribute to an overarching political solution. The success of any peacekeeping initiative will depend on whether the UN member states prove willing to harness the power of multilateral solutions. The critical importance of the interventions that UN peacekeepers are currently making in places such as the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan must not be underestimated. Preserving a cease-fire is not only essential to protecting civilian life; it also preserves the chance that a future political process will eventually lead to enduring peace.

If UN peacekeepers only have the resources to work toward the immediate goals of preserving cease-fires and protecting civilians, they can only prevent a bad situation from getting worse, not help build a path to peace. And if peacekeepers manage, rather than resolve, conflicts, then large-scale violence can easily return when the troops leave. UN peacekeepers are already bravely saving countless lives for a relatively small investment. But their missions need the attention, political backing, and resources they deserve. There are few better tools for securing peace in a fragile age.