Description
Peace enforcement operations authorized under United Nations (UN) Chapter VII mandates are usually executed by multinational military forces under the auspices of international organisations or coalitions. In these robust operations, troop contributing countries (TCCs) are motivated or constrained by a variety of rationales related to various national interests and priorities. The relationship between participation rationales and the willingness of individual national contingents to utilize force and take risks to implement mission mandates has received only scant scholarly attention. To address this gap, this study aims to comparatively assess how different TCC rationales determine variations in national reservations on the use of force – caveats – during operations. Accounting for the factors that determine the adoption of caveats during peace enforcement operations is important because caveats are consequential for a multinational force's ability to efficiently and coherently protect civilians and implement the overall mission mandate. TCCs making non-token, combat-capable contributions to these missions are perceived as best placed to implement mission mandates based on their combat capabilities. However, contingent willingness to utilize combat capability and take risks may hinge on the participation rationales of their political principals. Thus, this study seeks to answer the question: why do non-token combat-capable contingents apply caveats during peace enforcement operations? More so, what explains variation in the adoption of caveats by similarly sized non-token, combat-capable contingents? To bridge participation rationales and caveats, and explain variation in caveats behaviour, I conduct a co-variational analysis of troop contingents in the NATO Implementation/Stabilization Force in Bosnia and the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Data for this study is sourced primarily from institutional archives, organizational documents, and elite interviews.
