More than Fighting for Peace? An examination of the role of conflict resolution in training programmes for military peacekeepers.

Abstract

The purpose of this research project is to examine the role of conflict resolution in training programmes for military peacekeepers. It offers a significant contribution to the conflict resolution literature by providing contemporary analysis of where further manifestations exist of the links between military peacekeeping and the academic study of conflict resolution. The thesis firstly provides a thorough analysis of where conflict resolution scholars have sought to critique and influence peacekeeping. This is mirrored by a survey of policy stemming from the United Nations (UN) in the period 1999-2010. The thesis then undertakes a survey of the role of civil-military cooperation: an area where there is obvious crossover between military peacekeeping and conflict resolution terminology. This is achieved firstly through an analysis of practitioner reports and academic research into the subject area, and secondly through a fieldwork analysis of training programmes at the UN Training School Ireland, and Royal Military Training Academy 4 Sandhurst (RMAS). The thesis goes on to provide a comprehensive examination of the role of negotiation for military peacekeepers. This examination incorporates a historical overview of negotiation in the British Army, a sampling of peacekeeping literature, and finally fieldwork observations of negotiation at RMAS. The thesis discusses how this has impacted significantly on conceptions of military peacekeepers from both the military and conflict resolution fields. The thesis adds considerably to contemporary debates over cosmopolitan forms of conflict resolution. Firstly it outlines where cosmopolitan ethics are entering into military training programmes, and how the emergence of institutionalised approaches in the UN to ¿human security¿ and peacebuilding facilitate this. Secondly, the thesis uses Woodhouse and Ramsbotham¿s framework to link the emergence of cosmopolitan values in training programmes to wider structural changes at a global level.