In the absence of credible commitments, factions agree to peace negotiations and settlements under the supervision and guarantee of a third party. In doing so, the third party becomes what Stephen Stedman called a “custodian of peace” defined as an international actor whose task is to oversee the implantation of peace agreements.” The United Nations (UN), through its United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR) oversaw the implantation of the Arusha Peace Accords, singed in 1993 by the government of Rwanda and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). However, what happens when the third party, the custodian of peace, is in fact, a custodian of war? After the annexation of Crimea and the ensuing civil war in the south east of Ukraine, the peace efforts to end the conflict and restore stability to Ukraine have taken the route of the Minsk agreements. Negotiated between Ukraine, France, Germany, and Russia, the Minsk agreements have not reached fruition. On the one hand, Germany and France lacked the willingness and ability to enforce the tenets of the agreements. On the other hand, Russia assumed the responsibilities of the custodian of peace such as enforcing ceasefires, while at the same time supporting the rebels in the south east as a custodian of war.

This presents a two-fold puzzle. Firstly, why do states shift from sponsoring war to enforcing peace? Secondly, and more importantly, why would parties entrust a rival with the future of their peace? This talk answers these questions by proposing a theory of war spoiling as an explanatory variant to mainstream theories emphasizing spoilers of peace. The theory flips the current argument on war recurrence on its head and takes it back to very start of the debate: it is not war that is the problem, but peace and its prospect thereof. The intellectual roots are the arguments made by Stedman in his influential article on spoilers of peace processes. This talk adds an important dimension: the custodians of peace as a spoilers themselves. This is a departure from the literature which so far has operated under the assumption that the custodian’s role is the cultivation and protection of peace and the management of spoilers. In so doing, the argument proposes a reconsideration of the current appreciation of the complexity of the problems of war-to-peace transitions and war recurrence by bringing to the centre a known actor, the third party, in the yet unexplored capacity of spoiler of peace, enabler of war.

Vladimir Rauta is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Reading. His research focuses on proxy wars and external support to violent parties in civil wars. Currently, he is researching the micro dynamics of political violence in proxy wars, with a focus on Africa and the Middle East.