“New” State Actors and Conflict-Affected States: Confronting Violence, Shifting Ambitions, and Adjusting Principles

Abstract

Over the past couple of decades, “new” state actors, such as Brazil, China, Russia, India, Turkey, and countries of the Arab Gulf, have been playing an increasingly prominent role in assistance provision to conflict-affected states. Skeptical of the liberal peace-building model, they have emphasized supporting economic development and avoided promoting political reforms, viewing them as too interventionist in domestic affairs of conflict-affected states. Rather, they have emphasized solidarity, cooperation, mutual support, and respect for state sovereignty; and they are committed to non-intervention norms. However, the foreign policies of “new” state actors have been far from static. This article argues that these norms mask more complex relationships between “new” state actors and conflict-affected states. Historically, the “new” actors have tended to adhere less to non-intervention norms in their immediate neighborhood. Now, as they become more deeply engaged with countries emerging out of violent conflict, have come to aspire playing more prominent global roles, and the competition among them has risen, their adherence to principles of non-interference is under strain and policies regarding issues of peace and security are shifting.

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published: 07 May 2021
doi: 10.3389/fpos.2021.663432
Frontiers in Political Science | www.frontiersin.org 1May 2021 | Volume 3 | Article 663432
Edited by:
Cedric de Coning,
Norwegian Institute of International
Affairs, Norway
Reviewed by:
Kazushige Kobayashi,
Graduate Institute of International and
Development Studies, Switzerland
Yang Jiang,
Danish Institute for International
Studies, Denmark
*Correspondence:
Agnieszka Paczy ´
nska
apaczyns@gmu.edu
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Peace and Democracy,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Political Science
Received: 02 February 2021
Accepted: 22 March 2021
Published: 07 May 2021
Citation:
Paczy ´
nska A (2021) “New” State
Actors and Conflict-Affected States:
Confronting Violence, Shifting
Ambitions, and Adjusting Principles.
Front. Polit. Sci. 3:663432.
doi: 10.3389/fpos.2021.663432
“New” State Actors and
Conflict-Affected States: Confronting
Violence, Shifting Ambitions, and
Adjusting Principles
Agnieszka Paczy ´
nska*
The Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, George Mason University, Arlington, VA,
United States
Over the past couple of decades, “new” state actors, such as Brazil, China, Russia,
India, Turkey, and countries of the Arab Gulf, have been playing an increasingly
prominent role in assistance provision to conflict-affected states. Skeptical of the liberal
peace-building model, they have emphasized supporting economic development and
avoided promoting political reforms, viewing them as too interventionist in domestic
affairs of conflict-affected states. Rather, they have emphasized solidarity, cooperation,
mutual support, and respect for state sovereignty; and they are committed to non-
intervention norms. However, the foreign policies of “new” state actors have been far from
static. This article argues that these norms mask more complex relationships between
“new” state actors and conflict-affected states. Historically, the “new” actors have tended
to adhere less to non-intervention norms in their immediate neighborhood. Now, as they
become more deeply engaged with countries emerging out of violent conflict, have come
to aspire playing more prominent global roles, and the competition among them has risen,
their adherence to principles of non-interference is under strain and policies regarding
issues of peace and security are shifting.
Keywords: peacebuilding, “new” state actors, peacekeeping, conflict mediation, non-intervention norm
INTRODUCTION
In the last two decades, the international donor landscape has witnessed significant evolution. In
particular, new actors such as China, Brazil, India, Russia, Turkey, and South Africa, among others,
have expanded their relationships with conflict-affected states, increasing their investments and
trade relationships while also becoming significant providers of humanitarian and development
assistance. At the same time, these new actors have also been playing an increasingly important
role in UN peacekeeping operations, the UN Peacebuilding Commission, and various South-South
collaborations. Of course, some new donors have provided assistance for decades. However, the
scope and breadth of their engagements is now much more significant than in previous decades.
Although often grouped together, these new actors are a diverse group in terms of the size of
their economies, types of regime, global reach of their policies, and their global political ambitions.
They include economic powerhouses such as China, relatively poor states like South Africa, regional
powers such as India, democracies like Brazil, autocratic states like Russia, and countries of the Arab
Gulf. Despite their many differences, these new actors, or new donors as they will be referred in this

Paczy ´
nska “New” State Actors, Conflict-Affected States
article, also share similarities on how they conceptualize their
relationships with conflict-affected and fragile states that differ in
significant ways from how Western donors frame the assistance.
In particular, new donors rhetorically emphasize the importance
of non-intervention and non-conditionality of aid, viewing them
as violating state sovereignty. Consequently, they frame their
relationships with conflict-affected states in terms of South-
South collaborations and partnerships and as mutually beneficial
and reciprocal. These differences between Western and new
donors are a reflection of their different histories and experiences
with their own development trajectories. Significantly, most
new donors have experienced hegemonic power and colonial
domination and, therefore, try to avoid replicating such
hierarchical relationships in their collaborations with conflict-
affected states. At the same time, many new donors have been,
in the past or continue to be, conflict-affected states themselves.
These experiences with their own conflicts also shape how they
conceptualize relationships with states affected by violence. They
consequently offer models for improving stability and building
peace in conflict-affected states that often remain distinct from
those of Western donors.
This study argues, however, that how new donors interact
with conflict-affected states is much more complex than
these rhetorical framings suggest. Historically, new donors
have been much more willing to engage in interventionist
policies when interacting with conflict-affected states in their
immediate geographic neighborhood than with those that are less
proximate. More importantly, as these new actors have become
more deeply engaged in supporting countries emerging out of
violent conflict and as they have come to aspire playing more
prominent global roles, their adherence to principles of non-
interference has become, in many cases, more difficult to sustain.
Likewise, maintaining these principles has been harder when
new donors find their national, investment, and commercial and
security interests directly affected by a violent conflict. As a
consequence, a number of new donors have increasingly taken
on more prominent roles in mediating conflicts, expanding their
engagement in peacekeeping operations, and moving away from
categorical opposition to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)
principles, and, in particular, Pillar Three1, while remaining
concerned about its implications for state sovereignty. In other
words, the very expansion of their engagements with conflict-
affected states has been shifting their policies vis-à-vis these
states. Their growing global aspirations as well as the intensifying
competition among some new donors have also pushed them to
play an increasingly active role within the United Nations and in
regional organizations on issues of promoting stabilization and
peace-building in conflict-affected states.
This article is organized as follows. First, how the landscape
of donors to conflict-affected states has been shifting over the
past couple of decades has been discussed. Next, how Western
and new donors have conceptualized their engagements with
conflict-affected and fragile states would be briefly explored. In
the following section, how geographic proximity has shaped the
adherence of new donors to non-interventionist policies has
1(accessed 12 March, 2021).
been explored. The next two sections will examine how the
expansion of economic interests and, in particular, investments
and growing political ambitions have generated tensions for
new donors regarding non-intervention norms. Later, the article
will focus on how these dynamics have changed the nature of
the engagements of Brazil, China, and India in conflict-affected
while also more briefly discussing the shifting policies of Turkey
and Russia.
SHIFTING DONOR LANDSCAPE AND
CONFLICT-AFFECTED STATES
Although Western donors still account for the bulk of
development assistance, the contributions of new donors have
nearly doubled since 2012 (Devex, 2017). Before the COVID-
19 pandemic, the expectation was that they would account for
about 20% of global development assistance by the end of 2020.
The pandemic may further accelerate these trends as a number
of new donors may expand their assistance, seeing the public
health and economic crisis as an opportunity to demonstrate
their increasingly important global roles (Devex, 2018, 2020;
Figure 1).
In addition to the expansion of their bilateral and multilateral
assistance to conflict-affected states, new donors have also
established a number of partnerships and institutions outside of
the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) frameworks to facilitate collaborations and as alternative
sources of financing for the Global South states. In 2004, for
example, India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA) established
the IBSA Dialogue Forum and the IBSA Facility for Poverty
and Hunger Alleviation to strengthen South-South cooperation,
promote socioeconomic development, and more effectively
combat poverty. In 2009, Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC)
formed the BRIC Forum as an economic and geopolitical
alliance, with South Africa joining in 2010. Since then,
the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS)
Forum has held 12 summits, the latest in a virtual format
in November 2020. More recently, with the establishment of
the New Development Bank (NDB) in 2014 and the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2016, new donors have
also focused on providing alternative sources of development
and infrastructure financing to those available through Western-
dominated financial institutions. The NDB is operated by BRICS
and is set up to foster greater financial and development
cooperation between the five nations. The AIIB, on the other
hand, is a multilateral development bank whose mission is to
finance sustainable infrastructure.
The increasing prominence of new donors came at a time
when the international community and Western donors, in
particular, became increasingly concerned with conflict-affected
and fragile states. In the early 1990’s, the end of the Cold War
and a spike in the number of violent civil wars made the U.N.
both more willing and able to expand the peace-keeping, peace-
enforcing, and peace-building activities of the organization, and
“member states endorsed a radical expansion in the scope of
collective intervention” (Doyle, 2001, p. 529). At the same time,
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FIGURE 1 | Aid flows from emerging bilateral donors, 2010−2015 (in billions of US dollars). Data from Devex (2018).
the international community increasingly came to view security
and development as inter-related and mutually reinforcing. Thus,
“poverty, inequality, and disease” were pointed to “causes of
violent conflict, civil war, and state failure” (United Nations
Development United Programme, 2000). The 9/11 attacks and
US-led global war on terror solidified the dominant discourse
of conflict-affected and fragile states spreading “the virus of
disorder” globally (Turner and Pugh, 2006).
Western donors designed interventions in conflict-affected
and fragile states around a number of principles that came to be
known as the liberal peace-building model, which emphasized
the importance of market economies and democratic forms
of governance as essential to long-term stability and peaceful
conflict resolution. Liberal peace-building interventions, thus,
focused on supporting the development of accountable and
transparent governance institutions and expanding participatory
political processes, instituting the rule of law, and promoting
the development of market mechanisms and the private sector
in addition to security sector reforms. Between 2000 and
2015, official development assistance to conflict-affected and
fragile states increased by around 140% in real terms (United
Nations/World Bank, 2018, p. 1). Yet, despite billions of dollars
of assistance, interventions have generally had very mixed
results (OECD, 2020; Word Bank, 2020). As a consequence
of these lackluster results, the policies designed to “fix” these
states have been criticized as conceptually muddled, ineffective,
prioritizing institutional interests of donor agencies rather
than those of aid recipients, simply reinforcing global power
hierarchies; neglecting local voices, perspectives, expertise, and
ownership; and thus all too often resulting in interventions that
were not context-appropriate, irrelevant, and lacking legitimacy
and sustainability. Thus, these interventions, critics charged,
often aggravated rather than alleviated the very conflicts and
state fragility they were meant to address (Patrick, 2011; Mac
Ginty and Richmond, 2013; Autesserre, 2014, 2021; Luckham,
2017; Woodward, 2017; Firchow, 2018). As Paris (2004, p. ix)
underscored, “the process of political and economic liberalization
is inherently tumultuous. It can exacerbate social tensions and
undermine prospects for stable peace in fragile conditions that
typically exist in countries emerging from a civil war.” Critics
of the liberal peace-building model have also argued that these
initiatives were based on assumptions about the processes of
political and economic change drawing on Western experiences
without considering how these dynamics may differ in other
regions (Suhrke, 2007; Commission on State Fragility, Growth,
and Development, 2018). New donors are also critical of the
liberal peace-building model and the framing of states affected
by violence as fragile.
There is expanding literature that has focused on the
growing role of new donors in the provision of humanitarian
and development assistance (Amar, 2012; Mawdsley, 2012; de
Coning and Pradash, 2016; Mthembu, 2018; Purushothaman,
2021). On the other hand, while there is a growing body of
scholarship that focuses on interventions of an individual new
donor whose findings this article draws on, there are fewer
studies that systematically compare how different new donors
conceptualize peace-building and reconstruction interventions
in conflict-affected states (de Carvalho and de Coning, 2013;
de Coning and Pradash, 2016; Call and de Coning, 2017;
Paczy´
nska, 2019; Ghimire, 2020). These studies find that new
donors conceptualize peace-building and reconstruction in ways
that differ from Western donors. However, as the study argues,
these conceptualizations are not static but rather dynamic
and evolving.
In contrast to Western donors, new donors, despite significant
differences in their approaches to engaging with conflict-affected
states, positioned themselves as alternatives to the liberal peace-
building model. Most considered the liberal peace-building
model as too intrusive in the domestic politics of recipient
states and too focused on imposing political frameworks that
were not context-appropriate. For instance, India and Turkey
argued that locally rooted, indigenous, and inclusive political
institutions were essential to ensuring sustainable peace and
that the liberal peace-building model failed to do so when
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it imposed political frameworks developed elsewhere (Aneja,
2019; Tank, 2019). Others like China and Brazil, for example,
were critical of the liberal peace-building approaches because
they proved to be ineffective in addressing the root causes of
conflict and supporting long-term stability. Sustainable peace,
in their view, required tackling poverty and ensuring economic
development. In contrast to the Western donor approaches, new
donors also framed these engagements in non-hierarchical terms,
avoided utilizing the fragile state label, and prioritized solidarity
and South-South collaboration, non-interferences, and non-
conditionality of aid. Framing their engagements as eschewing
interference in domestic politics of conflict-affected states and
respecting their sovereignty, new donors placed emphasis on
providing demand-driven assistance that reflected the priorities
of the recipient governments rather than externally developed
programs and policies. However, as argued in this article, these
rhetorical framings mask more complex rationales for assistance
provision and the dynamic nature of the policies of new donors.
In particular, the commitment of new donors to non-interference
has always been a bit more strained than the rhetoric suggested.
We see this tension in very different ways in which new donors
have long engaged with states in their geographic proximity
as opposed to those further away. These strains have become
even more acute as new donor investments have expanded and,
for some new donors, as their global ambitions rose. These
shifts have generated pressures to re-evaluate their stance on
non-interference and become increasingly involved in conflict
mediation, peacekeeping, and peace-building activities.
DISTINCT HISTORIES AND NEW DONOR
POLICIES
Many of the principles shared by new donors in recent times
can be traced back to the 1955 Bandung conference and the
beginning of the Non-Aligned Movement (Kragland, 2019). This
is when conference participants developed 10 principles that were
to guide the relationships between the states of what is now
often referred to as the Global South. These principles included
respect for state sovereignty and territorial integrity, equality of
all nations, and non-intervention and non-interference in the
internal affairs of other nations2.
The distinct ways in which new donors frame their
engagements with conflict-affected states have been shaped
by their histories and positions within the global political
economy. Especially important have been the legacies of external
interventions, colonialism, and hegemonic power domination.
New donors, thus, work to avoid replicating similar hierarchical
relationships and to develop collaborative and cooperative
engagements with conflict-affected states. At the same time, their
own experiences with internal, often violent, conflict have driven
their commitment to non-interference in domestic affairs of
other states and respect for state sovereignty. For instance, South
2For all the principles see, for example, Final Communique of the Asian-African
Conference of Bandung (1955).
Africa experienced apartheid; Russia fought a war in Chechnya;
India has dealt with violent confrontations in Kashmir and
Gujarat; and Turkey has engaged in decades-long conflict with
its Kurdish population. More recently, China has repressed its
Uyghur Muslim minority and the pro-democracy movement in
Hong Kong. Many are also located in neighborhoods where other
states are grappling with violent conflict. For Russia, Caucasus
and Central Asia have been a concern; India has worried about
a potential spillover of violence from civil wars in Afghanistan,
Nepal, and Sri Lanka; South Africa faced spillover from political
crises in Zimbabwe; and the war in Syria raised Turkey’s fears
about its own as well as regional stability. Many are, thus,
apprehensive that policies such as the R2P might be used as
justifications for interfering in their domestic affairs, infringing
on their sovereignty, or even promoting regime change, concerns
that were only heightened by the application of R2P in Libya but
not Syria (Li, 2019). These experiences, in turn, impact how new
donors approach other conflict-affected states and, in particular,
their wariness of interventionist policies that are at the core of the
liberal peace-building model.
Experiences with external domination and internal violent
conflict have also shaped how new donors conceptualize the
relationship between security and development. In particular,
most, although not all, new donors have historically focused
on establishing economic relationships with conflict-affected
states while avoiding political interventions. They largely avoid
using the term fragile state as they view it as an example
of an externally imposed definition of what a legitimate state
looks like. Furthermore, they see the fragility frame as making
poverty a security rather than a developmental challenge and
placing the blame for threats to global peace and security
on states of the Global South rather than the states of the
Global North who, they argue, have historically perpetuated
the most violence (Paczy´
nska, 2016, 2019). Thus, much of the
assistance they offer includes direct investment, trade deals,
and infrastructure development since they view poverty and
economic underdevelopment as the root cause of instability
and conflict and that, without sustainable development, long-
term peace is impossible. This understanding of the relationship
between development and conflict lies at the heart of their
critique of the liberal peace-building model, which they
believe has failed to effectively tackle the issue of sustainable
development3. At the same time, although many have also
provided peacekeeping troops to UN missions, they have
tended to be less willing to embrace more far-reaching peace-
building endeavors, viewing them as too interventionist in
domestic affairs of conflict-affected states. As we will see in
the section that follows, however, these policies of limited
support for expansive peace-building missions and policies
3Although new donors frame their assistance as promoting sustainable
development, whether their policies actually contribute to achieving it has come
under scrutiny. In particular, the long-term consequences of growing levels of
debts to China have raised concerns. See for example, Hurley et al. (2018) and
Chakrabarty (2020). These concerns have been questioned by other scholars. See,
for example, Bräutigam (2020).
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of non-interference have proven to be more malleable than
this rhetoric suggests.
NEW DONORS AND GEOGRAPHIC
PROXIMITY
Where rhetorical framings and policy diverge in significant
ways is in how new donors engage with conflict-affected states
in their geographic neighborhoods and those that are more
distant. In the former, security concerns tend to dominate; in
the latter, commercial interests usually take priority, although
these dynamics have been shifting over time, a point this study
will return to in the concluding section. In particular, their
commitment to non-intervention in affairs of other states has
been more tenuous when responding to violent conflicts in
areas they consider their spheres of influence. Here, concerns
of violent conflict spilling across national boundaries and
potentially affecting the internal stability of new donors mean
that many have long been willing to pursue policies that indicate
their commitment to non-intervention policies may be more
situational than the public rhetoric suggests.
India has long seen South Asia as its sphere of influence and
where it has sought to intervene in conflicts in neighboring states,
in particular, in Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Afghanistan. Here, as Aneja
argues, “India’s commitment to principles of sovereign equality
and noninterference in the region has been highly selective”
(Aneja, 2019, p. 57). In other words, when the security interests
of India are under threat in its immediate region, it is willing
to exert political pressure and intervene, including with military
force, into the internal affairs of other states.
In 1971, for example, India sent troops to East Pakistan during
the Bangladesh Liberation War following increasing violence of
the Pakistan army against the Bengali population, framing the
action as humanitarian intervention (Bass, 2015)4. In 1987, it
intervened militarily in the civil war in Sri Lanka between the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan
government, sending the Indian Peace Keeping Force following
the signing of the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord. Although it was
intended as a peacekeeping operation, the Indian forces engaged
the LTTE militarily before finally fully withdrawing in 1990.
In 1988, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi sent 1,600 troops to the
Maldives to stop an attempted coup. India has also sidestepped
non-intervention principles through non-military interventions.
In 2015, for instance, India wanted to see Nepal revise its
newly adopted constitution that aimed to bring the civil war
in the country to an end. New Delhi felt that some aspects
of the document risked continued instability in the country.
When diplomatic pressure did not lead to desired changes, India
implemented an economic blockade on Nepal to force through
constitutional revisions. At the same time, as competition for
4Bass cites Indian scholar Pratap Bhanu Mehta who argued that this intervention
has been “regarded as one of the world’s most successful cases of humanitarian
intervention against genocide. Indeed, India in effect applied what we would
now call the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) principle, and applied it well.” (p.
229) However, at the time, India found little support for its action within the
international community, including at the United Nations.
influence in the region with China has intensified, India has also
sometimes circumvented non-intervention principles when, for
instance, it decided to provide military equipment to the Sri
Lankan government during the 2009–2011 civil war.
India sees its security and economic development prospects
as closely tied to establishing stable, friendly states in the
region. Most recently, these priorities were articulated during
the United Progressive Alliance government (2004–2011) as well
as its successor Bharatiya Janata Party led by Narendra Modias
neighborhood first policies. Assistance to Afghanistan reflects
these concerns and priorities and has focused on linking security
and economic development as the most effective way of curtailing
the rise of regional extremist ideologies and establishing a
stable Afghanistan. These policies stood in stark contrast to
the relationship of India with conflict-affected states in Africa
where interest in securing access to raw materials and export
markets dominates and where India had framed its engagements
in terms of the South-South cooperation (Paczy´
nska, 2019, p. 12).
In these more geographically distant regions, however, as this
article will examine in the next section, as India’s investments
in conflict-affected states have expanded, the pressure to loosen
commitments to non-intervention principles have also grown.
We see similar dynamics in the policies of Turkey toward
conflict-affected states. Since the coming to power in 2003 of
the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey abandoned
its earlier support to the liberal peace-building model. Instead,
Ankara began framing its relationships with conflict-affected
states as humanitarian diplomacy based on Islamic principles,
which it has presented as an alternative to what it views as
failed Western interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rather
than trying to rebuild states that are affected by violent
conflict to look like the donor state, humanitarian diplomacy
focuses on supporting indigenous institutions that can ensure
sustainable economic development and efficient governance.
Turkey has applied this approach in its relationship with
Somalia, where it has focused on facilitating reconstruction
of state infrastructure, promoting economic development, and
supporting strengthening of local governance mechanisms, while
facilitating peace and reconciliation processes. However, Turkey’s
commitment to this approach and to non-intervention principles
came under strain with the eruption in 2011 of Arab uprisings
when Ankara became increasingly concerned about the impact
of the uprisings on the Kurdish autonomy movement and saw
its security interests threatened as protests in neighboring Syria
morphed into a civil war. Faced with these security challenges in
its immediate geographic neighborhood, Turkey abandoned its
adherence to non-intervention and non-interference principles
and began to openly support armed Sunni groups who were
fighting to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime (Tank, 2019).
Like Turkey, Qatar also moved away from its previous focus
on conflict mediation to a more interventionist approach in
the wake of the Arab uprisings and began to explicitly offer
support to rebels in Libya and Syria. In the latter, it funneled
$3 billion between 2011 and 2014 to opposition forces. It also
provided financial support to Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood
and President Mohamed Morsi during his tenure in office
(Barakat and Milton, 2019).
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Russia has also approached its near-abroad differently than
more distant parts of the globe. In its immediate geographic
neighborhood, and in particular, in Caucasus and Central Asia,
Russia has long seen itself as a hegemonic power, and its focus
is on ensuring stability both through development assistance
and prioritizing by addressing violence, since Russia views the
potential of conflicts spilling across borders as a direct threat
to its own security. The policies of Russia aim at reintegrating
former Soviet Republics through security and economic ties and
reducing the influence of other global powers, and development
assistance is, therefore, seen as a mechanism for “maintaining
general geopolitical influence in the region” (Sergeev et al.,
2013, p. 55). In addition to the creation of the Commonwealth
of Independent States Free Trade Area (CISFTA), Russia has
also signed a collective air defense system in the Caucasus
and in Central Asia. It has also signed a lease agreement
with Tajikistan on the 201st Motorized Rifle Division military
base that is in effect until 2042, and Moscow successfully
pressured Kyrgyzstan in 2014 to terminate the US Manas Air
Force base (Zürcher, 2019). Moscow has also been willing to
intervene militarily when it felt that its strategic interests in
the near abroad were threatened. In 1992, Moscow sent its
14th Army when secessionist conflict in Moldova escalated. In
2008, Russia backed the breakaway self-proclaimed republics
of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia. In 2014, its forces
invaded the Crimea region of Ukraine, and in 2020, Russia
sent peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh following the renewed
conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the province. The
2014 Concept statement underscores the link between Russian
development assistance and its national interests especially in
the near abroad. It argues that “active and targeted policy in the
field of international development assistance, which serves the
national interests of the country, contributes to stabilization of
the socioeconomic and political situation in partner states (. . . )
and facilitates the elimination of existing and potential hotbeds
of tension and conflict, especially in the regions neighboring the
Russian Federation” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian
Federation, 2014).
In contrast, the more recent Russian involvement in Latin
America is focused primarily on commercial relationships, arms
exports, and diplomatic outreach. Here, it has sought to develop
partnerships with countries interested in establishing institutions
not dominated by the United States and has forged a close
collaboration with Brazil through the BRICS group (Gurganus,
2018) and offered support to the Maduro regime in Venezuela
(Herbst and Marczak, 2019). Similarly, Moscow’s engagements
with African states are driven by a different set of interests and
while Moscow has been the largest weapons supplier to the
continent, concerns about Russia security here are supplanted
by interest in expanding economic relationships, including trade
and investments, building political alliances in the wake of the
2014 expulsion of Russia from the G-8 and sanctions imposed
by the West following the invasion of Ukraine, especially with
those states, such as Zimbabwe, that have been sanctioned by
the West, and as a strategy to increase its global stature at the
expense of Washington (Paczy´
nska, 2020). However, as Russia’s
footprint in Africa expanded along with its global ambitions and
the growing competition with other new donors, its engagements
with conflict-affected states on the continent have also become
more interventionist. In Central African Republic, for instance,
Russian diplomats and a Russian security firm, the Wagner
Group, have been active in supporting the government and
have facilitated negotiating ceasefire agreements with rebels
(Lewis, 2020). Moscow has also been increasingly deploying a
strategy that mixes security cooperation and electoral support for
embattled regimes, including Angola, DRC, and Mozambique, in
return for access to mineral resources and diplomatic support in
international fora such as the UN (Stronski, 2019).
EXPANDING INVESTMENTS, SHIFTING
SECURITY INTERESTS
In addition to the differences in how new donors approach
engagements with conflict-affected states in their immediate
neighborhoods vs. those that are further away, their policies
have also been shifting in response to realities on the ground in
conflict-affected states where they have a presence.
One of the consequences of the expanding footprint of new
donor in conflict-affected and fragile states is that maintaining
political neutrality and remaining on the sidelines can be
challenging, especially when violent conflict erupts. In these
contexts, it has often become more difficult for new donors to
maintain their adherence to non-interference policies. Although
each has responded differently, these tensions have been
especially visible in the experiences of India and China, which
have the largest financial investments in conflict-affected states.
Both countries have therefore been adjusting their policies to
these new realities, although they have done so differently with
China becoming directly and openly engaged with mediating
conflicts and supporting regional peace-building efforts, while
India has mediated conflicts only rarely and mostly in an ad-
hoc manner and informally. However, New Delhi is increasingly
including issues of peace and security in its South–South
collaborations. Both have also been shifting their engagements
with UN peacekeeping missions, including participating in more
robust operations involving direct combat. As the article will
discuss in the section that follows, the shifts in both countries
approach to peacekeeping and peace-building are also shaped
by their expanding global ambitions as well as the growing
competition between them.
Over the past 15 years, Chinese assistance has grown
significantly with the country disbursing about $350 billion
between 2000 and 2014 in various forms of financing, including
official development aid as well as other financial flows. Most of
its development and welfare assistance is concentrated in Africa,
while its commercial financial flows are more geographically
disbursed (AIDData,)5. In 2018, the China International
Development Cooperation Agency was created. By March 2020
it had signed agreements with 29 countries. Most are conflict-
affected states that rank high on the various fragile states lists6. In
5AIDData. See also, Kitano and Miyabayash (2020).
6There are a number of different fragile state lists that use somewhat different
methodologies, including annual rankings developed by the OECD and the Fund
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2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a massive infrastructure
development and investment project, began, and by 2020, it
stretched from East Asia to Europe, Middle East, and Africa with
over 60 countries which account for two-thirds of the global
population either signing onto the initiative or indicating plans
to do so. Many of these states, such as Afghanistan, DRC, Cote
d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Iraq, Liberia, Myanmar, and Nepal, among
others, are conflict-affected and fragile states. China has already
disbursed $200 billion in low-interest loans for the initiative by
2020. By some estimates, the total investment in the initiative
may be close to $1.3 trillion by 2027 (Chatzky and McBride,
2020). The BRI has been one of the key vehicles through which
China has sought to increase its political and economic influence
as its global aspirations rose. Recent survey results indicate
that the Chinese development assistance is viewed positively
by a majority of Africans (Lekorwe et al., 2016) and Middle
Easterners (Robbins, 2021). As these investments have expanded,
the number of Chinese businesses and migrant workers living
abroad have also increased. In Africa, for instance, there are
now more than 10,000 Chinese businesses and over 1,000,000
workers. Ensuring their security from crime, civil unrest and
terrorism have become a growing concern to Beijing (Alden and
Jiang, 2019, p. 653). These concerns have been amplified in states
affected by violent conflict. Consequently, as Alden and Jiang
point out, “China has recently been compelled to involve itself in
conflict areas outside its borders in ways that some—even some
Chinese—see as counter to its policy of non-interference” (Alden
and Jiang, 2019, p. 653).
Historically, China refrained from conducting international
mediation, believing that maintaining neutrality was most
conducive to achieving its national interests while maintaining its
policy of non-intervention (Chaziza, 2018). However, as multiple
violent conflicts have increasingly threatened its interests, China
has sought to shift its policies while seeking to maintain its
non-intervention preferences. These tensions between normative
commitments and policy choices have been most visible in South
Asia, Africa, and the Middle East where China has significant
investments and along the BRI locations and especially in
those contexts where its nationals and financial interests are
directly affected by violent conflict. There has been a notable
uptick of Chinese conflict mediation activity since 2013, the
same year that the BRI was launched (Legarda, 2018). In the
Middle East, which has become a key source of oil imports,
the interests of China in regional stability that would ensure
secure access to energy resources has also pushed Beijing to
become more involved in conflict mediation in the region,
including efforts to reduce tensions in the Persian Gulf and
the Straits of Hormuz (Balasubramanian, 2020). The expansion
of Chinese trade and investments beyond the oil sector in
finance, services, and renewables further fuels the interest of
Beijing in ensuring regional stability (Kuo, 2020). Furthermore,
as the global reach of China has expanded, the Chinese public
has become more aware and concerned about the impact of
conflict on its nationals, thus raising pressure on the Chinese
for Peace. In the 2020 OECD States of Fragility Report for instance, more than half
of states in Africa were classified as fragile.
government to be more proactive in conflict prevention. The
Chinese government has been increasingly relying on special
representatives to address escalating conflicts. In 2017 alone,
Beijing was involved in mediating nine conflicts in contrast to
only three in 2012 (Legarda, 2018). Unlike in the past when its few
mediation efforts were done quietly, for instance in Zimbabwe
and Nepal, now the Chinese government publicizes its efforts
in preventing, managing, and resolving conflicts through official
government statements and media coverage.
For instance, China played a central role in persuading the
government in Khartoum to accept a joint United Nations–
African Union (UN–AU) peacekeeping force in Darfur. It has
also engaged in dialogue on the Iranian nuclear issue, mediation
of the Yemen and Syrian civil wars, the Israeli-Palestine conflict,
contributed to South Sudan domestic reconciliation process,
supported the Afghanistan political transition, and has been
engaged in inter-ethnic reconciliation efforts in Myanmar and
mediation of the Myanmar-Bangladesh conflict regarding the
future of the Rohingya people (Legarda, 2018). In Libya,
Sudan, and South Sudan where China had large investments
in the petroleum industry, it played an important role in
mediating conflicts when violence escalated and threatened both
its investments and nationals working in these three countries.
Additionally, in South Sudan when it relapsed into civil war in
2014, China sent in peacekeeping troops to protect the assets
and personnel of the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation
(CNPC) (Bodetti, 2019). The involvement of China in conflict
mediation in the Middle East and Africa has been made easier by
its lack of colonial baggage that colors the relationships off these
states of these regions with other global powers (Chaziza, 2018).
In the Middle East, it has also focused on strengthening both
multilateral and bilateral cooperation with regional actors and
other global powers as a way to more effectively manage conflicts.
As its involvement in conflict mediation has grown, states
affected by violence have been increasingly looking to China
to play a stabilizing role. Thus, the combined dynamics of the
concern of China about protecting its investments and interests,
its global aspirations, and the interests of states affected by
violence are further increasing the shift in the Chinese foreign
policy toward more interventionist policies than was the case in
the past even as it maintains non-interference rhetorical framings
(Chaziza, 2018).
As its conflict mediation has expanded, China has sought to
walk a fine line in developing more interventionist policies while
continuing to frame its engagement in terms of non-interference.
It does so by limiting the stated objectives of the mediation
itself and by always consulting sovereign governments involved
in the mediation efforts, in what has been dubbed by some
scholars as “consultative intervention.” As Li points out, “the
logic is that if the host government is receptive and welcoming [to
the mediation] it no longer constitutes interference” (Li, 2019),
thus allowing China to significantly shift its policies without
appearing to abandon its fundamental principles. China also
engages in whatHirono (2019, p. 615), for example, has dubbed
“incentivized mediation,” in which Beijing uses its economic
power to “provide incentives or leverage for warring factions to
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come to the negotiating table, but which also lets the warring
factions formulate their own roadmap to peace talks.”
At the same time, China’s growing interest in ensuring
stability in Africa was reflected in the convening of the 2012
Forum on Africa–China Cooperation (FOCAC) meeting. Since
then, Beijing has expanded its security and multilateral peace-
building cooperation on the continent. It has signed onto the
Initiative on China–Africa Cooperative Partnership for Peace and
Security (ICACPPS) that aims to bolster local capacities, and
it has expanded its support to the African Union (AU), Africa
Standby Force, the Africa Capacity for Intermediate Response to
Crises, and the Africa Peace and Security Architecture (Alden
and Zheng, 2019). At the same time, Beijing also expanded its
contributions to peacekeeping operations, which, since 2013,
have included combat troops, which were deployed to Mali and
South Sudan (Alden and Jiang, 2019).
Although much smaller than that of China nonetheless, the
development assistance of India has also increased significantly
in the past couple of decades rising four-fold and reached $1.6
billion in 2017 (Aneja, 2019). An area where the engagement
of India has expanded rapidly has been in Africa. By 2020, it
had completed 194 development projects in 37 countries on
the continent and was working on completing an additional
77 projects worth $11.6 billion. Its trade and investment also
expanded significantly over the past two decades (Ministry of
External Affairs, Government of India, 2020c). By 2020, India
accounted for $62.6 billion or 6.4% of the total trade of Africa,
making it the third largest trading partner after China and
the US (Kurzydlowski, 2020). India has also become the fifth
largest investor on the continent, with more than $50 billion
in investments with most concentrated in oil and gas, mining,
and banking and textiles. In conflict-affected states, most of these
investments are in the natural resources sector. These expanding
relationships were reaffirmed at the fourth India-Africa Forum
Summit held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic in
September 2020 (Ministry of External Affairs, Government of
India, 2020a).
India has long been committed to policies of non-interference,
non-intervention, and respect for state sovereignty and has
therefore framed its relationships with conflict-affected states in
collaborative and non-hierarchical terms. These policy framings
have also meant that in Africa, India has generally tended to
“work around rather than directly engaging with sources of
political fragility” (Aneja, 2017). However, like China where its
investments have come under threat from violent conflicts, its
commitment to these principles has come under strain, and New
Delhi has been increasingly promoting a holistic approach to
state stability as a prerequisite to sustainable economic growth
and security. Overall, however, India has responded differently
than China to these challenges. While it has been engaged in
conflict mediation in its immediate geographic neighborhood
and has often pursued policies that strain its non-interventionist
principles, as discussed in the previous section, in other regions
where violence has threatened its investments and nationals and
challenged its security interests, it has been more reluctant to
engage directly in conflict resolution. The shifting policies of
India in Africa are reflected more in the increased focus on
security and peace in its engagements with regional organizations
and bilateral relationships while its conflict mediation efforts tend
to be informal and ad-hoc. Nonetheless, on occasion as in the
case of the Sudan–South Sudan conflict, where India had over
$ 2 billion invested in the gas and oil sector, India has engaged in
mediation. Here, in response to the recurring civil war following
the independence of South Sudan, New Delhi was also willing
to increase its contributions to the UN Mission in South Sudan
(UNMISS) and its troops here were willing to engage in robust
peacekeeping given the high levels of violence and resulting
threats to the civilian population (Mohan, 2016; United Nations,
2016).
As their economic and commercial relationships expanded,
India followed the footsteps of China in expanding its
collaboration with African states on issues of peace and security.
This new focus on security and conflict resolution was reflected
in the discussions at the India-Africa Forum Summits, with
the first one held in New Delhi in 2008. In 2011, at the
second summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, two documents,
the Addis Ababa Declaration and the Africa–India Framework
for Enhanced Cooperation, were adopted and set the terms
“for the establishment of a long-term and mutually beneficial
partnership encompassing diverse fields” Manohar Parrikar
Institute for Defence Studies Analysis, 2011b). Against this
backdrop of deepening relationship between India and Africa,
the first India-Africa Strategic Dialogue conference was held in
2011, focusing on issues of peace-building, conflict resolution,
and reconstruction as processes that would facilitate long-term
stability and ensure civil wars would not reignite. Thus, while
India continued to stress that all UN peacekeeping mandates
required the consent of the host states, nonetheless, it called for
sustained peacekeeping efforts that ensured peace-building based
on “pardon and integration” and attention to the unique features
of each conflict context to ensure a successful mission (Manohar
Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies Analysis, 2011a). Later,
strategic dialogues also focused on issues of terrorism, extremism,
and maritime security. Thanks to this long-term partnership,
thousands of African military personnel have been trained in
India (Aneja, 2019, p. 60).
With growing competition with China and new global
aspirations of the Modi government, which came to power
in 2014, India further expanded its diplomatic, military,
and security and peace engagements. In March 2018, India
established 18 new diplomatic missions on the continent.
By 2020, the number of diplomatic missions rose to 38. The
collaboration deepened further when in February 2020 India
and 50 African states signed the Lucknow Declaration, “which
appreciated that India and Africa were a significant part of the
Indo-Pacific continuum and that the AU Vision for peace and
security in Africa coincided with the vision of India of SAGAR
(Security and Growth for All in the Region)” in addition to
emphasizing the continued close investment and financial and
trading relationships (Ministry of External Affairs, Government
of India, 2020b). The signatories also pledged to continue
collaborating on peace and security issues, including conflict
prevention, resolution, management, and peace-building,
enhancing the “role of women in peacekeeping” and fighting
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terrorism, and urging the UN to adopt the Comprehensive
Convention on Terrorism (Ministry of External Affairs,
Government of India, 2020b). Furthermore, the declaration
pledged that there would be improved “exchange of experts and
expertise, training programs and capacity building, enhanced
support toward peacekeeping and post conflict reconstruction in
Africa” and improved various defense joint ventures (Ministry of
External Affairs, Government of India, 2020b).
Similar dynamics are at play in South Asia. As discussed
in the previous section, historically India has been much more
willing to intervene in its immediate geographic neighborhood
to ensure that violent conflicts do not spill across borders
affecting the internal of India. As its investments in the
region grew and competition with China intensified, India
has become more active in maintaining regional peace and
security and its “rising activism has resulted in India taking
the lead in crisis response as regional ‘leading power’ and ‘first
responder’ to natural and manmade disasters, including the
Nepal earthquake and the Myanmar refugee crisis” (Ministry of
External Affairs, Government of India, 2020b). India has also
become more directly involved in supporting peace-building
initiatives, such as the 2018 peace negotiations in Myanmar. Also
shifting is the willingness of India to support pro-democracy
initiatives. While initially India sided with China and Russia
in opposing western attempts at democracy promotion as a
way of resolving conflicts, for instance, voting against imposing
sanctions on Myanmar in 2007 in support of its pro-democracy
movement, as its regional competition with China increased
and its concerns about the destabilizing potential of the BRI
rose, this reluctance has declined. It is now much more
frequently emphasizing democracy and good governance in
forging cooperative partnerships with other states in the region
(Xavier, 2018).
GLOBAL ASPIRATIONS
A number of the new donors, and in particular China, India,
and Brazil, have increasingly aspired to playing more prominent
global roles. With these shifting aspirations, their policies toward
conflict-affected states have evolved as well, putting strains on
their commitment to non-intervention norms. At the same
time, as their global prominence grew, they also faced growing
pressure from Western donors and especially the United States
to contribute more to U.N. peacekeeping initiatives, although
Western donors remained concerned about the nature of Russian
and Chinese bilateral assistance to conflict-affected states. These
two dynamics have combined to create more tensions between
the rhetorical commitment to non-intervention policies which
the new donors have increasingly pursued.
In addition to the growing concern of China about protecting
its investments and nationals, the intensifying conflict mediation
efforts by Beijing are also motivated by the growing aspirations
of China to be seen as a responsible global power. During the
Trump presidency, in particular, President Xi has sought to
position China as a constructive actor on the global stage in
line with the long-term objective of Xi of turning China into
a global power by 2049 (Legarda, 2018). As a consequence of
these growing global ambitions, Chinese diplomats are involved
in more mediation and regional negotiation efforts than in
previous decades (Chaziza, 2018). In the Middle East, China uses
mediation not only to promote its own economic, political, and
security interests but also to cultivate its image as a responsible
global power and enhance its international prestige and to
enhance its influence as the regional balance of power shifts
(Chaziza, 2018; Li, 2019).
As tensions between China and the United States increased,
the Middle East has also become a region where China can
challenge Washington as an increasingly important economic
partner and one that, unlike the United States, has working
relationships will all the major states in the region, including
Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. These good relationships
have allowed Beijing to become an active mediator, positioning
itself as a regional peace-broker, including in Syria and Yemeni
civil wars and the Sudanese crisis. However, since Beijing
tries to mediate these conflicts without becoming embroiled
militarily, its approach, as one observer noted, “seems to be more
focused on solutions that can contain tensions and bring about
negative peace rather than long-term, futuristic, and sustainable
solutions” (Balasubramanian, 2020). At the same time, these good
relationships and mediation diplomacy have also meant that
these regional powers have not criticized the repression of China
of political opposition in Hong Kong and its Uyghur minority.
China, in addition to becoming more involved in conflict
mediation, also begun reevaluating its opposition to the R2P
principle and in particular Pillar Three, which discusses the
obligation of the international community to take action if a state
does not fulfill its obligations to protect its population. Although
the views of China and Western donors on the application
of R2P continue to diverge, there is also a clear convergence
under way with China endorsing its application in a number
of cases. However, this endorsement generally focuses on Pillars
One and Two, which focus on state responsibility to protect
its population from mass atrocities and the responsibility of
the international community to encourage and assist states in
doing so (Fung, 2016). At the same time, the interest of China
in playing a more prominent global role has translated into
greater engagement in peacekeeping operations since 2000. In
2004, China became the largest UNSC permanent member troop
contributor to the peacekeeping missions of the UN. Although,
initially, it contributed primarily to police, engineering, and
hospital units, in 2015, it began also fielding combat troops in
South Sudan and Mali and has established a logistics base in
Djibouti “in part to support” its peacekeeping troops stationed
in Africa (Gowan, 2020). In 2015, President Xi Jinping expanded
the commitment of China to peace and security with the pledge of
$1 billion to UN programs supporting initiatives in this area, and
Beijing has become increasingly engaged with debates at the UN
headquarters regarding peacekeeping policy (Alden and Zheng,
2019). Here, it has focused on how best to ensure the safety of
peacekeepers and trying to limit the number of human rights
officials assigned to the missions. Yet, despite its concerns with
what it views as overly interventionist aspects of peacekeeping
missions, it has nonetheless been signing onto UNSC mandates
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that include “expansive language on the responsibility of UN
forces to protect civilians, advance human rights, and relate
priorities” (Gowan, 2020). By 2020, China had 2,534 Chinese
nationals at UN missions in South Sudan, Sudan, Mali, and the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This tension underscores
the challenge of combining growing global ambitions with non-
interventionist principles.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, China intensified its efforts
to position itself as a responsible global power, providing
assistance through multilateral and bilateral channels to help
fight the pandemic and distributing medical supplies, medical
teams, and vaccines. At the UN, Chinese representatives linked
the fight against the pandemic to long-term peace-building
approaches that should be “development-focused and socially
inclusive” and emphasized the need for solidarity, collaboration,
and multilateralism (United Nations, 2020). The extraordinary
China-Africa Summit of Solidarity in the Face of COVID-19
held in June 2020 also underscored the link between the ongoing
public health crisis and peace (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the
People’s Republic of China, 2020).
Despite long being one of the largest contributors to the
UN peacekeeping forces, India has been quite skeptical about
the effectiveness of external interventions in conflict-affected
states, concerned that such interventions often exacerbate the
very problems they are designed to solve (Aneja, 2019) and
saw the primary responsibility for building sustainable peace as
ultimately resting with conflict-affected states themselves with
the international community playing only a supportive role.
However, as its global ambitions grew, India, like China, has
shifted its approach to issues of peace and security, upped
its contributions to the UN Democracy Fund, became an
active member of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, and
recognized the R2P principle in 2009, all with an eye toward
bolstering its great power aspirations (Chandy, 2012). Although
India has a much smaller global footprint than China and
remains much more reluctant to engage in public mediation
diplomacy and continues to be more preoccupied with its
immense domestic challenges, its key role as a contributor
of troops to UN peacekeeping missions is seen by New
Delhi as a way to make a strong case for its inclusion as a
permanent member of the UNSC (Manohar Parrikar Institute
for Defence Studies Analysis, 2011a). As it has sought to
attain great power status, India has also continued to frame its
engagements with the Global South in terms of solidarity, non-
interference, and respect for state sovereignty and to present
itself as “an alternative power” that values morality and non-
coercion (Pu, 2017). Despite these norms in practice while
participating in the many UN peacekeeping operations over
the years, the military contingents of India have sometimes
undertaken “robust” operations, sometimes engaging in direct
combat (Mukherjee, 2015; Pu, 2017). The new, more expansive
engagement with peace and security challenges has also meant
that the policies of India have placed new strains on non-
intervention norms.
As in the case of India and China, as Brazil’s global
ambitions shifted, its commitment to non-intervention policies
also came under strain. Historically, the foreign engagements
of Brazil reflected the values of its 1988 constitution, which
stated that these must be “guided by the principles of non-
interference, equity among states, the peaceful resolution of
conflicts” and a commitment to human rights (Esteves, 2019).
As the interventions in conflict-affected states of the UN
became more extensive during the 1990’s, Brazil continued its
adherence to these values, frequently voicing concerns about
unilateral military interventions. For these reasons, despite
supporting peacebuilding initiatives of the UN, Brasilia opposed
the increasingly frequent peace enforcement missions. These
views were also reflected in the opposition of Brazil to the Agenda
for Peace put forward by UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-
Ghali in 1992, which it viewed as a “reinterpretation of the
Security Council’s mandate toward a more militarized direction”
(Esteves, 2019), making it easier for the UN to contemplate more
coercive interventions in the future. Brazil was also concerned
that the Agenda may encourage major global powers to rely
on military force rather than on negotiations and diplomacy
to address conflict and security challenges. It was particularly
concerned that the international community, with the adoption
of this new framework, might be moving away from requiring the
consent of states before peacekeeping troops could be deployed
on their territory, something that Brazil saw as essential to
respecting norms of state sovereignty.
However, by the early 2000’s, the aspirations of Brazil to
playing a more prominent global role began shifting during
the administration of President Lula. As Harig and Kenkel
(2017, p. 626) point out, the goal of this shift in policies was
to cement “the role of country as a relevant participant in
global governance. The prime goal of this increased activism in
international affairs was ultimately the permanent membership
of Brazil in the UNSC”. However, as its priorities evolved, Brasilia
began grappling with tensions between its new foreign policy
objectives and aspirations to be seen as a “responsible” global
power and its commitment to non-interventionist norms. In
Latin America, this shift was reflected in more active engagement
with conflict-affected countries in its immediate neighborhood,
and in particular, Bolivia, Colombia, and Venezuela. At the
global level, it came in the form of reduced opposition to the
Agenda for Peace and the R2P doctrine and, in particular, Pillar
Three. Here, both the Lula and the Rousseff governments (2003–
2011 and 2011–2016) sought to shape norms underpinning the
international order and in particular pushed for fairer treatment
of all states while mostly supporting liberal norms. Although
in the end, Brazil dropped the initiative, in 2011 it sought to
modify the norms underpinning R2P by promoting an alternative
“responsibility while protecting,” which called for “strict political
and chronological sequencing of R2P’s three pillars and making
a conceptual distinction between collective responsibility and
collective security” (Kenkel, 2016). This initiative emerged in
response to the NATO intervention in Libya enabled by UNSC
Resolution 1973. Many new donors, including Brazil, were deeply
suspicious of the motives behind the action of the West. Thus,
Brazil was forced to deal with tensions between its principle
of non-intervention and its commitment to working through
multilateral institutions on peace promotion and its increasing
acceptance of R2P. Brasilia sought to resolve these tensions by
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accepting the norms underpinning R2P, mass atrocity prevention
and human right protection, while criticizing the selective
implementation of the norm by the international community
(Harig and Kenkel, 2017, p. 631).
At the same time, Brazil sought to develop alternative
new international fora, such as the BRICS collaboration, IBSA
Dialogue Forum, and the G-10, where it could play a prominent
role and increasingly become an international norm-setter. It
also expanded its role in such organizations as the Union
of South American States and the Community of Portuguese
Language Countries and worked to play a more central role in
a variety of multilateral organizations. At the UN, Brazil was a
key actor in setting up the Peacebuilding Architecture, including
the Peacebuilding Commission, chairing the country security
configuration of the Commission for Guinea-Bissau in 2007. All
these efforts were done with an eye toward “boosting its bid for a
permanent seat on the UNSC” (Call and Abdenur, 2017).
As it shifted its global ambitions, Brazil also faced tensions
regarding how to engage in UN peacekeeping missions as they
become more expansive in the 1990’s raising concerns about their
increasingly coercive nature. Despite these concerns, Brazil took
the lead of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH)
in 2004. While deploying its military, which often engaged in
coercive action, Brazil sought to resolve the tension between
its non-intervention principles and its leadership of the Haiti
mission by emphasizing the humanitarian and development
aspects of the mission. Nonetheless, the leadership of Brasilia of
the MINUSTAH represented a significant change in its foreign
policies and strained its commitment to non-interventionist
norms. Since 2011, Brazil has also taken on an important role
in the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNFIL) to project an
image of peace provider in a conflict-affected region and as “part
of a broader policy project of Brazilian influence and presence
(. . . ) projecting an image of a responsible power capable of
having a positive influence in maintaining international peace
and security” (Silva et al., 2017).
CONCLUSION
The past couple of decades have seen the emergence of
new donors who framed their assistance to conflict-affected
states very differently than Western donors have done. In
particular, because of their own experiences with hegemonic
and colonial domination and violent conflict, these new donors
have emphasized South–South collaboration, reciprocity, and
solidarity, and non-intervention norms in their engagements
with conflict-affected states. However, as this article has argued,
the non-intervention norm has always been applied more
selectively than the public rhetoric has suggested, with new
donors historically willing to pursue interventionist policies in
states that are geographically proximate and where their security
interests are at stake. Furthermore, as the economic footprint
of new donor has expanded with investments and nationals
more frequently located in states affected by violent conflict, as
their global ambitions have risen and finally as the competition
among the new donors has intensified, these non-intervention
norms have come under new strains. China has expanded
its involvement in conflict mediation efforts. Both China and
India have developed new agreements with African states that
focus on addressing issues of peace and security. Finally, Brazil,
China, and India have played increasingly important roles in
UN peacekeeping and peace-building policies and operations.
Since its 2014 invasion of Crimea, Russia has also expanded its
military and political engagements with conflict-affected states
in Africa. It has sought to influence elections, negotiated to
establish military bases, and its semi-private military groups
moved in to shore up some conflict-affected states, such as
the Central African Republic, as it seeks new diplomatic allies
and to more effectively compete with India and China on
the continent. The COVID-19 pandemic has further solidified
these trends, with new donors looking to demonstrate their
ability to play more prominent global roles by increasing their
assistance to countries affected by the dual public health and
economic crisis.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and
has approved it for publication.
FUNDING
United State Institute of Peace, grant number USIP-108-13F.
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