Modern Peace Support Operations

This course addresses recent examples of the international community’s efforts to prevent and manage armed conflicts. The nature of these efforts vary, including for example attempts to initiate negotiations or economic sanctions, but the matter of the use of force (or the threat thereof) to prevent others from the use of force is particularly relevant in situations of military intervention.

The course is devoted to decision-making on international military operations, specifically peace-support operations (PSOs), at the international, national, and field levels. The course focuses on the military component of such missions, and in particular on the use of force. It addresses the implementation of PSOs and the composition, tasks, and effectiveness of intervening militaries, as well as ethical dimensions of interventions, including the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Protection of Civilians (PoC).

Overall, this course is designed to help students think analytically and systematically about peace support operations, and offer a solid foundation of the key ongoing theoretical and normative debates along with different kinds of empirical knowledge.

Teacher

Dr. Lisa Ekman (formerly Karlborg) is Assosiate Senior Lecturer of War Studies. She has written extensively on the relationship between external military forces and local host populations, including publications in Civil War, International Peacekeeping, Small Wars & Insurgencies, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism and Journal of Global Security Studies.