Europe's role in nation-building: from the Balkans to the Congo

Albania -- Sierra Leone -- Macedonia -- Côte d'Ivoire -- Democratic Republic of the Congo -- Bosnia -- Solomon Islands -- Comparative analysis -- Conclusions

Since 1989, nation-building has become a growth industry. In two prior volumes, RAND has analyzed the United States' and United Nations' (UN's) performance in this sphere, examining instances in which one or the other led such operations. In this monograph, we look at Europe's performance, taking six instances in which European institutions or national governments have exercised comparable leadership. To complete our survey of modern nation-building, we have also included a chapter describing Australia's operation in the Solomon Islands. In previous volumes, we defined nation-building as the use of armed force in the aftermath of a conflict to promote a durable peace and representative government. By specifying the use of armed force, we are not suggesting that compulsion is always necessary or even desirable, nor do we mean to imply that only armed force is used in such missions.-

The European Union has, indeed, become quite adept at mounting nonmilitary interventions in support of conflict resolution. We do believe that peace operations that include a military component can be usefully grouped together for analytical purposes, however, since the employment of force and the integration of military and civil instruments impose particular demands. Neither, in employing the term nation-building to describe this activity, are we seeking to distinguish it from what the United Nations calls peace-building, what the U.S. government calls stabilization and reconstruction, and what many European governments prefer to call state-building. Nation-building is the term most commonly used in American parlance, but any of these other phrases may serve equally well; those who prefer can substitute one or the other without injury to our argument. This is not a comprehensive study of all nation-building operations that have involved European countries.-