While peacekeeping operations have always been heavily dependent on host-state support and international political backing, changes in the global geopolitical and technological landscapes have presented new forms of state interference intended to influence, undermine, and impair the activities of missions on the ground. Emerging parallel security actors, notably the Wagner Group, have cast themselves as directly or implicitly in competition with the security guarantee provided by peacekeepers, while the proliferation of mis- and disinformation and growing cybersecurity vulnerabilities present novel challenges for missions’ relationships with host states and populations, operational security, and the protection of staff and their local sources. Together, these trends undermine missions’ efforts to protect civilians, operate safely, and implement long-term political settlements. This essay analyzes these trends and the dilemmas they present for in-country UN officials attempting to induce respect for international norms and implement their mandates. It describes nascent strategies taken by missions to maintain their impartiality, communicate effectively, and maintain the trust of those they are charged with protecting, and highlights early good practices for monitoring and analyzing this new operation environment, for reporting on and promoting human rights, and for operating safely.

This article aims to explain the protean nature of the concept of “legitimacy,” arguing that its variability largely stems from denoting a quality of institutions that is both internally complex and sensitive to variations in institutional context. While this institutional-context sensitivity often leads to confusion and miscommunication, it is also what centers the concept’s meaning and use. To better understand legitimacy’s different forms of institutional-context sensitivity, and how they are interconnected, the article shifts from analysis and comparisons of concepts and theories of legitimacy to analysis and comparison of specific legitimacy arguments regarding specific institutions. It introduces a structured framework for analyzing legitimacy claims, beginning with the identification of the institutional level that the argument is directed at. This approach highlights how legitimacy assessments vary across higher and lower institutional levels—a crucial aspect of institutional-context sensitivity that has been underexplored in recent institutional legitimacy literature. The framework, comprising four steps of analysis and two supporting figures, advances our understanding of the complex nature of institutions’ legitimacy and underscores the importance of distinguishing between the legitimacy of an institution and the legitimacy within an institution. Throughout, the article illustrates the framework with examples drawn from scholarly debates on the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court.

While the UN secretary-general maintains in the 2023 New Agenda for Peace that the impartiality of the United Nations is its strongest asset, the UN is increasingly becoming partial on the ground. The trend that started with the inclusion of the Force Intervention Brigade in the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2013 is accelerating and taking on new forms. The UN has been supporting the African Union Mission in Somalia and providing logistical support to the Group of Five for the Sahel Joint Force in Mali. In December 2023, the UN Security Council agreed on a resolution that should enable the predictability and sustainability of assessed contributions to African-led counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations, on certain conditions. The normative consequences of increased support to African-led interventions are significant and little explored. The UN system, including humanitarian and human rights components, will no longer be able to claim impartiality in countries where the UN is financing African-led interventions that are propping up fledgling regimes against opposition and terrorist groups. This essay will unpack and examine these developments and their consequences for UN peacekeeping and the larger UN system.

United Nations peacekeeping is experiencing a generational shift as several large missions downsize and close. Amid this change, this essay considers the future of the Protection of Civilians (PoC) mandate, which has been a priority of UN peacekeeping since it was first authorized twenty-five years ago. It argues that PoC has evolved significantly, expanding from a narrow focus on physical protection from immediate threats to a holistic approach that includes establishing a protective environment. It suggests that while the PoC mandate has proven effective in reducing violence, the future is fraught with four significant challenges: waning state commitment to UN peacekeeping, the fragmentation of global peace and security mechanisms, shifting local perceptions in a rapidly changing information landscape, and mounting disillusionment among UN personnel. This essay contends that these obstacles underscore the inherently political nature of PoC, where power dynamics and perceptions profoundly impact mission success. As peacekeeping missions scale back, PoC remains essential but increasingly precarious, demanding strategic adaptability and sustained commitment. Ultimately, the essay argues that without renewed political and institutional dedication, PoC’s effectiveness—and the UN’s credibility—will be difficult to uphold in the face of evolving conflict dynamics and geopolitical shifts.

There is a plurality of reasons for taking wildlife conservation seriously. These reasons include nonanthropocentric ones based on animal ethics. But in an unequal world, global conservation can impose disproportional burdens on people who are already disadvantaged. What are some of these costs, and how can we better reconcile what we owe to people as a matter of global justice with what we owe to animals? We can call this the global justice challenge of wildlife conservation. While advances in animal ethics and animal science have contributed to our understanding of the animal side of conservation morality, what we owe to people in the context of conservation is comparatively underdeveloped. The two books under review are valuable contributions to this discussion. Security and Conservation by Rosaleen Duffy is an exposé of the hidden conservation costs that are borne by people in the Global South. The author specifically scrutinizes the moral costs of the securitization and militarization of wildlife protection. Global Justice and the Biodiversity Crisis by Chris Armstrong is the first book-length normative inquiry into the global justice challenges that arise from biodiversity conservation. Together, these books draw our attention to the justice problems that can arise from conservation itself and point to where more work needs to be done if we want to harmonize our duties to animals and people.

Long viewed as an example of effective multilateralism, UN peace operations are facing mounting challenges. Transformations in the landscape of conflict are outpacing their ability to respond. Rising expectations of peacekeeping have led to disenchantment with what they can deliver, while dis- and misinformation tactics undermine the efforts of the UN to make and build peace. As UN peace operations risk becoming another casualty of intensifying international tensions, great power rivalry, and the erosion of the rules and norms that govern international cooperation, we consider the future of UN peace operations. In the debate between a “pragmatic” and an “adaptive” approach to peacekeeping, we argue that a fundamental question is the ability of both alternatives to address three recurring issues that have shaped the effectiveness and legitimacy of peace operations: the mismatch between ambitious mandates and limited resources; the gap between the protection of civilians objective and its implementation in practice; and growing difficulties in honoring the principles of impartiality. We argue that policymakers and researchers should not lose sight of the fact that peacekeeping's legitimacy depends on its adherence to some version of host-state consent and some kind of restriction on when and how force is used. The expectation of civilian populations that the UN stands for protection also means that the UN must continue to safeguard some key norms associated with peacekeeping.

Can United Nations peace operations improve their effectiveness and strengthen longer-term positive legacies in host nations by shifting to greater use of renewable energy? Since the end of the Cold War and the growth of modern UN peace operations, attention has been focused on the missions’ mandate of supporting political strategies for peace and core objectives such as protecting civilians. Could missions better meet their mandate with improved energy options and reduced emissions, or is there a trade-off with the core objectives? As the missions are nearly fully dependent on diesel generators to power their operations, what is the UN’s responsibility to reduce emissions at a time when addressing climate change is a priority of the UN Secretary-General? Is there an ethical case to make for the UN to support greater use of renewable energy where it operates? And could the UN partner with host nations and others to support a shift in energy use that benefits the communities that host peace operations? This essay argues that missions could reduce their emissions and leverage their energy needs to increase security, strengthen ties to local communities, increase energy access, and support the climate goals of host nations. Drawing on case studies in recent peacekeeping missions and the author’s review of UN commitments across mandates, the Sustainable Development Goals, peacebuilding, and climate goals, this essay will address this area of potential innovation that can help build a positive legacy for UN missions and countries emerging from conflict.

Russia's war against Ukraine has had devastating human consequences and destabilizing geopolitical effects. This roundtable takes up three critical debates in connection with the conflict: Ukraine's potential accession to the European Union; the role of Ukrainian nationalism in advancing democratization; and the degree of human rights accountability, not just for Russia, but also for Ukraine. In addition to challenging conventional wisdom on each of these issues, the contributors to this roundtable make a second, critically important intervention. Each essay explores the problem of concealed political and normative commitments within much of the research on Russia's war against Ukraine by unearthing biases intrinsic to particular conceptualizations. The collection also questions the perceived separation between “interests” and “values” that permeates policy analysis. This roundtable further draws attention to the ethical problems that scholars and policymakers bring to policy debates through the occlusion of their preexisting political commitments. It argues for greater transparency around and awareness of the ways in which values, not just evidence, inform research findings and policy positions.

Amid Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, the human rights community has understandably focused its attention on human rights violations committed by the Russian state. This has, however, left the human rights implications of the martial law Ukraine has put in place for civilians largely unexamined. This essay highlights the ways Ukraine's travel restriction on “battle-aged” civilian men has harmed three overlapping groups—civilian men, the families of the men (including women and children), and trans and nonbinary individuals—and shows that the restriction runs counter to important principles in international human rights and humanitarian law. It then considers the ethical dilemmas faced by the international human rights community in addressing such harms, and the political psychology of rights advocacy that may explain the tendency to underplay this particular set of human rights issues. Nonetheless, the essay ultimately argues that advocates should hold actors—including and perhaps especially those with which they may sympathize—accountable to the human rights standards to which they have pledged.

As part of the “Solar Geoengineering: Ethics, Governance, and International Politics” roundtable, this essay examines dilemmas arising in exploring nonideal scenarios of solar geoengineering deployment. Model-based knowledge about solar geoengineering tells us little about possible climatic responses to malicious, self-interested, or competing deployments, and even less about political or cultural responses outside of the climate system. The essay argues that policy for governing solar geoengineering in a world of multiple states and uneven power relations requires a broader base for solar geoengineering knowledge, beyond that offered by modeling, and a better understanding of nonideal scenarios, especially those motivated by logics beyond reducing climate impacts. It highlights the interests of military and security actors in such knowledge, and the potential for it to facilitate securitization and further reduce the prospect of multilateral collaborative governance of geoengineering in the public interest. The essay concludes that further research can be ethically justified but must be comprehensively governed.

This essay investigates the fit between solar radiation modification (SRM) and climate politics. Researchers, activists, and politicians often present SRM technologies as “radical.” According to this frame, SRM comes into view as a last-ditch effort to avoid climate emergencies. Such a rationale may be applicable to the scientists researching the potential of SRM, yet it only partially accounts for political and policy interest in SRM. In this contribution, I argue that there is an increasingly tight fit between the promise of SRM technologies and the global regime of climate politics. Within this regime, SRM may not be a radical option but is more of a logical extension of current rationales. I argue that SRM corresponds to tightly controlled discursive rules within which climate politics operates, leading to a shifting narrative on the feasibility, desirability, and necessity of SRM. The ethical implications of this tight fit are threefold. First, it implies that SRM might be an instrument of mitigation deterrence, implicitly as much as explicitly. Second, ethical responsibility and political value debates are at risk of becoming invisible once SRM becomes embedded in the prevailing regime. Third, SRM use might become inevitable, despite the good intentions of most people involved.

This essay argues that the possibility of governing the development and deployment of solar radiation modification (SRM) technology is predicated on the assumption of a liberal international order informed by an understanding of state responsibility. However, this order is experiencing a period of disruption that has placed stress on extant and emerging global governance regimes and brought the assumption of their efficacy and viability into doubt. In addition, international order and existing global governance of technologies with planetary implications, such as nuclear weapons, have become the increasing focus of criticism because of the inequities embedded within these institutions, calling into question how much of a roadmap the existing governance architecture can or should provide. Leading developers and proponents of SRM have advocated for cooperative, transparent, science-led governance, which parallels the language of early nuclear governance advocates, but there is a long history of displacement and disruption of indigenous and otherwise marginalized populations without meaningful consultation to accommodate technological developments driven by powerful, industrialized countries. Developing an ethical framework for the governance of SRM will be challenging under the current conditions of increasing tensions and confrontations between major powers that may have non–climate-related interests in developing and controlling SRM technology. This essay will reflect on whether the current international order, stable or unstable, is capable of producing ethical governance of SRM.

Recent years have seen increasing calls by a few scientists, largely from the Global North, to explore “solar geoengineering,” a set of speculative technologies that would reflect parts of incoming sunlight back into space and, if deployed at planetary scale, have an average cooling effect. Numerous concerns about the development of such speculative technologies include the many ecological risks and uncertainties as well as unresolved questions of global governance and global justice. This essay starts with the premise that solar geoengineering at planetary scale is unlikely to be governable in a globally inclusive and just manner. Thus, the ethically sound approach is to pursue governance that leads to the nonuse of planetary solar geoengineering. Yet is such a prohibitory agreement feasible, in the face of possible opposition by a few powerful states and other interests? Drawing on social science research and a host of existing transnational and international governance arrangements, this essay offers three illustrative pathways through which a nonuse norm for solar geoengineering could emerge and become diffused and institutionalized in global politics: (1) civil society-led transnational approaches; (2) regionally led state and civil society hybrid approaches; and (3) like-minded or “Schengen-style” club initiatives led by states.

In this essay, I use Martin Luther King Jr.'s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” to open questions about international order and disorder. The idea of order is central to modern discourse on international politics, but the concept is often ill defined and ambiguous. King's ideas clarify three issues: First, is order understood as an objective condition of a system or a political judgment about its suitability for social life? Second, does compliance with law lead naturally to order? And third, is order always preferable to disorder? The way King answers each question is somewhat different than the conventional wisdom in international relations. IR scholars typically assume that international order is a universal good and that compliance with law enhances it. King highlights the gap between order as defined by the authorities in Alabama and his own lived experience. I use the difference to map the terrain of scholarship on international order and disorder and to draw implications for concepts, research methods, and political judgment.

Discussions of the liberal international order, both inside and outside the academy, tend to take its necessity and desirability for granted. While its specific contours and content are left somewhat open in such debates, the idea that this international order is essential for global peace and stability is left largely unquestioned. What is more, the potential loss or end of this order is often taken to mean a return to anarchy, chaos, and disorder. In this essay, I question the presumed necessity and desirability of the liberal international order that most discussions of it seem to share. By rethinking the international order as processual, emergent, and grounded in the social and political contexts that shape its constitution and operation, I suggest that fears about the crisis of international order are less about international order itself and more about the loss of a specific order. This specific order, I argue, constituted in part through processes of racialization, is not so much a rules-based order of sovereign equality but rather an international order of White sovereignty that secures the domination and rule of some over others, of Whiteness over non-Whiteness. Recognizing the role of White sovereignty in the contemporary international order points toward a need to take seriously calls for abolition. Rather than signifying a return to chaos and disorder, the prospect and promise of abolition represents a call to break free from the constraints of the present order and reach into an as-yet-unimaginable future.

One of the problems with the problem of world order is that what makes for order within societies is often precisely what makes for disorderly relations between them. I argue in this short essay that many of the problems with the problem of world order arise from assumptions that are widely shared within a discipline where the language of power and interest dominates and where a view of states as “like units” permeates. With more emphasis on values and visions of the good life, and acceptance that the ontological foundation of IR is difference rather than sameness, the debates about the problem of world order would take on a different form. The essay adapts the work of Hedley Bull and introduces the concept of “resilience-governance” to distinguish between resilience as a practice of self-governance taking place within ordering domains and resilience as a practice of “diversity-governance” taking place between ordering domains. The combination of the two allows for a bifocal view into how practices of resilience as self-governance may produce order within individual domains but will at the same time increase diversity and difference between the ordering domains, hence making the practices of resilience as diversity-governance much more challenging.

The Hobbesian problem of order has been central to international relations (IR) pedagogy. What are the political implications of this pedagogy? Giving students conceptual tools to understand world politics feels vital in this moment of anxiety about the erosion of the current international order. But some of the deepest threats to international order are rooted in a multiplicity of justice claims. IR's explanatory orientation, and the many biases underlying its anchoring concepts, limit our ability as educators to make sense of those threats in the language of the discipline. How do we teach IR, then, without socializing students into a problematic discipline that only reproduces the existing order? I propose that rather than jettison our disciplinary concepts and frames with their baked-in injustices, we can reorient our teaching about them. Drawing on history and mythology, I focus on the Westphalian myth that anchors IR's central question: Given states, how can international order be produced? I suggest another version of the myth that foregrounds how order and justice, the explanatory and the normative, are entangled all the way down. This revised Westphalian myth urges us to think of recognition of political units—a justice claim—as intrinsic to ordering decisions.

Cracks in the liberal international order (LIO) have been occurring since its very formation. Yet, some international relations scholarship frames the narrative about imminent threats to the LIO as if such threats were new. From a postcolonial vantage point, this essay contends that mainstream theorizing about international order is problematically Eurocentric and develops a three-pronged argument. In the first place, the essay argues for understanding order as a command or as an imposition. Order as a command renders visible power disparities, injustices, and inequalities of the international order as seen by actors from below. Second, the essay leans on Edward Said's contrapuntal reading method to show that experiences of order are plural rather than singular or universal. Third, the essay argues that from a postcolonial perspective, the opposite of order is not chaos or volatility but rather agency or the authorship to be a rule maker. A full picture of order as imposition requires understanding how togetherness and sameness are modes for Global South actors to find collective unity to resist the injustices and inequalities of the LIO.

This essay focuses on the concept of “international order” and its uses and misuses. It argues that the concept of “order” should not be conflated with the concept of a “system,” and that it makes more sense to speak of world order than international order because the former accommodates political units beyond the nation-state. Drawing on my recent book Before the West (2022) I show how the concept of “world order” travels better in history and also speculate about how it can help us think about the future as well.

The discourse of tragedy has significant value in a military context, reminding us of the temptations of hubris, the prevalence of moral dilemmas, and the inescapable limits of foresight. Today, however, this discourse is drawn upon too heavily. Within the tragicized politics of nuclear and drone violence, foreseeable and solvable problems are reconceptualized as intractable dilemmas, and morally accountable agents are reframed as powerless observers. The tragedy discourse, when wrongly applied by policymakers and the media, indulges the very hubris the tragic recognition is intended to caution against. This article clarifies the limits of “tragedy” in the context of military violence and argues for a renewed focus on political responsibility.