نشریه مطالعات بین المللی
سال یازدهم شماره 3 (پیاپی 43، Winter 2015)

The eruption of many violent conflicts after the end of the Cold Warforced the “Blue Helmets” not only to conduct peace-keeping operations but also peace-enforcing, which are far more difficult and controversial. But is highly politicized organization without independent military capabilities and budget capable of undertaking such difficult but needed tasks? Many failures, such as those in Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia and now in Africa, shows that it is not. However, no other international organization does have such capabilities, as well as political and moral mandate to engage in conflict resolution. The main goal of this paper is to present and analyze an issue of UN peacekeeping operations – their evolution, current state and challenges, both current and future. This international tool was helpful many times – it helped to resolve countless violent conflicts and defuse many international and intra-state crises. However, in current turbulent and highly complex world the UN peacekeeping operations are in a deep crisis. Is there any way to revive them? In this article I will try to find an answer to the question of a future of UN peacekeeping operations as a tool of a conflict resolution.

Inter-religious tensions based on non-tolerance or lack of desire for dialogue, account for the majority of cases of intra- and inter-state violence. Apart from prevalent religious beliefs, the presence of minority faith groups, and their tensions with or repression by the mainstream politics often raises questions as to the future. Conflict ethnography, as outlined by David Kilcullen (2009), should deconstruct one sole country, considering geography, religion and language, socio-cultural contexts and identity meanings. This is crucial as a first step to the establishment of common denominators among different culture, and development of cross-border dialogue. The initiation of dialogue as a means to combat the “clash of civilisations” has been projected largely as an initiative of the West. This does not mean, however, that other societies lack peaceful conflict management tools. Many know of the Afghan traditional dispute resolution still widely practiced in villages and tribal areas, yet, few have gone deep into this conflict transformation tradition. My research explores the opportunities for dialogue between communities as a means to initiate peaceful coexistence. With the support of impartial religious and secular institutions, local grassroots and international community, dialogues will lead to building trust and bridges on multiple levels.

While an increasing number of scholars attempt to develop alternatives to the current practice of diplomacy based on promoting national interests, these alternatives are neither taken seriously by political-practitionners nor by most scholars. To change this trend, this paper argues that the strategic ontology of diplomacy must be challenged first before moving on to alternatives such as sustainable diplomacy. In order to do so, this paper shows the effects of the ‘smart power’ informed U.S. foreign policy towards Iran from 2006 onwards. It shows that ‘smart power’ enabled to sustain this strategic ontology by changing means for others instead of calling the ends of U.S.-Iran diplomacy into question. Through a genealogical approach, this paper shows what ‘smart power’ did to U.S. foreign policies of cultural diplomacy, human rights promotion, broadcasting, student exchanges and sanctions toward Iran. As Said, this paper concludes that the future of U.S.-Iran relations remain bleak as long as both parties will not construct knowledge about the ‘other’ for the service of a better standard of co-existence (1997).

The relationship between religion and human rights is much contended. The question that this research asks is how can interfaith dialogue lead to strengthen human rights. The research builds on the history and structures of inter-communal relations as well as current initiatives of interfaith dialogue in Egypt in order to try to understand the weaknesses of interfaith dialogue initiatives in the Egyptian setting. This research brings forth a new call for democratized interfaith dialogue that assists rather than weaken human right promotion in Egypt.

While for a long time, negotiating with terrorists was limited to very limited numbers of contexts. After the Good Friday agreement, literature on negotiation with terrorist groups rises. According to this literature, negotiation could be used as means of counterterrorism. This part of conflict resolution literature argues that negotiating with terrorist groups and organizations would culminate in isolating the hardliners and thus reduce the tension and consequently increases the security. This paper would examine the applicability of this argument in Middle East. The paper studies the organizational structure of terrorist groups and then takes Irish Republican Army(IRA) and Al- Qaeda(AQ) as its case studies. With a comparative organizational structure study of IRA as a hierarchical organization and AQ as a network organization, it suggests that using negotiation as counterterrorism measure would be useful when state is facing a terrorist organization with hierarchical structure.

Responsibility to protect as an doctrine has opened its way in some UN Security Council‘s resolutions. A state has primary responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Manifest failure of a state to protect its populations from these crimes transfers responsibility to protect to international community. International community will apply R to P, through the United Nations. Articles 33, 52, 53 and 54 of the UN Charter are regional organizations’ basis actions for realization of R to P. Regional organizations will help the realization of R to P better than other international organizations because, they are closer to the conflicts that occur in their regions and they are more familiar with those regional issues. Thus, they can also exercise all parts of R to P i.e. responsibility to prevent, responsibility to react and responsibility to rebuild. In other words, mechanisms of regional arrangements for realization of responsibility to protect are a) use of pacific settlements b) military actions. Two aspects of R to P i.e. responsibility to prevent and responsibility to rebuild have a significant role for maintaining, meeting and restoring the peace. In fact, R to P is a practical solution to prevent “breach of peace” and to help “peace building”.