Interview with Jean-Marie Guehenno

Interview with Jean-Marie Guehenno, Former Head of UN Peacekeeping Operations

Peace and Security in the XXI Century

The UN Brief interviewed Jean-Marie Guehenno, who served as the United Nations Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations from 2000 to 2008. He is the Arnold A. Salzman Professor of Professional Practice in International Affairs, and Director of the Kent Program on Conflict Resolution, at the School of International and Public Affairs, SIPA, at Columbia University.

A career diplomat, he was Director of Policy Planning, at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as French Ambassador to the European Union, and Chairman of the French Institute of Higher Defence Studies.

We spoke about his book on the UN peacekeeping operations The Fog of Peace published after he stepped down from his position as USG, China, surveillance capitalism, Ukraine, and the UN Peacekeeping operations’ limitations.

The book is a great reference for students and early career diplomats who are keen on understanding the challenges that the UN and the international community faced in the period that Guehenno was leading DPKO. That time turned out to see the greatest expansion of DPKO, which was necessary to address the growing number of conflicts that required UN intervention. He oversaw near 130,000 staff, on 18 missions.

In his book he gives a first person account of how the UN grappled with responding to conflict erupting in Sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, the seeds of the Arab Spring, Haiti, and how the US and France cooperated to tackle civil conflict, Ebola outbreaks, and the Internally Displaced People (IDPs) refugee crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

We also spoke about the impact of emerging technologies on peace and security, conflict resolution and mediation, and how international forces can never impose Peace in fragile countries, such as Haiti, that requires society-wide consultations.

His latest book, Le premier XXIe siècle: De la globalisation a L’emiettement du monde, talks about how globalisation has its drawbacks, and an increasingly fragmented world can pose security risks that are hard to anticipate, as much of it happens in the cyber realm. Listen: