Ebook: The Morality of Peacekeeping

What is the peacekeeper's role in the 21st Century?

Peacekeeping, peace enforcement and ‘stability operations’ ask soldiers to use violence to create peace, defeat armed threats while having no enemies and uphold human rights without taking sides. The challenges that face peacekeepers cannot be easily reduced to traditional just war principles.

Daniel H. Levine uses insights from care ethics as well as extensive interviews with peacekeepers to develop the idea that peacekeepers have no enemies and should be seeking to bring even abusive actors into a Kantian ‘kingdom of ends’. He argues that, while it contains elements of all three, peacekeeping is morally distinct from war, policing and governance. And he asserts that the traditional ‘holy trinity’ of peacekeeping principles – consent, impartiality, and minimum use of force – still provide the best guide to its morality.

Key Features

• Cases discussed include Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti and Liberia
• Focuses on protection and reconciliation rather than victory
• Excerpts from interviews with peacekeepers in the field, predominantly from Africa and India