These days, the line between war and peace is a blur. It’s not just armies facing off anymore. You’ve got non-state groups, shadowy networks, cyber attacks, propaganda, and all sorts of proxy battles spilling over borders. The old rules about who’s a combatant and who’s a civilian just don’t hold up. And in the middle of all this mess, the United Nations is expected to keep the peace. No surprise that UN peacekeeping is feeling the heat these days.
Let’s take a closer look at how the UN is attempting to adapt, what’s getting in the way, and where all this may be leading us.
So, what then is a hybrid conflict?
Hybrid wars have everything in the pot: traditional troops, guerrillas, cyber warriors, disinformation, economic sanctions, battles over territory or resources you name it. Non-state actors are involved big time. These aren’t conflicts where you can simply draw a line down the map and say, “This side vs. that side.” And the fighting occurs everywhere: on land, sea, air, in cyberspace, and in the information space. For peacekeepers, who had a relatively simple job to monitor a ceasefire, guard civilians, assist in rebuilding the mission now is much more difficult to define, let alone execute.
Why UN Peacekeeping Still Matters
For years, the blue helmets of the UN have been the world’s first choice when peace disintegrates. They intervene to end gunfire, assist nations in their recovery, make humanitarian relief feasible, and assist in establishing new governments. When it goes well, peacekeeping keeps fragile states together and provides citizens a chance at genuine peace.
But the game has changed. The UN is aware of it. Even on the UN’s own website, they acknowledge wars are becoming “more complex and deadly,” longer in duration, mired in regional and international politics. Simply showing up and observing is no longer sufficient. Peacekeepers must know quickly and act even quicker.
Biggest Hurdles for UN Peacekeeping in the Hybrid Era
1. The Battlefield Has Changed
Old-fashioned peacekeeping presumed you could identify who the combatants were, map out the combatants’ lines, and play by a set of rules. No longer. You’re now facing:
– Militias that straddle borders and do not report to any government.
– Technology such as drones, cyber attacks, secure chats, and misinformation.
– It’s nearly impossible to separate fighters from civilians, which complicates protecting people.
– Conflicts don’t remain localized; they bring in neighbors and outside forces.
Therefore, peacekeepers can’t simply get wedged between two armies. They must be on the move, connected, and prepared to respond nearly everywhere.
2. Stretched Too Thin
The UN itself reports that its greatest headache is the mismatch between what missions require and what they get. Most operations are hampered by bad roads, challenging terrain, unreliable supply lines, and strained communications. Slowing everything down is bureaucracy when flexibility and rapidity are so important.
3. Trust and Credibility on the Line
In hybrid wars, disinformation is not only a hassle it can kill credibility in peacekeepers, their impartiality, even their entitlement to be there. If locals perceive the blue helmets take sides or fail to guard civilians, the entire mission’s credibility crashes. And the more participating countries, the more challenging to be perceived as just and efficient.
4. Politics Gets in the Way
The greatest danger to peacekeeping? UN officials tell us it’s “divisions among Member States.” Geopolitics, Security Council vetoes, and nations not willing to cooperate all work to make strong peacekeeping missions more difficult to initiate. Typically, the UN goes into areas where “peace” is in short supply areas mired in lengthy, sordid conflict.
5. Complicated Partnerships
Now there are “hybrid missions” where the UN, regional organizations such as the African Union, or other security alliances collaborate. That creates all kinds of headaches: Who’s in command? Whose regulations do you obey? With so many players, coordinating is difficult.
6. Falling Behind on Tech
Armed actors employ drones, encrypted communications, and cyber capabilities for their benefit. Peacekeepers, on the other hand, are falling behind. The battle isn’t on the battlefield anymore it’s online, in the press, everywhere. The UN must get smarter and speedier in this arena.
The bottom line? The laws of war have evolved, and UN peacekeeping must do the same — or risk falling behind.
Illustrative Examples of
For the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the operation discovered that there was conflicting interpretation of cease-fire obligations among the parties, and disinformation was a major problem for the credibility of the mission.
The larger UN commentary argues that “we are clearly in a situation more faced than ever heretofore with intrastate and interstate conflict than at any time during the post-World War II era”.
Unless peacekeepers are taught to adapt, missions can be made obsolete, wasteful or worse, counter-productive (undermining confidence, not protecting civilians).
Hybrid conflicts can be very costly humanitarianly expensive, create refugee flows, constrict development, and destabilise regions.
The spill-over effects: terrorism, organised crime, arms trade, environmental/climate related violence all overlap with hybrid conflict processes.
To the UN’s credibility, multilateralism and global governance, successful peacekeeping is at the top.
How UN Peacekeeping Can Adapt
How UN Peacekeeping Can Evolve
The scope of the challenges as much as they are, there are a number of ways that one can evolve and reform:
1. Mandates and Capability
Mandates need to be reflective of conflict’s hybridity: more than observation, but capabilities against multi domain threats (cyber, disinformation, drones).
Peacekeepers require increased situational awareness, timely intelligence, technological surveillance.The UN itself recognizes the need for innovation: “our future monitoring efforts will need to address threats that extend beyond the traditional physical domains.”
2. Resource Matching and Flexibility
Align resources (troops, equipment, logistics, communications) with the mission environment’s complexity.
Enhance rapid deployment arrangements, rules of engagement flexibility and mission architecture flexibility.
Enhance in infrastructure, communications, local transportation and access.
2. Building Local Legitimacy and Information Operations
Deploy official communications plans to counter propaganda and establish a trust relationship with the people.
Guarantee local outreach, partnership, transparency, and inclusive participation processes.
Recognize that peacekeeping will have to be politically rooted: operate in support of local political processes, inclusive governance and peacebuilding.
4.Strengthening Coordination and Hybrid Mission Design
Where regional actors are engaged in missions, private actors or more than one state, role clarification, command unification and coordination mechanisms have to be enforced.
The UN has to engage regional actors (AU, EU, regional security institutions) neutrally, uniformly, and responsibly.
5. Technological Innovation and Leverage
Draw drones, satellite imaging, AI, end-to-end secure communication into peacekeeping.
Install cyber-capabilities (defense and surveillance), digital forensics to counter disinformation, and crisis-response systems.
Train peacekeepers in new domains like cyber, information operations, and multi-domain situational awareness.
6. Political Will and Global Cooperation
Increased Member State involvement: aligned mandates, budgeting, troop deployments, sustained political support.
Security Council and peace operations architecture reform will have to be realigned to 21st-century realities.
Healing great power divisions is paramount: in the absence of political cohesion, missions are compromised.
A Word on Ethical and Legal Dimensions
In hybrid conflict environments, peacekeepers have to engage with new unforeseen dangers in previous formats: cyber-attacks, sabotage, combat through disinformation, non-state actor drones. Legal frameworks (Rules of Engagement, international humanitarian law, host state agreement, and neutrality) have to be learned and even evolved. Civilian protection is also a matter, but without infringing mandate, interfering in local politics or violating neutrality.
Also, peacekeeper responsibility is still key; credibility is still tenuous. Operations should be able to preserve respect for human rights, avoid infringing upon quasi-combatant functions, and preserve the separation of peacekeeping from warfighting.
Looking Ahead
The following is some recommended description of how a successful UN peacekeeping operation in a hybrid-conflict setting would be:
A clear, realistic mandate based on the character of the conflict—translated into rules of engagement and capacity, and resources.
Locally pertinent mission, communication interaction with the local community, ability to counter disinformation.
Technology-enabled situational awareness (drones, satellite imagery, cyber-surveillance) applied in operations.
A modular adaptive deployment ability: can react fast, react to shifting flows, switch from monitor to protective roles.
Clear roles, coordination with regional authorities. Effective coordination at international, regional, national, and local levels.
Logistics, funding, transportation and infrastructure to operate in challenging terrain and across sectors.
Political backing by Member States, overall backing in the Security Council, and an evident exit strategy or transition process.
Conclusion
In the case of hybrid war, the role of UN peacekeeping could never have been so vital but no more challenging. The traditional assumptions of peacekeeping keeping vigil over cease-fires, exercising visibility, building stability are being stretched to the limit in an environment where fight spaces are not linear, heroes are multiple and amorphous, technology is dominant, and war and peace become indistinct.
To stay effective, the UN will have to embrace innovation, reexamine its mandates, spend on technology, improve coordination and legitimacy, and wed its assets to its ambition. The price of failure is high: long wars, humanitarian catastrophes, instability with cross-border spillovers, and the devaluation of multilateralism itself.
To peace practitioners, policymakers, and civil society, the task at hand now is to educate peacekeepers not only to maintain peace but to rule peace in a growing sophisticated hybrid environment.
Written By: Perseverance Phusewa, Lovely Professional university
Email: [email protected]
Dr Samta Kuthuria
