International Political Economics: The Impacts Term Paper

Open, View, and/or
Download this Document

Total Length: 4412 words ( 15 double-spaced pages)

Total Sources: 15

Page 1 of 15

Despite offering particular benefits to post-conflict nations, increased levels of help following civil war also comes with negative upshots that entails a rise in fraud and jeopardizing one of the basic objectives of peacekeeping.

Corruption affects the peacebuilding process, institutions and people in a given nation. For instance in Herzegovina and Bosnia, corruption affected the operation of Bosnian judicial institutions (Kahler, 2013). Moreover, the strategy adapted to address fraud in Bosnia that entailed reforming judicial system, dismissal regimes and discipline were not tactical enough but responsive in temperament. The international society claimed that the reforms should be domestically led and owned where resulting rules should echo the accessible cultural and legal paradigms.

United Nations Peacekeeping and Corruption

According to Gold (2005), the United Nations is not a compassionate, but an inefficient world body. Gold asserts that the United Nations has instigated the rise and spread of global chaos. For instance, between 1999 and 2003 through corrupt UN officials and peacekeepers, Iraq could use unlawful income to develop its military capacity (Gold, 2005). Charles Duelfer, ahead of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group, a group that worked to understand what transpired to Iraq's mass destruction weapon in 2004, gave a testimony confirming that through UN military impact, Iraq derived numerous billion dollars between 1999 and 2003 from kickbacks and oil smuggling. Iraq also imported illegal dual-use technology and illegal military weapons via the oil-for-food contracts controlled by UN peacekeepers. Moreover, UN corrupt officials affect a nation's political economy. For instance, in 1991, the UN Security Council imposed economic sanctions on Iraq oil sales aimed at financing the buying of arms and development of mass destruction weapons (Gold, 2005). However, in 1996, the United Nations executed an oil-for-food program that allowed the Saddam era to sell oil to enable buying of food and other humanitarian products. Saddam also used the UN peacekeepers and officials to buy his own diplomatic protection.

According to Gold (2005), the UN peacekeepers and officials instigate and support terrorism. By the start of the 21 century, the world experienced divergent threats that the UN had addressed in the beginning of World War II. The single largest threat to international security is global terrorism. Prior to 9/11 terrorist attack, it was apparent that radical groups had resorted to a global campaign of terror. Among the numerous terrorist attack prior to the 9/11 attack includes the August 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and the 1996 bombing of the al-Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. The UN failed to live up to its goals and mission of upholding international security and peace. Allowing nations such as Iraq to purchase banned military weapons and create weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and other nations instigated international terrorism. This was evidenced through the cooperation between UN peacekeepers and Hizballah to kidnap soldiers in Lebanon (Gold, 2005).

Peacekeeping and Economic Development

Economic development and macroeconomic constancy are crucial to the consolidation of tranquility following civil war. In this regard, development help has become a persistent component of post -- conflict peacebuilding and intervention. According to Hughes (2009), if the entire evaluated United Nations peace operations mission budgets are used in means that fosters local economic growth while at the same time delivers efficient security and peace, then the general productivity of the spending would augment. Powerful economic growth increases the probability that UN peacekeeping missions can be withdrawn thereby lowering the cost of UN peacekeeping operations. According to an UNTAC study carried out in Cambodia, UN peace operations hold fewer effects on inflation because of the reduced level of UN mission local spending (Hughes, 2009). However, United Nations peacekeeping operations hold greater negative impacts (Kahler, 2013). This is because following UN peace operations in Cambodia, unsustainable blueprint of growth was realized because of most Cambodians businesses closed, land prices increased and so was rental charges. This situation was also recorded in DRC, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Timot-Leste and other nations where parallel economies were evident (Hughes, 2009).

The parallel economies emerged to achieve the requirements of international employees and it distorted rental and retail markets. Peacekeeping operations also instigated the creation of a temporary service industry that increased prostitution and illegal drug sale and use. While peacekeeping aims at providing security and peace that facilitates economic recovery, the manner in which security and peace occur can detract or promote economic development.

Stuck Writing Your "International Political Economics: The Impacts" Term Paper?

View All Our Example International Political Economics: The Impacts Term Paper

Have A Custom Example Essay Written

Mission procurement decisions, structure, decision making, hiring decisions, and the manner in which to spend the peacekeeping mission allowances affects the local economy.

Intricate peacekeeping operations maintain and restore fundamental initial security in the deployed areas. This is their greatest single role in development because without security and peace, people do not have incentives to invest in the lawful economy. Reinstatement of security and peace makes lawful economy practicable (OECD, 2012). A powerful legal economy fosters security and peace objectives through creating employment prospects. The peacekeeping procedures' spending holds the ability to initiate the local economy during the period when it is most required. This economic action offers incomes and employment that promotes the refurbishing of stability and peace

Effects of Peacekeepers' Corruption

Peacekeeper's corruption leads to the emergence of the drug economy. The emergence of drug economy is evident in Afghanistan's political economy. Corruption and drug in some parts of Afghanistan have instigated the political order while in another it has fueled political disorder. According to a report filed by Transparency International and the World Bank, Iraq is among the most corrupt nations in the world (OECD, 2012). Although corruption flourished during the era of Saddam Hussein, corruption has further worsened during the post-Saddam era (Gold, 2005). Eradicating and controlling fraud in Iraq has proven to be difficult because corruption involves interlinked forces that include:

Dynamics and growth of informal and shadow economy

Social capital deterioration that leads to lack of confidence among divergent regions, tribes and religious groups

The emerging link amid gangs, the insurgency and tribes

These factors should be considered in controlling corruption. Practitioners and scholars identify corruption as a great obstacle to the efforts of peacebuilding. Corruption weakens the effectiveness and legitimacy of a nation through destroying public goods distribution. Corruption makes motions to be unable to resolve and manage social conflicts, reignites disagreements and leads to violence through fueling economic, social and political grievances and through undermining the institutions of security (Pete, Harvey, Savage & Jacobs, 2006). In spite of the extensive assortment of social ills linked to fraud in peacekeeping perspective, the manner in which fraud influences peacebuilding attempts are less direct and not well comprehended.

Facts of corruption are hard to collect and the reality of operating in post-conflict settings makes corruption data collection even harder. In addition, corruption shifts across divergent cultural and social contexts, and some actions viewed as corrupt in some settings are legitimate and appropriate in other contexts. Analysts and donors via links between citizens and state usually comprehend fraud and its effects. Less attention is offered in the manner through which fraud affects the links between divergent societal groups. There is developing recognition that fraud in peacebuilding perspective can offer short-term stabilization of post-war political order.

Prospects for rent-seeking and fraud can offer motivations for armed groups to sign a peace agreement and become agents of upholding patronage stabilizing network intrinsic in bargaining the peace process (Leckie, 2004). Peacebuilders can as a result accept corruption pragmatically and tacitly as a way of buying peace while they attempt to develop institutions to maintain corruption in the long-run (Pete, Harvey, Savage & Jacobs, 2006). However, there are significant costs linked to such a move. A nation's stability depends on appointing local leaders to execute extensive peacekeeping objectives, but when the interests of the local leaders extend beyond those global peacebuilders, incompatibility occurs. Different interest and inclusive comprehension of local status the leaders hold are potentially going to hinder constructive anti-corruption reforms. Moreover, involving wartime networks in the process of peacebuilding also undermines a nation's institutions, impart impunity and entrench inequality.

According to Smith & Cuest (2011), huge foreign forces in a given conflict-zone, country generates criminal activities such as drug and human trafficking. Using Haiti, Sierra Leone and Kosovo as case studies, Smith & Cuest (2011) demonstrated how the injection of relatively wealthy UN soldiers motivates generation of criminal networks through illegal actors. The UNMIK (United Nations Mission in Kosovo) highlights the hugest peacekeeping operations carried out by the United Nations. After adoption of the Council Resolution 1244, UN deployed a force of about twenty thousand peacekeepers to protect the civilian from the conflict between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Kosovo Liberation Army. Although the Kosovo Protection Force achieved its mission, the huge number of foreign force instigated demands for.....

Show More ⇣

     Open the full completed essay and source list


OR

     Order a one-of-a-kind custom essay on this topic


sample essay writing service

Cite This Resource:

Latest APA Format (6th edition)

Copy Reference
"International Political Economics The Impacts" (2013, July 25) Retrieved June 7, 2026, from
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/international-political-economics-impacts-93426

Latest MLA Format (8th edition)

Copy Reference
"International Political Economics The Impacts" 25 July 2013. Web.7 June. 2026. <
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/international-political-economics-impacts-93426>

Latest Chicago Format (16th edition)

Copy Reference
"International Political Economics The Impacts", 25 July 2013, Accessed.7 June. 2026,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/international-political-economics-impacts-93426
   

Open, View, and/or
Download this Document
order custom essay example