Re-envisioning peacekeeping: Simulation, the United Nations and the mobilization of ideology
Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to critically assess the role and place of United Nations peacekeeping in the practice and theory of post-Cold War international relations. Specific cases of United Nations peacekeeping and interventionism--in North Korea, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda--were closely detailed. For the purpose of the critical analysis, three possible, yet complementary, levels of reading of the case-studies were introduced: a strictly denotative and normative interpretation which, simply put, told the story of UN peacekeeping from the perspective of its successes and failures; a more complex criticism of the United Nations as an ideological instrument of global governance and neoliberalism; and a supplementary postmodern reading which, building upon the previous two levels of analysis, sought to highlight the inconsistencies and inherent discontinuities of UN peacekeeping as a normative practice and as an ideological enterprise. Throughout this multi-layered critical analysis, the emphasis was placed on vision and the visual models and media through which UN peacekeeping was both practically and ideologically mobilized. Techniques such as panoptic modes of surveillance, visual simulations by means of cinema or television, photographic allegories were used to give the appearance that United Nations interventions were effective (in keeping the peace) and contributed to the realization of liberal ideologies of governance (more trivially known as "New World Order" ideals). This study showed, however, that such an intervention only took place at a level of appearances and make-believe, and that the UN in the mid-1990s may best be interpreted as a failing simulation. Indeed, instead of keeping or making the peace in the countries where it intervened, and despite its arsenal of visual devices, the UN could not prevent instances of disruption, disorder, and instability from haunting the post-Cold War international landscape, to the dismay of neoliberal world order ideologues.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Weber, Purdue University.
Subject Area
International law|International relations|Political science|Philosophy
Off-Campus Purdue Users:
To access this dissertation, please log in to our
proxy server.