South America and Peace Operations

This volume is the first English-language work to focus specifically on South America in the context of peace operations. The region of South America has been undergoing significant changes recently with regard to its attitudes towards participation in peace operations, a phenomenon that has brought with it an increase in interest in, and production on, the region. Leaving behind a strong reluctance with regard to intervention-the offshoot of suspicions grounded in historical US interference in the Western Hemisphere-the states have recently taken on a much stronger presence among UN blue helmets. The foremost showcase of this more robust and responsible stance has been MINUSTAH, the current UN mission in Haiti. South American contributors provide over half the operation's troops, and the Force Commander is provided by Brazil. As South American states continue to rise in importance as contributors to peace operations-an indicator of larger shifts in the distribution of global power-understanding their traditions and motivations is of ever greater importance to the community of international relations scholars and practitioners. This book is intended as an introduction for researchers to the nexus of issues surrounding this region's increasing clout as a provider of blue helmets. The idea is to provide the reader with a historically and theoretical grounded understanding of what motivates defence policy and decisions on intervention in the region, coupled with a series of case studies and the strongest, most diverse bibliography possible in its area, designed in order to facilitate avenues of future research by its readers. The volume joins together seven substantive contributions wedding practical applicability with diversity of analysis. Contributions giving the analytical underpinnings for the study of the South American context of intervention are placed at the beginning, and gradually overlap with case studies of specific troop contributing countries from the region. This book will be of much interest to students of peacekeeping, South American politics, peace and conflict studies, security studies and International Relations in general.