Enforcing the Peace: Learning from the Imperial Past [Hardcover]

Kimberly Zisk Marten (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 22, 2004

Anarchy makes it easy for terrorists to set up shop. Yet the international community has been reluctant to commit the necessary resources to peacekeeping -- with devastating results locally and around the globe. This daring new work argues that modern peacekeeping operations and military occupations bear a surprising resemblance to the imperialism practiced by liberal states a century ago. Motivated by a similar combination of self-interested and humanitarian goals, liberal democracies in both eras have wanted to maintain a presence on foreign territory in order to make themselves more secure, while sharing the benefits of their own cultures and societies. Yet both forms of intervention have inevitably been undercut by weak political will, inconsistent policy choices, and their status as a low priority on the agenda of military organizations. In more recent times, these problems are compounded by the need for multilateral cooperation -- something even NATO finds difficult to achieve but is now necessary for legitimacy.

Drawing lessons from this provocative comparison, Kimberly Zisk Marten argues that the West's attempts to remake foreign societies in their own image -- even with the best of intentions -- invariably fail. Focusing on operations in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor in the mid- to late 1990s, while touching on both post-war Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq, Enforcing the Peace compares these cases to the colonial activities of Great Britain, France, and the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. The book weaves together examples from these cases, using interviews Marten conducted with military officers and other peacekeeping officials at the UN, NATO, and elsewhere. Rather than trying to control political developments abroad, Marten proposes, a more sensible goal of foreign intervention is to restore basic security to unstable regions threatened by anarchy. The colonial experience shows that military organizations police effectively if political leaders prioritize the task, and the time has come to raise the importance of peacekeeping on the international agenda.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Brief and compelling book.

(David Isenberg Asia Times Summer 2005)

Marten draws a sharp distinction between when the international community should assert a heavy hand and when it should tread lightly.

(Salaman Ahmed Foreign Affairs 9/1/05)

It is a book that every student of world politics should read.

(Andrew Preston International Journal )

Enforcing the Peace is well written, combining high academic quality with popular relevance and accessibility.

(Kristoffer Liden Journal of Peace Research )

Marten offers an invaluable analysis of the challenges of contemporary peacekeeping.

(David Edelstein Political Science Quarterly )

Instructive.

(Tony Smith Perspectives on Politics )

An important, useful, and timely contribution to our understanding of peacekeeping.

(Satish P. Joshi H-War )

Review

Provocative....Others have seen parallels between peacekeeping operations and colonialism, but Marten takes that analogy and develops it to its logical and highly controversial conclusion--that colonialism provides a potential model for success and can rescue complex peacekeeping operations from their steady stream of failures. This is an important and much needed addition to the peacekeeping literature. Although some might view the presumed parallels between colonialism and peacekeeping to be polemical, Marten's coolly reasoned and historically rich arguments should cause even the most dismissive to take a hard look and to wrestle with her policy recommendations.

(Michael Barnett, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of the University of Minnesota Winter 05/06)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press; 1st Printing edition (September 22, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231129130
• ISBN-13: 978-0231129138
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #991,991 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile but Stops Short, January 6, 2005

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Enforcing the Peace: Learning from the Imperial Past (Hardcover)

This book came highly recommended to me, but I now believe, after reading it, that is was recommended because it contributes to the tarring of America for being an imperial power in the present, while also documenting the almost certain failure of any imperial power in the present that chooses to a) act unilaterally and b) impose its values and form of governance on an uncooperative indigenous population.

On balance, I find the book worthy in so far as it draws parallels between the imperial occupations of the past and those of the present that focus on winning the war but pay no attention to winning the peace. Unfortunately, the book stops precisely where I was hoping it would start: it fails to address the two biggest aspects of winning the peace: a) inter-agency operations that mobilize *all* sources of national power and b) a deliberate concept, doctrine, manning, funding, and capabilities for stabilization and reconstruction, such as the Defense Science Board has recommended and the US Department of Defense is now implementing.

A few notes:

1) The author coins the term "complex peace operations" where the term is not needed--the author means to discuss peace enforcement missions;

2) The author is completely correct and helpful in pointing out that multilateral operations inspire legitimacy, while unilateral operations inspire counterinsurgency;

3) The author focuses on political will with respect to sustained occupation by military forces (we do not have it), but does not engage in what I regard as the more important discussion, which is the need for political will and wit to understand, as General Tony Zinni understands, that the fastest way to reduce violence and restore legitimacy is to introduce water, food, and medicine to the area;

4) The author very helpfully spends time discussing why the German and Japanese reconstruction models are irrelevant to today's failed states;

5) The author praises the military for being able to do humanitarian and other "operations other than war" when the military is well-led and carefully monitored, but misses the larger point that most military professionals and historians will gladly point out: one needs both forces--a big war force put into OOTW operations will lose its skill at big war within two years, while also being incompetent at small war/OOTW for the first two years it is thus engaged;

6) The author suggests, and I believe with good reason based on solid research, that the West is over-reaching when it seeks to impose Western values, Western forms of governance, and even singular governments on ethnic divisions that have stood the test of time--flexibility in accepting multiple forms of self-governance is essential;

7) Finally, and I have seen this myself in Viet-Nam and in El Salvador, and read of it in many other places, the author points out that any time the West intervenes and seeks to select leaders on the basis of its own criteria, it inevitably disregards local realities and ends up creating more friction than it resolves.

The author ends with the suggestion that we focus less on instilling liberal democracies, and more in simply assuring sufficient security such that commerce can be practiced and the arts can flourish.

This is an ably crafted and documented book, but it stops short. It urgently needs a companion volume that collects and integrates lessons from successful interventions. As the book went to press, Haiti was breaking apart for the second time, and I note with interest that the one force that might actually be effective there--the French-speaking French gendarme, is nowhere to be found.

Ten other books as good or better:
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone
Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror
Security Studies for the 21st Century
The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century
Modern Strategy
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism: How the Financial System Underminded Social Ideals, Damaged Trust in the Markets, Robbed Investors of Trillions - and What to Do About It
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Promises more than it delivers, May 21, 2005

By 

M. Ou Mme Michel "Mischka Yakovleff" (Angers France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Enforcing the Peace: Learning from the Imperial Past (Hardcover)

Professor Kimberly Zisk Marten draws interesting parallels between colonialism and what she terms "modern complex peacekeeping operations". The book's rave reviews and her own introduction hint at unveiling a treasure trove of useful lessons to be learned from the recent (imperial) past of Great Britain and France.

Unfortunately, apart from outlining the parallel, few useful lessons are drawn. Analysis of current or recent operations is there, and generally relevant, but "colonial best practice", for example, is not there.

Also, scholarship is biased to the point of looking distinctly shoddy on French matters. This book pretends to offer insights into two colonial traditions and experiences, yet the French, to judge from the biography, is virtually absent, or seen through the eyes of American scholars : the French experience as seen through foreign scholars. The same, as analysed by French of other non-English speaking academics, would have been much more balanced and fertile.

For example : how come French Western Africa was quiescent under a grand total of 30,000 troops (mainly native), whereas today the same area has more than 150,000 soldiers and yet is at the verge of a major explosion?

Or else : how to explain the remarkable performance of colonial troops in the heyday of empire, especially as they fought the best European armies of the time, and their pitiful performance today ? African troops in the Great War (French side), in Italy 1943 (mountain troops), the German-led "askari" of Lettow-Voerbeck who ran rings around their British pursuers throughout WWI...

In conclusion, this book is something of a disappointment, because it trumpets wonderful and innovative insights, and yet does not deliver much more than a few platitudes and superficial analyses of current peacekeeping operations.

And definitely, the author could have been more modest in pretending to exploit both the British and the French experience : she is much too short and biased on the second count. She should have downgraded the offer to "an occasional comparison with the French experience will be drawn".

4.0 out of 5 stars My book: Enforcing the Peace by Kimberly Zisk, July 21, 2005

By 

Mariney Ocampo (Cuernavaca, Mexico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Enforcing the Peace: Learning from the Imperial Past (Hardcover)

This book is fundamental in the area of International Peace and Security. Even though it is a book aimed mostly to scholars I think it has a valuable message for all people interested in the reality behind PK.
Zisk Marten compares complex UNPKO's to the 20th century Imperial colonialism. These practices are almost the same, but today's colonialism (carried out through PK, among other mecanisms)is sophisticated and justified under new speeches of power under which it is intended to re-create societies based on western values.
I highly recommend this book.