Flying over the Blue Helmets: Evaluating Peacekeeping Missions in Southern Lebanon in Light of Technological Warfare

This essay looks at the viability of United Nations peacekeeping in an era of remote, technologically-driven warfare through the case of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). We argue that Israel's employment of technology in the pursuit of warfare has severely weakened the core logic of interposition upon which peacekeeping rests, rendering UNIFIL’s ground presence a constrained buffer that can be bypassed by aerial and remote forms of force. Drawing on UN resolutions and reports, media sources, and academic literature, the analysis traces how technological warfare has bypassed and endangered peacekeepers and the civilians they are meant to protect. It also explores the erosion of local trust in international peacekeeping, the perceptions that surround UNIFIL’s presence, and the broader normative implications of sustaining a perception gap between the promise associated with peacekeeping presence and the protection that can credibly be delivered under technological asymmetry. It concludes by outlining three pathways for rethinking peacekeeping under technological asymmetry: adapting mandates and rules of engagement to address technological developments, embracing strategic honesty and prioritizing political solutions, and confronting the ethical costs of maintaining missions whose protective promise can no longer be credibly fulfilled.