National Interests as Friction: Peacekeeping in Somalia and Mali

Abstract

The concept of friction is applied to challenge the assumption that the main goal of peace support operations is to permanently stabilise a country. By exploring missions in Somalia and Mali, where neighbouring states are the main troop contributors, we suggest to focus on the interaction among troop-contributing countries within missions. They express how national interests play out in the framework of international organisations. Even when a mission deploys, rules that should define how cooperation is to occur during deployment are lacking, especially when they contradict national interests of individual troop contributors. The result is mission incoherence and fragmentation.