Can United Nations Peacekeeping Operations Reduce Terrorism?

• In Event: The United Nations and Global Norms

Abstract

With increasing terrorist incidents around the world, international counterterrorism has become a preemptive task to deter potential threats. A large volume of research has examined factors that influence successful counterterrorism operations, such as foreign aids (Bapat 2011; Findley and Young 2011; Kim, Li, and Sandler 2020), the rule of law (Choi 2010), and the United States military interventions (Azam and Thelen 2010; Choi 2016). However, only a few empirical studies have examined the roles of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations (PKOs) in counterterrorism, despite the fact that addressing terrorism has been one of their key missions since the 9/11 terror attacks. We analyze factors that contribute to successful counterterrorism with a particular focus on UN PKOs. The specific research questions are as followed: 1) Do UN PKOs reduce terrorism? 2) Under what conditions do UN PKOs reduce terrorism?

Existing studies report conflicting results regarding the effectiveness of PKOs for counterterrorism. Smit (2017) reports that PKOs contribute to counterterrorism by reforming structural conditions in host countries, whereas Karlsrud (2017) argues that PKOs are not capable of deterring terrorism with the Mali case. By statistically analyzing 30 countries between 1990 and 2016, Wagner (2018) reports that UN PKOs decrease terror attacks only with enough investment to enhance the rule of law. However, the current studies rely on country-level datasets and cannot explain sub-national variations in PKO deployments within each host country. However, local-level data are required to understand an accurate relationship between UN PKOs and counterterrorism for two reasons: 1) PKOs tend to be deployed to border areas and easily accessible places (Ruggeri et al. 2018) and 2) terror incidents are more likely to occur in urban areas and near the capital (Marineau 2020).

To fill the gap in literature, we employ a spatio-temporal grid dataset from nine countries with twelve UN PKO missions between 2000 and 2013. Each country is divided into 0.5×0.5 decimal degrees. To examine the success of counterterrorism, we use the incidents of transnational terrorism as our dependent variable. For this dependent variable, using Marineau et al.’s (2020) terrorism dataset, we create a binary variable for the occurrence of terrorist attacks and a count variable for the total number of transnational terrorism. Our key independent variable is the deployment of UN PKOs. The independent variable is measured by the presence of UN PKOs and the number of PKO troops (Cil et al. 2019; Fjelde et al. 2018). We include various country-level control variables (e.g., battle deaths and Polity scores) and sub-national level variables (e.g., distance from cities and the number of troops in neighbor cells). We employ the logistic and negative binomial methods. We further use an instrumental variable and the propensity score matching technique to handle potential selection bias issues (Fjelde et al. 2018).

We argue that dispatching UN PKOs is not likely to reduce transnational terrorism, but is effective only under particular conditions, in which PKOs have incentives to conduct counterterrorism operations actively. First, we hypothesize that the presence of UN PKOs is positively associated with the occurrence of terrorist attacks and the total number of transnational terrorism. Based on the principal-agent theory, UN peacekeepers, as risk-averse agents, do not comply with donors’ expectations due to both of their asymmetric information (Blair et al. 2020). Specifically, peacekeepers may be likely to avoid patrolling high-risk areas, though they are required to commit to patrolling such areas to deter potential terrorist threats. Second, we hypothesize that UN PKOs reduce terrorist incidents when peacekeepers have a high number of their own casualties. Direct damages to peacekeepers can increase an incentive for them to patrol and monitor the areas by resolving the principal-agent problem. To estimate this effect, we include an interaction variable between PKO presence and the lagged number of peacekeeper casualties in each country and year.

Our research contributes to the literature on terrorism and conflicts by leveraging theories in the two fields and suggesting empirical evidence of PKOs’ effectiveness in implementing counterterrorism tasks. In addition, our findings provide policy implications by finding better measures to increase UN PKOs’ capability of reducing terrorist attacks. Terrorism not only causes direct damages to PKOs and civilians but also deteriorates the long-term stability of the country and region. This research offers insights into UN policy to improve peacekeepers’ commitment to counterterrorism.

Authors

• wukki kim, Korea Military Academy

• Minju Kwon, Chapman University