There are strong calls to give UN peacekeeping operations more robust mandates to engage in counter-terrorism tasks. But the idea of UN peacekeepers conducting counter-terrorism operations is not without its problems.

Terrorist attacks have been increasing rapidly over the last decade. According to the Global Terrorism Index, 29,376 people were killed in terrorist attacks in 2015. This was the second deadliest year after 2014, when 32,765 people were killed. The spike in 2014 and decline in 2015 is largely a result of the rise and subsequent weakening of Boko Haram and the Islamic State (IS).

Fatigue after long engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq and the continued impact of the financial crisis has significantly dampened the interest in new out-of-area operations among Western member states. At the same time, the threats of terrorism and migration remain at the top of the foreign policy agenda. It is in this environment that policy makers are turning to the UN, to see what role it can play in the global security burden-sharing. This means a more transactional relationship with the UN, not necessarily considering the longer-term impact of undermining its impartiality and legitimacy.

UN peacekeeping operations have, during the last decade, been deployed to protect civilians in increasingly unstable conflicts, most often without a peace to keep. However, although the conflicts have been asymmetrical in nature, armed groups have seldom perceived the UN as a party to the conflict, and pursued a strategy of strategic targeting of its troops, police and civilians.

The Case of Mali

Image credit: MINUSMA/Flickr.

In March 2012, a coalition of rebel and Islamist groups took control of the north of Mali in the wake of a coup. On April 6, 2012, the rebels proclaimed the independence of the ‘Republic of Azawad’ and the imposition of sharia law in northern Mali. 412,000 persons had fled their homes and had become internally displaced or moved across the border to Mauritania, the Niger and Burkina Faso. By November 2012, Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had taken control of Timbuktu and Tessalit, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) had taken control of Douentza, Gao, Menaka, Ansongo and Gourma, and Kidal was under the control of the Islamist group Ansar Dine (“defenders of the faith”).

The Islamists and rebel groups were quickly conquered and fled to the far north of Mali after a short and swift intervention in the beginning of 2013 by the French Opération Serval, in cooperation with the African-led International Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA). To avoid being stuck in a long and bloody counterinsurgency, the French had pushed for a swift handover to the UN.

On 1 July 2013, AFISMA handed over authority to the UN multidimensional integrated stabilisation mission in Mali (MINUSMA). However, the Islamist groups have proven resilient and the operation has been struggling to deploy and implement its mandate. From its inception in 2013 until 31 January 2017, it has endured 72 fatalities due to hostile actions, including suicide attacks, mortar attacks and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The mission has been given increasingly robust mandates, and its most recent mandate ordered the mission to “…to stabilize the key population centres and other areas where civilians are at risk, notably in the North and Centre of Mali, and, in this regard, to enhance early warning, to anticipate, deter and counter threats, including asymmetric threats…”.

The mission is actively supporting counter-terrorism actions, as it has been preparing “targeting packs” and has been informally sharing information with the French parallel counter-terrorism operation Barkhane  (the French follow-on mission from Serval). This follows a trend towards peace enforcement that started with MONUSCO, where the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is now being mandated to “neutralize” identified rebel groups.

Future missions may be deployed to Libya, Syria and Yemen – countries that are also marked by asymmetric conflict and violent religious extremism. Against this backdrop, many member states are now arguing that UN peacekeeping operations need to reform to not only deal better with the challenges it faces in Mali, but also in future operations.

The high-level panel on peace operations, nominated by former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, strongly underscored that UN peacekeeping operations should not undertake “counter-terrorism operations”. However, the report left the back-door open, insofar as it argued that “UN peacekeeping missions, due to their composition and character, are not suited to engage in military counter-terrorism operations. They lack the specific equipment, intelligence, logistics, capabilities and specialized military preparation required, among other aspects.” Disregarding the principled arguments against moving UN peacekeeping in such a direction, this could indeed be read as a list of areas where reform is needed to enable UN peacekeeping to take on counter-terrorism tasks.

A Desirable Shift?

But what may the consequences be of taking UN peacekeeping operations in such a direction? First, UN peacekeeping missions are not likely to be able to perform counter-terrorism tasks in a satisfactory manner, militarily speaking. They are composed of troops from many different countries, and although they should provide a military deterrent against armed groups, they are not likely to be able to protect themselves against asymmetric attacks. Even small attacks can lead to the withdrawal of troops by troop-contributing countries, as most of these do not have the political interest needed to be able to sustain losses. The exception to this are neighbouring countries, as these may have a political interest in the conflict, but precisely because of this fact they may also be interested to use force only against some and not all parties that threaten the peace.

The UN has been strongly criticised for not taking action to protect civilians, and the continued inaction has been used as an argument to make the UN more robust, as well as able to take on counter-terrorism tasks. However, this argument confuses the ability of the UN to protect civilians with counter-terrorism. In Mali, the mission is much busier protecting itself than protecting civilians. In fact, the recruitment to the terrorist groups is increasingly moving south in the country, as local populations are not experiencing a peace dividend or improving levels of participation and inclusion after the deployment of MINUSMA. Rather, they are experiencing a government that is continuing to marginalize significant groups of the population such as the Tuaregs in the North and the Fulani (also known as Peul) in the central regions of the country, and employ draconian counter-terrorism tactics.

The inclusion of neighbouring countries’ troops in UN peacekeeping missions was previously considered a red line. As seen with the example of MINUSMA, as well as UN peacekeeping missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan (to mention a few), this principle has fallen by the wayside. Taken together with the move towards UN peacekeeping missions taking on counter-terrorism tasks, this shows a trend towards a more partial UN in these situations, which may increasingly be rendered unable to play its vital good offices and humanitarian roles, and be a UN for all the people, not only the government of the day. The UN and member states should reverse this trend, and make sure that UN peacekeeping operations can serve in their most effective way – as a tool to keep the peace while institutions, service delivery and an inclusive and participatory state is being built.

John Karlsrud is the Manager of the Training for Peace program. He is on Twitter at @johnkarlsrud.

This article is part of a two-part series discussing Britain’s Trident nuclear programme and the influence it may be having on the country’s energy policy. Read part 2 here.

Following a majority vote of 355 in the House of Commons  in July 2016, the UK Government took the key decision to renew the Trident nuclear weapons system. Yet the issue remains controversial, with a wide variety of aspects persistently under scrutiny. At the forefront are debates over the costs of Trident renewal, which range from £31 billion (for the lowest estimates of submarine build costs alone) to over £200 billion when lifetime costs are considered.

With a host of other ethical, technical and strategic issues also abounding, controversy around UK nuclear weapons policy has intensified in recent years and months, including on the future vulnerability of nuclear submarines, the growing influence that the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) has over university research, the malfunction of a Trident missile test, and Theresa May’s decision to withhold this information from parliament ahead of the July 2016 vote. Not for the first time, support for Trident has come into tension with democratic transparency and accountability.

In this two-part article we focus on another non-military sector in which developments may be strongly – but nearly invisibly – conditioned, by ambitions to renew UK strategic nuclear weapons capabilities. The issue here is a widely identified ‘puzzle’ in UK energy policy – the persistent intensity of UK Government enthusiasm for what is actually in energy terms the seriously under-performing option of civil nuclear power. Based on official defence policy documents, it seems clear that UK commitments to nuclear energy are significantly influenced by pressures to sustain the skills and expertise perceived to be necessary for the country’s naval nuclear propulsion programme. Crucially, these military connections remain almost entirely unacknowledged in energy policy literatures. The implications thus extend beyond military and energy policy alone, to raise questions about British democracy more widely.

 The ‘puzzle’ of UK energy policy

In September 2016, after many years of setbacks, the decision was finally taken by UK Prime Minster Theresa May to give the green light for the construction of Hinkley Point C (HPC) nuclear power station in Somerset. This £24.5 billion initiative, largely financed by French and Chinese state-owned firms, constitutes one of the largest single infrastructure investments in British history. The announcement came less than a year after enactment of a “new direction” in UK energy policy, withdrawing support from several renewable and energy efficiency schemes and entrenching commitments to nuclear power. The relative scale and intensity of this British nuclear enthusiasm is a point of growing curiosity among international observers. Al Gore is “puzzled” by this and he is not the only one.

Official UK rationales for these persistent nuclear commitments are indeed puzzling. As government analyses have repeatedly shown, nuclear power is far from being the most favourable low carbon UK energy option. Britain is blessed with what the Department for Energy and Climate Change called “the best wind, wave and tidal resources in Europe”. Official figures repeatedly show HPC to be more expensive than comparable tranches of energy from wind and solar power. Arguments over the value of “base load” generation are repudiated by the National Grid. With nuclear construction times also massively longer and relative costs dropping radically for renewables, the mismatch looks set to exacerbate by the time HPC comes online.

Originally set for completion by Christmas 2017, HPC is now unlikely even to have started construction by then. Associated plans for a massive 16 GWe programme of new nuclear power by 2025 look even less likely. With UK renewable energy capacities in the meantime burgeoning despite a relative dearth of official support, energy security arguments would logically also favour a switch towards these “Cinderella options” to fill the gap left by nuclear delays. Yet, as prospects for resolving underperforming nuclear plans get ever more distant, increasingly favourable renewable projects remain paradoxically ever more threatened by cut-backs, leading to serious problems in that sector. Taken at face value, these patterns are difficult to explain.

The comparative weakness of UK civil nuclear

Image credit: Defence Imagery/Wikimedia.

Looking at key international comparators, our research has illuminated these anomalies in more detail. The scale of the planned 16 GWe UK “nuclear renaissance” relative to the existing size of the national energy system, is unsurpassed anywhere in the world. With global investments in non-hydro renewables outstripping nuclear and fossil fuels combined, authoritative observers – including a UN Chief Scientist – argue that the world is moving in one direction (towards a renewables future), whilst the UK is moving in another. As a country with an unrivalled record of success in industrial policy, Germany offers a particularly compelling contrast. Despite hosting one of the best-performing nuclear industries in the world, the German Energiewende (energy transition policy) aims entirely to phase out nuclear power by 2022. Why should a country like the UK, with a far more attractive renewable resource and a far less competitive nuclear industry, persist in the reverse strategy?

Our research also finds that conventional theories concerning innovation and technological transitions predict, on the basis of economic and industrial considerations, Britain (not Germany), would be most expected to phase out nuclear power. Germany was a leader in nuclear innovation with German companies leading in reactor construction projects around the globe. The UK no longer has the industrial capability to construct new conventional civil nuclear reactors. German nuclear reactors have traditionally been some of the best performing in the world, while (as noted by the Environmental Audit Committee), the UK performs badly in international comparisons. The history of UK nuclear power is replete with a number of historic failures including the “major blunder” of the Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor (AGR) programme, a 15 GW new build programme announced in 1979 where only one reactor was built, and the “financial collapse” of privatised nuclear signalled by the bailing out of British Energy.

Factors that may explain why British and German policies have pursued such counter-intuitive trajectories go well beyond energy-specific issues – involving (for instance) the relative strengths of democracy in the two countries. Disembedding an entrenched industrial system like nuclear power requires enormous political leverage. This is difficult to achieve without strongly democratic institutions and wider capacities for vigorous critical debate. German levels of participation, subsidiarity, civic responsiveness and central accountability are repeatedly rated in international surveys to surpass corresponding qualities of democracy in the UK.

The UK as a military nuclear power

There is, however, another key difference between these two countries which arguably helps explain this pattern: the two countries’ contrasting enthusiasm for military nuclear capabilities. Although it hosts US air-launched nuclear weapons under NATO nuclear-sharing agreements, Germany has no apparent commitments or ambitions to develop its own nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered military capabilities. Conversely, the UK has retained a remarkable industrial and technological infrastructure for maintaining a ‘continuous-at-sea-nuclear-deterrent’ since the late 1960s.  Even a cursory familiarity with UK politics shows how essential this capability is perceived to be, under a particular post-colonial vision of an ‘outsized power’ that ‘punches above its weight’ on the world stage.

This cherished feature of elite UK national identity comes at significant cost. Nuclear-powered submarines are a particularly burdensome element of these ambitions. With their stealth, range and robustness viewed as essential to the military credibility of strategic nuclear weapons, these are among the most complex and demanding of manufactured artefacts – each comparable in complexity to the space shuttle. Yet security sensitivities preclude much of the kind of specialist outsourcing of production that is routine in other industries, as made explicit in the (still current) 2005 Defence Industrial Strategy. So despite a diminishing, ever more globally-integrated manufacturing base, Britain must somehow finance exclusive national capabilities in this most demanding of areas.

With the sensitive nature of the military nuclear sector, obviously limiting opportunities directly to cover these costs through exports, it is becoming ever more difficult to maintain the national reservoirs of specialist expertise, education, training, skills, production, design and regulatory capacities necessary to sustain UK nuclear submarine infrastructures. It is here that even second- and third-tier roles for British submarine industry firms in parallel supply chains for civilian nuclear power, could make all the difference. Perhaps it is a particular militaristic vision of national prestige on the world stage, then, that might help explain why the UK Government is evidently so relaxed about the otherwise insupportable additional costs of civil nuclear power?

Here, further illumination may be found in another UK energy policy puzzle: the Blair government’s unexplained ‘U-turn’ on nuclear energy policy where the technology went from being declared “unattractive” in 2003 to being firmly back on the agenda in 2006 in one of the most abrupt policy turnarounds in UK history. It is during this period that the obscure imperatives around national submarine capabilities come to the fore. We explore this critical juncture in Part 2.

Phil Johnstone is Research Fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU),  the University of Sussex. His current research is focussed on disruptive innovation in the energy systems of Denmark, the UK and Germany. Previously Phil worked on the Discontinuity in Technological Systems (DiscGo) project and is a member of the Sussex Energy Group (SEG). 

Andy Stirling is a professor in SPRU and co-directs the STEPS Centre at Sussex University. An interdisciplinary researcher with a background in natural and social science, he has served on many EU and UK advisory bodies on issues of around science policy and emerging technologies.