Constructing sovereignty for security

In a global order based on juridical sovereignty of nation-states, the missions called ‘peacebuilding’ by the UN or ‘stabilisation operations’ by some governments necessarily require the building of states. The international organisations and governments involved in such efforts, however, have neither the doctrine nor organisation for such tasks. Problems encountered in recent efforts signal the need for a unified international counterpart for the recipient national government. Peacebuilding and statebuilding require transitional governance institutions that incorporate the concurrent need for internal and external legitimacy transparently, rather than in a fragmented, secretive and ad hoc way. The peacebuilding mechanisms proposed by the Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change have the potential to bring order into the anarchy often created by multiple agendas, doctrines and aid budgets. Notes 1. Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, A/59/565 (New York: United Nations, 2004) and ‘In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All’, A/59/2005, http://www.un.org/largerfreedom. 2. Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (The Brahimi Report) (A/55/305-S/2000/809). 3. Robert Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, ‘Why Africa's Weak States Persist: The Empirical and the Juridical in Statehood’, World Politics, vol. 35, no. 1 (1982), pp. 1–24. For a recent interpretation, see Michael Barnett, ‘The New United Nations Politics of Peace: From Juridical Sovereignty to Empirical Sovereignty’, Global Governance, vol. 1, no. 1, winter 1995, pp. 79–97. 4. Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). 5. Ghassan Salamé, Appels d'Empire. Ingérences et Résistances à l'âge de la mondialisation (Paris: Fayard, 1996). 6. Brahimi Report. 7. Anthony Giddens, The Nation State and Violence (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1987). 8. Barbara F. Walter and Jack Snyder (eds), Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). See also Leonard Wantchekon, ‘The Paradox of “Warlord” Democracy: A Theoretical Investigation’, American Political Science Review, vol. 98, no. 1 (2004) pp. 17–33. 9. Abdullah Abdullah, Minister of Finance of Afghanistan, presentation at the Afghanistan Development Forum, April 2005. 10. Mark Duffield, ‘Reprising Durable Disorder: Network War and the Securitisation of Aid’, in Bjorn Hettne and Bertil Oden (eds), Global Governance in the 21st Century: Alternative Perspectives on World Order (Stockholm: Expert Group on Development Initiatives, Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 2002). 11. UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, A More Secure World and ‘In Larger Freedom’. Additional informationNotes on contributorsBarnett R. Rubin Barnett R. Rubin is Director of Studies and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Cooperation, New York University. In November–December 2001 he served as special advisor to the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, during the negotiations that produced the Bonn Agreement. His books include Blood on the Doorstep: The Politics of Preventing Violent Conflict(2002), The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System(2002; first edition 1995), and The Search for Peace in Afghanistan: From Buffer State to Failed State (1995). A version of this essay has appeared as Consolidación de la paz, consolidación del estado: construir soberanía para la seguridad' (Madrid: CIP-FUHEM, 2005).