U.N. Peacekeeping Can Help Trump Advance His ‘Back to Basics' Agenda

Yahoo

20-05-2025

Earlier this month, the United Nations Security Council renewed the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan amid a worsening security climate in the country. In voting for the renewal, the U.S. acting ambassador to the U.N., Dorothy Shea, stated that 'the United States is committed to the UN returning to its foundational purpose of maintaining international peace and security.'
But for all the United States' rhetoric about the value and importance of peacekeeping, only two weeks prior it had withdrawn its own small contingent of military officers from the U.N. force in South Sudan, known as UNMISS. A week before that, a memo that leaked to the press included a plan to freeze U.S. contributions to peacekeeping missions altogether.
This disconnect between U.S. rhetoric and actions may seem puzzling, but is consistent with U.S. President Donald Trump's policy agenda in three ways. First, pulling money from Blue Helmet peacekeeping operations, which is the main thing Americans think of when they think of the U.N., fits the Trump administration's broader political promise to voters to conspicuously slash what it considers to be wasteful bloat at the organization.
Second, the removal of U.S. military personnel from UNMISS appears to be connected to South Sudan's initial denial of entry to a Congolese national removed from the U.S. as part of Trump's mass deportation policy in early April, though Juba later relented and admitted him 'in the spirit of the friendly relations between South Sudan and the United States.' If so, this kind of retaliation would be consistent with the transactionalism Trump is known for.
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Third, the U.S. rhetoric at the Security Council is aimed at countering what it views as mission creep in U.N. practice. As Shea pointedly noted when UNMISS was renewed, 'Peacekeeping mandates, including this one, should not pursue ideological goals that are difficult to define and even more challenging to implement on the ground, but rather focus on core Chapter VII functions.' As for the U.N. more generally, she added the 'potential of the system is commendable, but it has fallen quite far from its original mission,' reflecting a general White House concern for the U.N. to get back to 'basics.'
Shea is correct that U.N. peacekeeping is worthwhile, and acknowledgment of that fact could offer the Trump administration an opportunity to further rethink and pivot on matters of global peace and security, as it has done in recent days on the India-Pakistan and Israel-Hamas conflicts, and may be planning on the Russia-Ukraine war. After all, of all the U.N. agencies that Trump could target for funding cuts, peacekeeping is actually the one most aligned with the U.N.'s core mission of conflict prevention. It is also the one that is most likely to be cost-effective—eight times more cost-effective than unilateral U.S. stability and support operations, to be exact. Based on that cost-benefit analysis, the Trump administration could actually get a better bang for its buck by coupling its desired U.N. reforms with efforts to enhance the factors scholars know help peacekeeping missions succeed, rather than by pulling resources altogether.
U.N. peacekeeping is widely understood to be one of the most powerful and effective conflict-intervention tools in human history. Political scientists who have studied these missions have found marked improvements across the board on various measures, including the speed with which wars end, the reduced likelihood of them restarting and the reduced likelihood of civilians being killed or sexually assaulted.
But as political scientist Page Fortna notes, U.N. missions are often sent to intervene in the hardest conflicts where they are least likely to succeed, and they are often inadequately resourced to boot, which explains why they are also widely perceived as ineffective. The many successes these missions achieve go uncovered by the media, while any failures that occur take the spotlight, with commentators then using those failures to call for the elimination of peacekeeping altogether.
Instead, we should be learning from the wider picture of peacekeeping's many successes. To be sure, South Sudan is a case that might cast doubt on the efficacy of peacekeeping. Efforts toward sustainable peace have stalled. Refugee flows into neighboring countries remain at crisis levels. And war crimes against civilians by government forces are endemic, including a disturbing turn toward the use of chemical incendiary weapons as well as a recent attack on a hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders.
But this is a reason not for withdrawal, but rather for a stepped-up U.S. troop presence and infusion of funding, alongside reforms of the mission's mandate.
That's because peacekeepers in South Sudan haven't always had the ability to put their best foot forward. It's easy to blame the U.N. for this, but in reality the organization is always beholden to the political constraints imposed by member states, particularly the permanent members of the Security Council and especially the U.S., its biggest donor.
Member states set out the mandate for each peacekeeping mission from scratch, and they have opportunities to make substantive changes to improve effectiveness—including by holding senior commanders accountable—when they renew missions. In fact, as the 'penholder' for South Sudan at the U.N., the U.S. has greater latitude, and therefore greater responsibility, than most for setting that agenda and wielding what leverage it has.
Member states also choose whether or not to provide adequate resources for operational success. Washington has historically provided 22 percent of the U.N. peacekeeping budget, and as a result, as Mark Leon Goldberg makes clear, the U.S. footprint—and therefore leverage—in the peacekeeping world is heavy.
Rather than pull out of peacekeeping, the Trump administration could use that leverage to wring even more value out of peacekeeping missions in exchange for its funding. For example, it could require that South Sudan and the Security Council implement—and fund—specific fixes known to make a difference. As an example, demobilization, disarmament and rehabilitation, or DDR, programs are a staple of successful peacekeeping missions, but they are being starved for resources in South Sudan. This is a fixable problem and a missed opportunity.
Protection of civilians also works best if small units of dedicated peacekeepers with situational awareness have the latitude to put themselves between vulnerable civilians and armed groups without waiting for approval from up the chain of command. Consider the contrast between the Dutch and Norwegian peacekeeping battalions in the former Yugoslavia. Future updates to the UNMISS mandate could strengthen the ability of the mission and its contractors to operate to prevent massacres without prior authorization.
Political scientists Hanne Fjelde, Lisa Hultman and Desiree Nilsson also show that civilian protection operations work better in constraining nonstate actors than in constraining the armed forces of the government whose consent is required for the mission. To solve these problems, member states must use leverage at their disposal to change the behavior of the peacekeeping mission's host government as well as militias. In some respects, the U.S. approach to South Sudan following its initial withdrawal of personnel last month is heartening, as the updated rules just approved by the Security Council do call for more accountability for government forces.
The Trump administration should be credited with these positive steps. But more could be done. In South Sudan, one driver of the ongoing tensions and civil war remains the easy flow of small arms and tanks into the country through Uganda. An arms embargo is up for renewal later this month, but according to retired U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Edward Carpenter—former chief of policy and plans for UNMISS and author of 'Blue Helmet'[full disclosure: he's also my brother]—the embargo is not only ineffective, as it goes largely unenforced, but also ironically counterproductive.
That's because the ban on 'military aid' has historically been interpreted to prohibit the kinds of nonlethal supplies and assistance—such as uniforms, meals and military-to-military training in professional conduct and the laws of war—that actually assist government forces in maintaining discipline, creating the conditions for peace and providing alternatives to scorched-earth tactics. The language of the embargo was relaxed in 2023 to allow for just this kind of assistance, but so far the U.S. has failed to offer any to the South Sudanese government through various programs at the Defense Department's disposal. That's unfortunate, because these nonlethal services are exactly the sort of leverage Washington could use to pressure South Sudan's government to protect civilians. 'The government wants and needs these goods, which means they can be used to incentivize real change,' Carpenter says.
Finally, if the Trump administration really cares about the success of U.N. peacekeeping missions, it has the ability to set new standards of risk and reward for participating states. One of the key political problems any peacekeeping mission faces is domestic casualty-aversion, which makes it harder for senior personnel to protect civilians when it counts. Peacekeeping can be dangerous: Just last week, two Cambodian peacekeepers lost their lives in South Sudan. And because member states often have no appetite for announcing such casualties to their home constituents, missions sometimes get shut down when they become too dangerous.
But danger is to be expected in situations where civilians' lives are on the line. If the U.S. really wants to support not only the institution of peacekeeping but the idea of it, Washington could commit more troops rather than fewer—and model the resolve in the face of casualties that other troop-contributing countries have sometimes lacked when the going gets tough. This would reinforce U.S. leadership on the U.N.'s core mission.
The U.S. is right to be concerned about revitalizing the U.N.'s core mission and values. If Trump views conflict resolution as the most important of those, the data shows that peacekeeping remains the surest of bets, despite the fact that certain hard cases have offered a mixed record. A foreign policy consistent with that goal would see the commitment of U.S. troops and treasure being increased rather than deprioritized, as they would yield valuable returns on investment.
Charli Carpenter is a professor of political science and legal studies at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, specializing in human security and international law. She tweets at @charlicarpenter.
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