title: Peacekeeping

text: Shortly thereafter, the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC), was deployed in 1960. This operation involved upwards of 20,000 military personnel at its peak, and resulted in the death of 250 UN personnel, including then Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold. ONUC was meant to ensure the withdrawal of Belgian forces in the Congo, who had reinserted themselves after Congolese independence in the wake of a revolt carried out by the Force Publique (FP), in order to protect Belgian citizens and economic interests. ONUC was also tasked with establishing and maintaining law and order (helping to end the FP revolt and ethnic violence) as well as provide technical assistance and training to Congolese security forces. An additional function was added to ONUC's mission, in which the force was tasked with maintaining the territorial integrity and political independence of the Congo—resulting from the secession of the mineral-rich provinces of Katanga and South Kasai. The UN forces there, somewhat controversially, more or less became an arm of the Congolese government at the time and helped to forcefully end the secession of both provinces.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the UN created multiple short-term missions all over the world including the Mission of the Representative of the Secretary-General in the Dominican Republic (DOMREP), the UN Security Force in West New Guinea (UNSF), the UN Yemen Observation Mission (UNYOM), in conjunction with more long-term operations such as the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), the UN Emergency Force II (UNEF II), the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).


title: Peacekeeping

text: Experiences of peacekeeping during the Yugoslav Wars, especially failures such as the Srebrenica Massacre, led, in part, to the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission, which works to implement stable peace through some of the same civic functions that peacekeepers also work on, such as elections. The Commission currently works with six countries, all in Africa. In 2013 the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2122, which among other things calls for stronger measures regarding women's participation in conflict and post-conflict processes such as peace talks, gender expertise in peacekeeping missions, improved information about the impact of armed conflict on women, and more direct briefing to the Council on progress in these areas. Also in 2013, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), a UN women's rights committee, said in a general recommendation that states that have ratified the UN Women's Rights Convention are obliged to uphold women's rights before, during, and after conflict when they are directly involved in fighting, and/or are providing peacekeeping troops or donor assistance for conflict prevention, humanitarian aid or post-conflict reconstruction.


title: Peacekeeping

text: The Committee also stated that ratifying states should exercise due diligence in ensuring that non-state actors, such as armed groups and private security contractors, be held accountable for crimes against women.


title: Peacekeeping

text: One of the findings of Page Fortna about where peacekeepers go is that "peacekeeping is a matter of supply and demand" From the supply side, she observes that there is unlikely a Peacekeeping mission in civil wars on countries close to one of the members of the Security Council. From the demand side, there is diverse evidence that peacekeeping missions are deployed in the countries who need it the most, this is where the risk of a recurring war is high.


title: Peacekeeping

text: The United Nations Charter stipulates that to assist in maintaining peace and security around the world, all member states of the UN should make available to the Security Council necessary armed forces and facilities. Since 1948, about 130 nations have contributed military and civilian police personnel to peace operations. While detailed records of all personnel who have served in peacekeeping missions since 1948 are not available, it is estimated that up to one million soldiers, police officers and civilians have served under the UN flag on its 71 missions. As of September 2021, 122 countries were contributing a total of around 76,000 military observers, police, and troops.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Despite the large number of contributors, the greatest burden continues to be borne by a core group of developing countries. The ten largest troop contributing countries (including police and military experts) to UN peacekeeping operations as of October 2021 were Bangladesh (6447), Nepal (5536), India (5481), Rwanda (5263), Ethiopia (4856), Pakistan (3949), Egypt (2818), Indonesia (2818), Ghana (2296), and China (2248). More than 14,000 civilian personnel serve in peacekeeping operations as legal or medical experts, educators, communication technology professionals, or administrators as of October 2021.


title: Peacekeeping

text: As of 30 September 2021, 4147 people from over 100 countries have been killed while serving on peacekeeping missions. India has the highest number of peacekeeper casualties with 174, followed by Bangladesh (159), Pakistan (159), Nigeria (157), Ghana (145), Ethiopia (138), Canada (123), France (115) and the United Kingdom (106). Since 1948, 56 peacekeepers have been killed each year on average, but recent decades have seen this number almost double, with 110 deaths per year since 2001. 30% of the fatalities in the first 55 years of UN peacekeeping occurred between 1993 and 1995.


title: Peacekeeping

text: There is a strong North-South divide in peacekeeping in that developing nations from the Global South provide the overwhelming majority of peacekeepers. Thomas G. Weiss and Giovanna Kuele argue that this is due to three factors: regional interests, prestige, and financial benefits. African countries are the largest contributors of peacekeepers, but the continent also has the highest number of peacekeeping missions, and most African peacekeepers serve on African missions. As an example, almost all 4800 Ethiopian peacekeepers are deployed in its neighboring countries of Sudan and South Sudan. Being a contributor to peacekeeping missions also provides some international prestige for developing countries, and can bolster countries' claims to be a great power as in the case of Brazil and India. Lastly, providing peacekeepers can have financial benefits for poorer countries. The monthly rate of reimbursement per peacekeeper includes $1,028 for pay and allowances; $303 supplementary pay for specialists; $68 for personal clothing, gear and equipment; and $5 for personal weaponry. Both the direct payments and the training and equipment provided by UN peacekeeping missions can be financially attractive to individual soldiers and developing nations. About 4.5% of the troops and civilian police deployed in UN peacekeeping missions come from the European Union and less than one percent from the United States.


title: Peacekeeping

text: With regard to mission leadership, Force Commanders often come from large troop contributors, while the Special Representatives of the Secretary General often come from developed countries.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Security Council Resolution 1325 was the first major step taken by the UN to include women as active and equal actors in “the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response and in post-conflict reconstruction and stresses the importance of their equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security”. A critique of this resolution is that UNSCR 1325 proposes the implementing gender mainstreaming, however the progress that has been accomplished in this area has focused on women, rather than on assessing the impacts of planned action on both men and women. In 2010, a comprehensive 10-year impact study was conducted to assess the success of this resolution and found that there was limited success with the implementation, particularly in the increasing women's participation in peace negotiations and peace agreements, and sexual and gender-based violence has continued to be prevalent, despite efforts to reduce it.


title: Peacekeeping

text: In 2013 the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2122, which among other things calls for stronger measures regarding women's participation in conflict and post-conflict processes such as peace talks, gender expertise in peacekeeping missions, improved information about the impact of armed conflict on women, and more direct briefing to the Council on progress in these areas. Also in 2013, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), a UN women's rights committee, said in a general recommendation that states that have ratified the UN Women's Rights Convention are obliged to uphold women's rights before, during, and after conflict when they are directly involved in fighting, and/or are providing peacekeeping troops or donor assistance for conflict prevention, humanitarian aid or post-conflict reconstruction The Committee also stated that ratifying states should exercise due diligence in ensuring that non-state actors, such as armed groups and private security contractors, be held accountable for crimes against women.


title: Peacekeeping

text: As of July 2016, women serve in every UN peacekeeping mission either as troops, police, or civilian staff. In 1993, women made up 1% of deployed uniformed personnel. In 2020, out of approximately 95,000 peacekeepers, women constituted 4.8% of military personnel, 10.9% of police personnel, and 34% of justice and corrections personnel in UN peacekeeping missions. As of September 2021, no state contributing more than 100 UN peacekeepers nominates more than 25% women; in absolute numbers, the largest female contingents are provided by Ethiopia (578 female peacekeepers, or 12% of its total forces), Rwanda (500/10%), and Ghana (389/17%). While there is no set target for the proportion of women among military personnel, the UN is requesting contributing states to nominate a minimum of 20% women for policer officer positions and 30% for justice and corrections personnel.


title: Peacekeeping

text: While much has been written about peacekeeping and what peacekeepers do, very little empirical research has taken place in order to identify the manner in which peacekeepers can have an impact in a post-conflict environment. Columbia University Professor Virginia Page Fortna attempted to categorize four causal mechanisms through which peacekeepers have the opportunity to lay the groundwork for a lasting peace. Fortna's four mechanisms are as follows:


title: Peacekeeping

text: Fortna argues that peacekeepers have a positive impact on the peace process, despite often being sent to places where peace is most difficult to achieve. Peacekeeping is often looked at by detractors as ineffective, or unnecessary. Peace prevails when belligerents already have a vested interest in sustaining peace and therefore it could be argued that Peacekeepers play only a minor role in creating a strong foundation for enduring peace. Yet these causal reasons illustrate the important roles that Peacekeepers play in ensuring that peace lasts, especially when contrasted against situations in which belligerents are left to their own devices. These causal reasons thus illustrate the need for Peacekeeping and lay a foundation for the manner in which Peacekeeping operations can have a substantive impact on the post-conflict environment.


title: Peacekeeping

text: In order to change the incentives for war and make peace more appealing the UN can provide a military force by way of an enforcement mandate which provides deterrence to would-be spoilers. They can monitor the situation making the potential for surprise attack by one of the belligerents less likely to occur or by making it more difficult to carry out such an attack. A lightly-armed observer mission can also serve as an early-warning force or "tripwire" for the aforementioned enforcement mission. Aid and recognition provided to the belligerents by the international community should be made conditional and based on compliance with objectives laid out in the negotiating process. And lastly, peace dividends should be provided in the forms of jobs, public works and other benefits.


title: Peacekeeping

text: To reduce uncertainty and fear the UN Peacekeeping force can monitor the aforementioned compliance, facilitate communication between belligerents in order to ease security dilemma concerns thus reassuring belligerents that the other side will not renege, and allow for belligerents to signal their legitimate intentions for peace to the other side. That is to say, provide a meaningful pathway for communication between both sides to make their intentions known and credible.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Prevention and control of potential accidents that may derail the peace process can be achieved by the peacekeeping force by deterring rogue groups. Belligerent forces are often undisciplined without a strong central source of command and control, therefore while a peace is being negotiated there is potential for a rogue group on one side to renege and spoil the peace process. UN forces can serve to prevent this. Additionally, the UN force can serve as a moderator and make communication easy between both parties and bring in political moderates from either side. By providing law and order UN peacekeeping forces can temporarily replace a state's security forces and prevent a bias overreaction to an alleged violation by one side which could in turn result in escalation and a renewal in the violence.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Prevention of political abuse can be achieved through the reformation of institutions associated with the government. Training and monitoring the security forces (e.g. army or police) help to make them an unbiased protector of the people rather than a weapon of suppression for the ruling government. Hopefully this training can bring trust by the people for the security establishment. UN forces can also run and monitor elections in order to ensure a fair process. In other cases, the UN may provide a neutral interim government to administer the country during a transitional period wherein the associated government institutions are being retrained, reformed or better developed. Lastly, military groups such as armed rebels can be encouraged to put down their weapons and transformed into political organisations using appropriate non-violent means to mete out their grievances and compete in the election cycle. This is especially important as many of these groups serve as the chief opposition to a given government, but lack the means or know-how to operate effectively as political organisations.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Different peacekeeping missions take place as a result of different causal mechanisms. More military deterrence and enforcement are meant for those missions operating under the auspices of Chapter VII, while Chapter VI missions are meant to serve more as monitoring forces and interpositional operations are meant to target and prevent potential political abuse—these are primarily multidimensional missions and are heavily involved in the post-conflict political situation.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Reviews of the academic literature show considerable evidence that peacekeeping increases peace. According to Fortna, there is strong evidence that the presence of peacekeepers significantly reduces the risk of renewed warfare; more peacekeeping troops contribute to fewer battlefield deaths; and more peacekeeping troops contribute to fewer civilian deaths. A study by political scientists at Uppsala University and Peace Research Institute Oslo estimates that an ambitious UN peacekeeping policy with a doubled peacekeeping operation and strong mandates would "reduce the global incidence of armed conflict by two thirds relative to a no-PKO scenario." According to Fordham University political scientist Anjali Dayal, "Scholars have found that peacekeeping keeps wars from bleeding across borders. Having more peacekeepers on the ground also seems to correspond with fewer civilians targeted with violence. And peace operations at times have successfully served as transitional authorities, handing power back to local authorities, although this is decreasingly true." A 2018 study found that peacekeeping reduces the severity of civil war on its own, but when it is coupled with mediation, the impact is greater. There is also evidence that the promise to deploy peacekeepers can help international organizations bring combatants to the negotiation table and increase the likelihood that they will agree to a cease-fire.


title: Peacekeeping

text: By controlling for specific factors that affect where peacekeepers are deployed and what the potential chances for peace are, Page Fortna's statistical research shows that there is a statistically significant impact on lasting peace when peacekeepers are deployed. Despite the fact that peacekeepers are sent to locations where peace is least likely to succeed, Fortna finds that conservative estimates suggest that the presence of UN peacekeepers diminishes the risk for renewed violence by at least 55%-60%; with less conservative estimates upwards of 75%-85%. Additionally, her analysis concludes that there is little difference in the effectiveness between Chapter VI consent-based missions and Chapter VII enforcement missions. Indeed, enforcement missions only remain effective if the UN peacekeeping force can prove and sustain their credibility in the use of force. This stresses the importance of a UN mission maintaining the consent of the peacekept. Ultimately, Fortna finds that peacekeeping is an effective tool for ensuring a lasting peace; especially compared to situations in which belligerents' are left to their own devices. Utilising the previously mentioned causal mechanisms for peacekeeping, a UN peacekeeping force can have a substantial and substantive impact on sustaining a lasting peace. Having a relative consensus of the positive impact of peacekeeping for ensuring a lasting peace, Fortna and Howard suggest that the literature is moving towards the study of i) the effectiveness of the types of peace-keepers, ii) the transitional administrations, iii) the links between peacekeeping and democratisation, and iv) the perspectives of the "peacekept".


title: Peacekeeping

text: Doyle and Sambanis' analysis finds that lasting peace is more likely after non-ethnic wars in countries with a relatively high level of development in addition to whether or not UN peacekeeping forces and financial assistance are available. They conclude that in the short run lasting peace is more dependent on a robust UN deployment coupled with low levels of hostility between belligerents. They note that increased economic capacity can provide an incentive not to renew hostilities. In the long run, however, economic capacity matters far more whereas the degree of hostility between belligerents is less important. As successful as UN deployments can be, they have inadequately spurred independent economic development within the countries where they have intervened. Thus, the UN plays a strong, but indirect role and success in lasting peace is predicated on the development of institutions that support peace, rather than serving as a deterrent for renewed war.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Other scholarly analyses show varying success rates for peacekeeping missions, with estimate ranging from 31 percent to 85 percent.


title: Peacekeeping

text: According to a 2020 study, non-UN peacekeeping missions are as effective as UN peacekeeping missions. Another 2020 study found that peacekeeping successfully protected civilians.


title: Peacekeeping

text: A 2021 study in the "American Journal of Political Science" found that UN peacekeeping in South Sudan had a positive impact on the local economy.


title: Peacekeeping

text: There are many factors that can have a negative impact on lasting peace such as hidden information about the relative strength possessed by the belligerents; a rebel group's involvement in illicit financing through means such as through the export of diamonds and other minerals; participation in the trafficking of drugs, weapons and human beings; whether or not military victory was achieved by one side; the length of the war as well as how costly it was; commitment problems and security dilemma spirals experienced by both sides; whether a cease-fire or treaty signed by the belligerents; lack of transparency in the motives and actions carried out by belligerents in the immediate aftermath of the conflict; extremist spoilers; participants in the conflict that may benefit from its continuation; indivisibility and more.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Perhaps one of the most statistically significant contributors to a lasting peace is whether or not military victory was achieved by one side. According to Fortna's research, civil wars in which one side wins, resulting in a cease-fire or truce, have an approximately 85–90% lower chance of renewed war. Moreover, peace treaties further reduce the risk by 60–70%.


title: Peacekeeping

text: If a group is funded by drugs, diamonds or other illicit trade then there is a substantial increase in the chance of renewed violence—100–250%—which is to say that in such circumstances war is two to three-and-a-half times more likely to begin again. While Fortna finds that wars which involve many factions are less likely to resume, Doyle and Sambanis find the opposite.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Costly wars and wars fought along identity lines both provide varied chances of the renewal of violence. While longer wars and peace established by treaty (especially those attained by military victory) can reduce the chances of another war.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Some commentators have highlighted the potential to leverage peacekeeping operations as a mechanism for advancing military normalisation. Michael Edward Walsh and Jeremy Taylor have argued that Japan's peacekeeping operations in South Sudan provide those promoting Japan's military normalisation with "a unique opportunity to further erode the country's pacifist constitution." "Unable to accept the full weight of modern peacekeeping operations without fundamental political, legal, and social changes," they conclude that "Japan's peacekeepers remain ill-prepared to tackle many serious contingencies requiring use of deadly force." For this reason, they suggest that Japan's continued participation in UN peacekeeping operations might force policy changes that ultimately push the country toward "a tipping point from which the normalisation of Japan's military (will be) the only outcome."


title: Peacekeeping

text: Diana Muir Appelbaum has expressed concern that the creation of a military in Fiji for the purpose of serving in international peacekeeping missions, has produced a military powerful enough to stage four coups d'état (1987, 1999–2000, 2006, and 2009) and to rule Fiji as a military dictatorship for over two decades. However, a 2018 study published in the "Journal of Peace Research" found that countries where militaries are highly dependent on the funds they receive from UN peacekeeping were less likely to experience coups d'états than comparable countries less dependent on such funds.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Studies of peacekeeping soldiers show both positive and negative effects. A study of 951 US Army soldiers assigned to Bosnia revealed that 77% reported some positive consequences, 63% reported a negative consequence, and 47% reported both. The peacekeepers are exposed to danger caused by the warring parties and often in an unfamiliar climate. This gives rise to different mental health problems, suicide, and substance abuse as shown by the percentage of former peacekeepers with those problems. Having a parent in a mission abroad for an extended period is also stressful to the peacekeepers' families.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Another viewpoint raises the problem that the peacekeeping may soften the troops and erode their combat ability, as the mission profile of a peacekeeping contingent is totally different from the profile of a unit fighting an all-out war.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Since the 1990s, UN peacekeepers have been the subject of numerous accusations of abuse ranging from rape and sexual assault, to pedophilia and human trafficking. Complaints have arisen from Cambodia, East Timor and West Africa. In Bosnia-Herzegovina prostitution associated with trafficked women skyrocketed and often operated just beyond the gates of U.N. compounds. David Lamb, a regional human rights officer in Bosnia from 2000 to 2001 claimed "The sex slave trade in Bosnia largely exists because of the U.N. peacekeeping operation. Without the peacekeeping presence, there would have been little or no forced prostitution in Bosnia." In addition, hearing held by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002 found that members of SFOR were frequenting Bosnian brothels and engaging in sex with trafficked women and underage girls.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Reporters witnessed a rapid increase in prostitution in Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, and Kosovo after UN and, in the case of the latter two, NATO peacekeeping forces moved in. In the 1996 UN study called "The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children", former first lady of Mozambique Graça Machel documented: "In 6 out of 12 country studies on sexual exploitation of children in situations of armed conflict prepared for the present report, the arrival of peacekeeping troops has been associated with a rapid rise in child prostitution".


title: Peacekeeping

text: Gita Sahgal spoke out in 2004 with regard to the fact that prostitution and sex abuse crops up wherever humanitarian intervention efforts are set up. She observed that the "issue with the UN is that peacekeeping operations unfortunately seem to be doing the same thing that other militaries do. Even the guardians have to be guarded".


title: Peacekeeping

text: An investigation by Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein, then Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations, in 2006 resulted in a comprehensive report which detailed some of this abuse in detail— particularly that which occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Sexual exploitation frequently came in the form of prostitution, wherein some money (an average of $1-$3 per encounter) was exchanged for sex. In other instances food, or jobs were utilized to ply women for sex. Other young women reported of "rape disguised as prostitution", whereabouts peacekeepers would rape them and were then given some money or food in order to make the act seem consensual. Between May and September 2004, there were seventy-two allegations of sexual exploitation—68 against military and 4 against civilian personnel. By the end of 2004 there would be a total of 105 allegations. The majority of these allegations were in regards to sex with person under the age of 18 years (45 percent) and sex with adult prostitutes (31 percent). Rape and sexual assault made up approximately 13 and 5 percent respectively, with the remaining 6 percent of allegations relating to other forms of sexual exploitation. Most of the allegations were against peacekeepers from Pakistan, Uruguay, Morocco, Tunisia, South Africa, and Nepal.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Uruguayan President Jose Mujica apologized to Haitian President Michel Martelly over the alleged rape of an 18-year-old Haitian man by Uruguayan UN peacekeeping troops. Martelly said "a collective rape carried out against a young Haitian" would not go unpunished. Four soldiers suspected of being involved in the rape have been detained.


title: Peacekeeping

text: In July 2007 the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) confined an entire contingent of 734 Moroccans in the Ivory Coast in the wake of allegations that some had sexually abused underage girls. In the following years, there were 80 investigations carried out by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS). In 2013, allegations were levelled on personnel from France, Gabon, and Burundi operating in the Central African Republic. These include accusations of sexual abuse and exploitation of at least 108 from Kemo Prefecture and that the vast majority of the cases involved minors. In 2016, more allegations of abuse were levelled on Peacekeepers operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern province of North Kivu. Tanzania and the UN opened a joint inquiry into the alleged abuse, which involved Tanzanian troops. There have been 18 reports of sexual abuse, eight of which involved minors. Sixteen Tanzanian soldiers, a Malawian and a South African are implicated in the accusations. The UN reported in March 2016 that there was a large increase in allegations; which involved troops from twenty one countries. Most of the allegations involved troops from African countries including: Cameroon, Congo, Tanzania, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ghana, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal and Togo.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Significant scientific evidence, first reported by the Associated Press, and later the "New York Times", "Al Jazeera", and ABC News has shown that Nepalese Peacekeeping troops stationed at a remote base in Mirebalais, Haiti, triggered a deadly cholera epidemic that has ravaged the country since October 2010. Cholera is a waterborne disease that causes diarrhoea and vomiting, and it can kill in a matter of hours if patients do not receive rehydration intervention. As of July 2012, Haiti's cholera epidemic was the worst in the world: about 7,500 had died and about 585,000 Haitians (about 1 in every 20 Haitians) had become ill with the disease.


title: Peacekeeping

text: According to the UN-appointed Independent Panel of Experts on the Cholera Outbreak in Haiti, the conditions at the Peacekeeping base were unsafe, and allowed contamination of Haiti's river systems in at least two ways: "The construction of the water pipes in the main toilet/showering area [was] haphazard, with significant potential for cross-contamination...especially from pipes that run over an open drainage ditch that runs throughout the camp and flows directly into the Meye Tributary System". Additionally, the Independent Panel reported that on a regular basis black water waste from the Mirebalais base and two other bases was deposited in an open, unfenced septic pit that was susceptible to flooding and would overflow into the Meye Tributary during rainfall.


title: Peacekeeping

text: In November 2011, over 5,000 victims of the cholera epidemic filed a claim with the UN's internal claims mechanism seeking redress in the form of clean water and sanitation infrastructure necessary to control the epidemic, compensation for individual losses, and an apology. In July 2012, 104 Members of the United States Congress signed a letter affirming that the "actions of the UN" had brought cholera to Haiti and that the UN should "confront and ultimately eliminate cholera". In 2013 the UN rejected the claim and the victims' lawyers have pledged to sue the UN in court.


title: Peacekeeping

text: There is a notable intermingling of varied cultures when it comes to peacekeeping. From the vast number of troops, police and personnel that are brought together from various contributing countries to the oftentimes challenging ethnic regions which peacekeeping forces are often deployed. Because of these varied cultures, complicated cultural interactions take place which not only affect mission effectiveness, but can also lead to friction with the population the peacekeepers are meant to be assisting.


title: Peacekeeping

text: In most cases prior to 1988, specific countries often provided peacekeepers. At that point, only twenty six countries had sent personnel to participate in peacekeeping deployments. Today, that number has risen to more than eighty. This results in an extremely heterogeneous group. Thus, UN Peacekeeping deployments must not only contend with language complications, but also myriad cultural and social differences that can create operational difficulties that are hard to overcome. These differences can create problems with regard to interactions (whether personal or between institutions/units), misunderstandings, inadvertent offensive behaviour and prejudices that may be associated with a particular contingent from a given country.


title: Peacekeeping

text: In terms of operations, effectiveness can be hindered by the varying tactics, techniques and procedures employed by the military or police personnel that are a part of a given deployment. Because UN forces are cobbled together from so many different sources, there is a discrepancy in capabilities, training, equipment, standards and procedures. Moreover, substantial differences exist in the form of command and control between contributing members personnel. In addition, some nations may not wish to be subordinated to another, complicating unity of command. This can lead to deep-seated divisions between contingents within the UN force that results in a lack of mutual support between units in the field. This can be demonstrated in the experiences of UN peacekeeping forces deployed to East Timor, where the Australians engaged in a robust operation that maximised force protection in contrast to a pro-active heart and minds approach utilised by Great Britain's Ghurka personnel.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Maintaining the consent of the peacekept is an important facet of modern peacekeeping. Notably in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda, fundamental principles of retaining that consent was ignored on the grounds of a humanitarian intervention—reflecting the nature of an Article VII intervention. Yet in order to stress and maintain the legitimacy of an intervention it is important that the UN's forces continue to enjoy the consent of the population and government of the country to which they were deployed. This means making the peacekept feel a part of the process in addition to important cultural knowledge of the area in which peacekeepers are operating, in order to reduce friction and provide for a successful operation.


title: Peacekeeping

text: There has been little study on the interaction of cultures that exist within a peacekeeping force and the population within which they operate. However, in 1976 Galtun and Hveem studied Norwegian personnel who participated in UNEF-1 (in Gaza) and ONUC (Congo). They posited that knowledge of the culture and an understanding of the inhabitants in a given country were not only necessary, but crucial for the success of the mission. They found that personnel from the Norwegian contingent wanted greater insight into the conflict and the culture in which they operated. They also wanted more robust training with regard to working with people from other countries. Yet the study revealed the troops received very little from briefings and that the majority of the information regarding the conflict was gained through the news, reading books or speaking with other UN personnel—rather than any established UN training program.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Similarly, a study conducted on the relations between members of UNIFIL and local population in Lebanon, carried out by Heiberg and Holst, all but confirmed the findings. In their example, they found that the countries that were able to integrate more fully with the population and show a depth of knowledge about the local culture were more successful, while those that were ambitious, but less integrated into the local scene found themselves far removed from the individuals with which they were supposed to be engaged with, and their success, or lack thereof, illustrated this.Only the Italian contingent of some 2,200 people operated as part of the local environment and became an active element in restoring normal living conditions. Its soldiers were provided with the training required to acquaint them with the cultural, political and social situation of the people among whom they worked. Operating in a sector that contained approximately 600,000 inhabitants, mostly Shi'ites, the Italians carefully nurtured contact with the ordinary citizens and the political leaders in their area... While the Americans thought they were becoming involved in Lebanese politics, they entered into Lebanese culture and history with little or no understanding of the way things worked—or didn't work... Most Americans did not understand the subtleties of short-term alliances, the length of memories and blood feuds, the strength of "aln" [kin] in Arab culture nor the nuances of religious differences.This illustrates the importance of understanding the significance that culture plays in the conduct of successful peacekeeping operations. However, despite the existence of a UN training manual that attempts to advise peacekeepers on necessary techniques, there is no unifying doctrine, or standardised procedure among peacekeeping contingents, which will ultimately hinder the potential for success.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Throughout the duration of the Cold War external intervention and mediation in civil conflicts took on a state-centric mechanism in which sovereignty was inviolable. Rarely did the international community intervene in internal conflicts involving a state's government and domestic belligerents that opposed it. Since the end of the Cold War, however, that has changed. Today, mediation by international actors in civil conflict rest on a standardised resolution mechanism that accords broadly equal standing to all factions within a conflict, and attempts to reach a settlement accepted by all.


title: Peacekeeping

text: The end of the Cold War presented an opportunity to reshape the international system. This opportunity was afforded to the Cold War's victors—that is to say, the United States and other western capitalist states governed by liberal-democratic values that put a premium on basic human rights and democratization. In the preceding decades the state was the only entity to receive special status. While there were exceptions, such as groups struggling against colonial powers, the state possessed the ultimate degree of legitimacy. As a result, the international community rarely meddled with the internal machinations of a given country. Sovereignty was not to be violated and this was a system which benefited both superpowers, their allies, as well as third world governments.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Now, however, with legitimacy being extended to non-state actors, as well as the opportunity for a minority to secede from a given state and form a new country there has been a dramatic shift in the international status quo. Moreover, the international community's model for conflict resolution is heavily influenced by academic thought developed in western countries. This model encourages intervening in civil wars in order to stop political violence and come to a negotiated settlement which often involves democratising efforts. Critics such as Christopher Clapham and David Shearer, argue that this intervention can provide mechanisms for continued conflict to the detriment of the civilian population. Clapham's argument is principally in relation to the situation in Rwanda leading up to the genocide, whereas Shearer focuses on the negative aspects of intervention, primarily regarding Sierra Leone, which prevents total victory by one side and results in the creation of asymmetries between belligerents which opens the door for continued bloodshed.


title: Peacekeeping

text: In Rwanda, third-party attempts at a negotiated settlement between the Hutu and Tutsi afforded an opportunity for Hutu extremists to prepare for the killing of Hutu moderates and the genocide of the Tutsi. The international community, led by regional states from the Organisation of African Unity, sought to negotiate a settlement and find a solution for the ongoing ethnic violence between Hutu and Tutsi via the Arusha Peace Process. This process lasted just over a year, included substantial international involvement, and incorporated many regional actors such as Tanzania (host of the process), Burundi, Uganda and Zaire.


title: Peacekeeping

text: While the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) was a major beneficiary of the Arusha accords and was able to redress many of its grievances, many of the gains that it made could have been achieved through military action. Arusha, according to Clapham, affected the relative power of the participants in the two following ways: a ceasefire which froze the distribution of territorial control at a particular point and secondly the importance it ascribed to the participants of the negotiations. Meaning that it froze the conflict and prevented continued territorial gains being made by the RPF, in addition to designating the degree of importance with regard to the factions within the negotiations. A faction's importance was weighted not on their relative popularity or military strength, but on artificial weight assigned by the mediators. Thus, the entire process served to undermine the RPF's position while stalling their hitherto successful military campaign, while allowing Hutu extremists to prepare for a genocide.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Shearer argues that modern strategies that rely solely on consent-based negotiations are severely limited and that victory by military means should not be ignored. He states that a shift in battlefield fortunes can often bring one belligerent to the negotiation table and will likewise moderate their demands.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Consent is of great importance when it comes to negotiation and mediation. The current international system and the conflict resolution model which the international community has utilised most since the end of the Cold War puts a premium on consent. But Shearer asks that if a belligerent uses negotiations and cease-fires as a method of delay in order to allow them to reposition military forces and continue fighting, then should consent-based strategies still be pursued, regardless of the potential for lengthening a conflict and the associated human cost?


title: Peacekeeping

text: According to the empirical analysis cited by Shearer, past civil wars with negotiated settlements have had little success. He cites a study from John Stedman that notes between 1900 and 1980 85% of civil wars were solved by one side winning outright (this excludes colonial wars). 15% percent ended as a result of negotiation. Additionally, Roy Licklider's study supports these conclusions by noting the following:From 1945 to 1989, 58 out of a total of 93 civil conflicts, as he categorised them, were settled in some form, while the remainder continued. However, only 14 (or 24 percent) of those settled were solved by negotiation. The others (76 percent) ended with military victories. Additionally, fighting resumed in seven of the 14 conflict which were initially ended by negotiation. The overall success rate of negotiated settlements, therefore, was around 12 percent out of the internal wars that ended.In Sierra Leone the Revolutionary United Front, led by Foday Sankoh, fought an ongoing and bloody civil war with the government from 1991 to 1996. The conflict attracted little international attention, but managed to devastate the country and destroy its economy. Neither belligerent was willing to concede or compromise on their demands, despite multiple attempts at a negotiated settlement. Sankoh would come to the table after the intervention of the private military corporation Executive Outcomes and a reversal in the RUF's battlefield fortunes.


title: Peacekeeping

text: In the aftermath the RUF was a depleted threat, civilians were able to return from refugee camps and begin rebuilding their lives. But the peace was fragile and negotiations were ongoing. The RUF was reluctant to put down their arms, concerned over potential retribution at the hands of army units and civilian militias alike. There was a planned deployment of UN peacekeepers meant to ease these concerns and help with the transition to peace, but things began to unravel. International contributors began to shy away from further peacekeeping initiatives; such as an expensive and open-ended mission in a strategically unimportant country. As a result, the UN's intervention force was slow to come to fruition and then came to a halt completely when Sankoh argued the size of the contingent of 740 UN peacekeepers was too large.


title: Peacekeeping

text: The UN refused to engage without total consent from both parties, thus preventing the deployment of a peacekeeping force. This consent-based approach, Shearer argues, illustrates the limits the UN can play in the volatile and fragile state of affairs that exist during and after civil wars. "In Sierra Leone, it meant that an important component needed to shore up the peace-building process was absent. It also meant that Sankoh was dictating terms." This consent-based approach effectively allowed the leadership of a brutal rebel group to hinder the potential for peace.


title: Peacekeeping

text: The situation was exacerbated by the fact that the newly elected President of Sierra Leone terminated the Executive Outcomes contract undermining his hard power advantage. Things were further inflamed when disaffected officers of the army overthrew the government in 1997. The war quickly renewed. A small UN force of monitors was deployed to observe the security situation. UNOMSIL, as it was called, was deployed between July 1998 and October 1999, but was forced to withdraw from the country when the RUF took the country's capitol.


title: Peacekeeping

text: UNAMSIL was eventually formed and deployed in 1999, authorised under a Chapter VII mandate, it was meant to enforce the Lome agreements. However, violence would continue. From the outset the RUF was beyond uncooperative and once the ECOMOG contingent withdrew, the RUF attacked UN forces, eventually taking hundreds hostage. This led to an unexpected backlash from the international community that the RUF did not anticipate. Its leadership had expected the international community to cut and run, as it had done in Somalia and earlier when UNOMSIL fled Freetown. Instead, with British support, an aggressive campaign was waged against the RUF. UNAMSIL's mandate was expanded and its manpower enlarged. By late 2000 and early 2001 the RUF's military strength had been severely depleted. Thus the Abuja agreements were signed and UNAMSIL fulfilled its mandate in December 2005. While Sierra Leone is at peace today and the UN's mission can be deemed a success, the way in which the situation developed illustrates Shearer's point: that a consent-based approach focused on negotiation that encompasses all belligerents' interest may not necessarily lead to success. As we see, fighting continued despite the presence of UNOMSIL. Indeed, even after UNOMSIL was replaced by a more robust force under a Chapter VII mandate in the form of UNAMSIL the violence continued. When the British intervened militarily and substantially degraded the RUF's capability to sustain the conflict, as Executive Outcomes had done years prior, the RUF finally come to the negotiating table and allowed for the establishment of peace.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Some authors question the idea of international interventions at all. In a 2005 working paper for the Center for Global Development, Jeremy Weinstein of Stanford University provides a theory of "autonomous recovery", in which states can achieve sustainable peace without international intervention. Using case studies of Uganda, Eritrea, and Somalia, Weinstein demonstrates how states can develop effective institutions out of warfare. This method has cost and benefits that must be weighed against the potential outcome of international intervention. External intervention can stop mass atrocities, but also stop institutional change. Autonomous recovery elevates the strongest leader, but also rewards the strongest fighters who may be less inclined to share power. Furthermore, intervention depends on external influence while autonomous recovery is based on internal factors. The conclusions of his argument could suggest intervention is not ideal policy, but Weinstein argues the international community's "responsibility to protect" doctrine has moral importance for intervention and the conditions for "autonomous recovery" are very rare. Weinstein argues the fundamental challenge is how to incentivise good governance and assistance to rebel groups without disrupting the connection of citizens to rulers in terms of revenue collection that enables accountability.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Although acknowledging a number of practical and moral reasons for peacekeeping operations, James Fearon and David Laitin assert that they have a tendency under some circumstances to become tangled with state-building efforts. In weak states facing successful guerrilla campaigns, peacekeepers face pressures to build state institutional and administrative capacity in order to achieve lasting peace. These pressures can lead to mission creep beyond the original purview of the peacekeeping operation; without engaging in state-building, the peacekeepers risk allowing the peacekept country to revert to violence following their exit. Thus, Fearon and Laitin advocate for the greater integration of state-building in peacekeeping efforts through a new framework of "neotrusteeship", which would see foreign powers exercising a great deal of control over a weak state's domestic affairs in order to ensure the prevention of future violence.


title: Peacekeeping

text: A growing critique of peacekeeping is the lack of engagement between the peacekeeping officials and the local populace. As Séverine Autesserre outlines in a 2015 Foreign Policy article, this creates an environment where the peacekeeping officials develop plans to 'keep' the peace, but they are disconnected from reality, having the opposite effect on the ground. Additionally, it creates a reinforcement mechanism for the peacekeeping officials, because the officials on the ground report that their plan was successfully implemented, but, in reality, it had adverse effects. If the situation on the ground turns into another outbreak of violence, the local populace will be blamed.


title: Peacekeeping

text: This criticism is similar to the critic levelled at development in developing countries by authors such as James C. Scott, James Ferguson, and L. Lohman. Although peacekeeping and development are two different things, the logic behind the criticism is the same. The third-party officials-whether they are peacekeepers or agents of development-are isolated from the general populace, believing they know what is best, and refusing to gather information from a ground level. This is not out of maliciousness or imperialism, but out of a legitimate belief that they, as educated officials with access to other experts and who are well versed in development and peacekeeping literature, know what is best.


title: Peacekeeping

text: In response to criticism, particularly of the cases of sexual abuse by peacekeepers, the UN has taken steps toward reforming its operations. The Brahimi Report was the first of many steps to recap former peacekeeping missions, isolate flaws, and take steps to patch these mistakes to ensure the efficiency of future peacekeeping missions. The UN has vowed to continue to put these practices into effect when performing peacekeeping operations in the future. The technocratic aspects of the reform process have been continued and revitalised by the DPKO in its "Peace Operations 2010" reform agenda. This included an increase in personnel, the harmonisation of the conditions of service of field and headquarters staff, the development of guidelines and standard operating procedures, and improving the partnership arrangement between the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), African Union, and European Union. A 2008 capstone doctrine entitled "United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines" incorporates and builds on the Brahimi analysis.


title: Peacekeeping

text: One of the main issues that the Brahimi report identifies is the lack of coordination and planning of the Peacekeeping Operations. Also, the difference between the objectives of the Peacekeeping Operations and the resources destined to fund the missions. Therefore, the report asks the Security Council to make clear the goals and the resources to accomplish them. According to Fearon and Laitin, the Brahimi Report provides a political instrument for the secretary-general to negotiate with the Security Council the goals, the troops, and the resources need it to the operations. This instrument tries to avoid the cases of underfunding presented in Missions such as in Bosnia, Somalia, and Sierra Leone.


title: Peacekeeping

text: Christine Gray analyses the issues of implementing the recommendations of the Brahimi Report. She explains the difficulty in implementing these recommendations. In particular, in reducing the gap between the mandates of Security Council and the actual resources devoted to implementing them.


title: Rebecca Musser

text: Rebecca Musser (née Wall, formerly Jeffs; born 1976) is an American author and activist. She was a wife of the late Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints prophet Rulon Jeffs and escaped the compound before bringing legal proceedings against the church. In the film "Outlaw Prophet: Warren Jeffs", Musser is portrayed by actress Sabina Gadecki.


title: Rebecca Musser

text: Rebecca Wall was born to Lloyd Wall and Sharon Steed, both of whom were members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) and had a polygamous family. At the time of her birth, Musser's father had two wives; his first wife was Irene, and his second was Sharon. Musser remembers her father being frustrated with only having two wives, as other men in the religion had many more.


title: Rebecca Musser

text: Lloyd had nine children with Myrna and 12 with Sharon. As Sharon was the second wife, she was lower in rank than Myrna; Sharon and her children lived in the family's basement while Myrna and her children lived upstairs. One of Musser’s sisters is Elissa, author of the memoir "Stolen Innocence", an account of her own escape from the church. Musser is mentioned in the book, including her reaction to the fact that Elissa had to marry their cousin at age 14. At around age five, Musser was the victim of sexual abuse along with some of her sisters by an upstairs half-brother. She stated when Myrna found out about the abuse Musser was "threatened", and did not tell anyone again until she was an adult.


title: Rebecca Musser

text: Musser recounts her experience in the FLDS being extremely regimented, stating, "They didn't let us work, they didn't let us go to school. Our sole purpose was to be in religious prayer and to be obedient, adoring." When she turned 19, she became the 19th bride of Rulon Jeffs after he received "divine inspiration" that she was to be his new wife. Rulon was 85 at the time. Musser stated, "I was scared, I was terrified of marrying this man, and yet I could not say no because it would bring a tremendous amount of shame on my family." After Musser was given to Rulon by her father Lloyd, Lloyd was "gifted a third wife" by Rulon. Musser endured years of sexual abuse by Jeffs until his death in 2002, aged 92. By that time, 63 other women were her "sister-wives", a designation given to the polygamous wives of one man in the FLDS. After Jeffs' death, Musser was told by Jeffs' son and new church leader Warren Jeffs that she needed to remarry. Warren threatened her with her life if she did not obey. Musser was able to escape the compound by scaling a wall which surrounded the house and slipping past Jeffs' armed guards. After her escape, Musser traveled to Oregon to live with her brother.


title: Rebecca Musser

text: Musser testified against Warren Jeffs a total of 20 times and helped prosecutors to win 11 convictions against him. During one of the days testifying for the trial she showed up in a sleeveless red dress. This was significant because the color red had previously been banned by Jeffs for all church members. Author Debra Weyermann stated, "As the wife of a former prophet, Rebecca had credibility compounded by her collected, steady, and unflappable demeanor in the witness box." After testifying, Musser made headlines in the "New York Daily News", AOL, and "Marie Claire", among others.


title: Rebecca Musser

text: In 2013 Musser wrote the memoir "The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice" along with author M. Bridget Cook, which was released by Grand Central Publishing. The title referenced when Musser wore her red dress to Jeffs' trial. The book received a positive welcome from "The Today Show" and was featured in their 'Today Books' section. "The Witness Wore Red" was also featured on NPR, Secular News Daily, and others. "Publishers Weekly" called the memoir a "harrowing account" of FLDS life.


title: Rebecca Musser

text: Musser is a member of Sheroes United, a non-profit organization that embraces female role models in communities. Musser is featured as a Shero on their website with a biography focusing on life after leaving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She has also founded the non-profit organization ClaimRED, an organization dedicated to those who have become victims of human trafficking.


title: Rebecca Musser

text: Actress Sabina Gadecki portrays Musser in the 2014 film "Outlaw Prophet: Warren Jeffs". Musser recounts her experiences in the 2022 Netflix documentary "", directed by Rachel Dretzin.


title: Rebecca Musser

text: After leaving the church, Musser married Rulon Jeffs' grandson Ben Musser and had two children, son Kyle and daughter Natalia, before divorcing.


title: Spoils system

text: In politics and government, a spoils system (also known as a patronage system) is a practice in which a political party, after winning an election, gives government jobs to its supporters, friends (cronyism), and relatives (nepotism) as a reward for working toward victory, and as an incentive to keep working for the party—as opposed to a merit system, where offices are awarded on the basis of some measure of merit, independent of political activity.


title: Spoils system

text: The term was used particularly in politics of the United States, where the federal government operated on a spoils system until the Pendleton Act was passed in 1883 due to a civil service reform movement. Thereafter the spoils system was largely replaced by nonpartisan merit at the federal level of the United States.


title: Spoils system

text: The term was derived from the phrase "to the victor belong the spoils" by New York Senator William L. Marcy, referring to the victory of Andrew Jackson in the election of 1828, with the term spoils meaning goods or benefits taken from the loser in a competition, election or military victory.


title: Spoils system

text: Similar spoils systems are common in other nations that traditionally have been based on tribal organization or other kinship groups and localism in general.


title: Spoils system

text: Although it is commonly thought that the spoils system was introduced by President Andrew Jackson, historical evidence does not support this view. Patronage came to the United States during its Colonial history, whereas in its modern form, the spoils system got introduced into U.S. politics during the administration of George Washington, whose outlook generally favored members of the Federalist Party. Sometimes, Washington is accused of introducing the system himself. In addition, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson have also been accused, to a degree, of introducing the spoils system to U.S. politics.


title: Spoils system

text: In 1828, moderation was expected to prevail in the transfer of political power from one U.S. president to another. This had less to do with the ethics of politicians than it did with the fact the presidency had not transferred from one party to another since the election of 1800-known historically for the extraordinary steps the outgoing Federalist Party took to try and maintain as much influence as possible by exploiting their control over federal appointments up until their final hours in office (see: Marbury v. Madison and Midnight Judges Act). By 1816, the Federalists were no longer nationally viable, and the U.S. became effectively a one-party polity under the Democratic-Republican Party. The Jacksonian split after the 1824 Election restored the two-party system.


title: Spoils system

text: Jackson's first inauguration, on March 4, 1829, marked the first time since 1801 where one party yielded the presidency to another. A group of office seekers attended the event, explaining it as democratic enthusiasm. Jackson supporters had been lavished with promises of positions in return for political support. These promises were honored by a large number of removals after Jackson assumed power. At the beginning of Jackson's administration, fully 919 officials were removed from government positions, amounting to nearly 10 percent of all government postings.


title: Spoils system

text: The Jackson administration aimed at creating a more efficient system where the chain of command of public employees all obeyed the higher entities of government. The most-changed organization within the federal government proved to be the Post Office. The Post Office was the largest department in the federal government, and had even more personnel than the War Department. In one year, 423 postmasters were deprived of their positions, most with extensive records of good service. Nevertheless, Jackson did not differ much from other Presidents in the number of officials he replaced by his own partisans.


title: Spoils system

text: By the late 1860s, citizens began demanding civil service reform, but it was only after the assassination of James A. Garfield by a rejected office-seeker in 1881 that the calls for civil service reform intensified. Moderation of the spoils system at the federal level with the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883, which created a bipartisan Civil Service Commission to evaluate job candidates on a nonpartisan merit basis. While few jobs were covered under the law initially, the law allowed the President to transfer jobs and their current holders into the system, thus giving the holder a permanent job. The Pendleton Act's reach was expanded as the two main political parties alternated control of the White House every election between 1884 and 1896. Following each election, the outgoing President applied the Pendleton Act to some of the positions for which he had appointed political supporters. By 1900, most federal jobs were handled through civil service, and the spoils system was limited to fewer and fewer positions.


title: Spoils system

text: Although state patronage systems and numerous federal positions were unaffected by the law, Karabell argues that the Pendleton Act was instrumental in the creation of a professional civil service and the rise of the modern bureaucratic state. The law also caused major changes in campaign finance, as the parties were forced to look for new sources of campaign funds, such as wealthy donors.


title: Spoils system

text: The separation between political activity and the civil service was made stronger with the Hatch Act of 1939 which prohibited federal employees from engaging in many political activities.


title: Spoils system

text: The spoils system survived much longer in many states, counties and municipalities, such as the Tammany Hall machine, which survived until the 1950s when New York City reformed its own civil service. Illinois modernized its bureaucracy in 1917 under Frank Lowden, but Chicago held on to patronage in city government until the city agreed to end the practice in the Shakman Decrees of 1972 and 1983.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: Paradise Valley is a town in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, and a suburb of Phoenix, the state's largest city. It is Arizona's wealthiest municipality. The town is known for its luxury golf courses, shopping, expensive real estate, and restaurant scene. According to the 2020 census, its population was 12,658. Despite its relatively small area and population compared to other municipalities in the Phoenix metropolitan area, Paradise Valley is home to eight full-service resorts, making it one of Arizona's premier tourist destinations.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: The town's name comes from the expansive area known as Paradise Valley that spreads from north of the Phoenix Mountains to Cave Creek and Carefree on the north and the McDowell Mountains to the east. Resident children attend schools in the Scottsdale Unified School District.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: The town's history dates to a more agrarian society. After the initial European settlement, Paradise Valley was first used for cattle grazing. In the 1880s, when the land was being surveyed so it could be developed into agricultural lots, the name "Paradise Valley" first came into use, given by surveyors from the Rio Verde Canal Company and its manager at the time, Frank Conkey. The name may have been chosen due to the abundance of spring wildflowers and palo verde trees. Mainly an agricultural area during the 1800s and the first half of the 1900s, the area began to be settled after World War II, on large, lots for which it became known.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: As the neighboring settlements of Phoenix and Scottsdale began to grow and annex adjoining areas, the residents of what became Paradise Valley were concerned that the qualities they most valued would be lost if they were consumed by their larger neighbors. These residents formed the "Citizens Committee for the Incorporation of The Town of Paradise Valley, Arizona", which collected enough signatures to take to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. The supervisors granted the petition, allowing the town of Paradise Valley to be incorporated on May 24, 1961.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: Today, Paradise Valley is Phoenix's wealthiest suburb, known primarily for its many resorts and expensive real estate.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which , or 0.18%, are water.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: The central terrain of Paradise Valley is dominated by Mummy Mountain. Other landmarks include Camelback Mountain on the southern border and the Piestewa Peak mountainous area on the western border.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: Several historical sites are within the town, including the Harold C. Price, Sr. House, McCune Mansion/Hormel Mansion, and Barry Goldwater Memorial Park.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: As of the census of 2000, 13,664 people, 5,034 households, and 4,163 families resided in the town. The population density was . The 5,499 housing units averaged 354.8 per square mile (137.0/km). The racial makeup of the town was 95.6% White, 0.7% Black or African American, 0.2% Native American, 2.0% Asian, <0.1% Pacific Islander, 0.4% from other races, and 1.0% from two or more races. About 2.7% of the population was Hispanic or Latino of any race.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: Of the 5,034 households, 33.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 76.1% were married couples living together, 4.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 17.3% were not families; 13.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 6.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.71 and the average family size was 2.98.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: In the town, the population was distributed as 24.9% under the age of 18, 4.0% from 18 to 24, 18.8% from 25 to 44, 35.9% from 45 to 64, and 16.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 46 years. For every 100 females, there were 98.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 96.1 males.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: The median income for a household in the town was $150,228, and for a family was $164,811. Males had a median income of $100,000 versus $52,302 for females. The per capita income for the town was $81,290. About 1.9% of families and 2.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 1.5% of those under age 18 and 2.8% of those age 65 or over. In 2012, the "Forbes" magazine named Paradise Valley's zip code, 85253, the 71st-most expensive in the United States. This ranking also makes it the most expensive in the state of Arizona.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: The mayor and six town council members are the elected representatives of the Town of Paradise Valley. The council is composed of six members who are elected to serve four-year staggered terms. In 2010, voters approved the direct election of mayor. Scott LeMarr became the first directly elected mayor in 2012. The council still selects its vice mayor from among its members. Jerry Bien-Willner, elected in 2018, is the current mayor. The chief of police is Pete Wingert.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: In 2012, citizens gathered 500 signatures on a petition requesting the council reconsider the issue of direct election of mayor. The council voted in June 2012 to return the question of direct election of mayor to the people. Residents voted to keep the direct election of Mayor.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: Paradise Valley is a part of Congressional District 6, which has been represented by Republican Representative David Schweikert since the district's creation in 2011. Despite the town's conservative lean, at the state level it has been represented by three Democrats since 2020. A part of Legislative District 28, it is represented by Christine Marsh in the State Senate and by Kelli Butler and Aaron Lieberman in the House of Representatives.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: Most of Paradise Valley is within the Scottsdale Unified School District. A relatively small portion, however, is served by Creighton Elementary School District and Phoenix Union High School District.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: Several charter schools also are in the area, including nearby Great Hearts Academies and BASIS Schools, as well as private schools such as Phoenix Country Day School.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: According to Paradise Valley's 2014 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the town are:


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: The town is not to be confused with Paradise Valley Village, an official municipal designation, in northeast Phoenix. For instance, Paradise Valley Community College, Paradise Valley High School, Paradise Valley Mall, Paradise Valley Golf Course, and the former Paradise Valley Hospital are all several miles north of the town, in Phoenix. The Paradise Valley Unified School District does not serve the town; its boundaries end a few miles north of the border.


title: Paradise Valley, Arizona

text: Paradise Valley is the setting of the television series "The Secret World of Alex Mack" and the film "Pump Up the Volume".


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (; 14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882) was a French aristocrat who is best known for helping to legitimise racism by the use of scientific racist theory and "racial demography", and for developing the theory of the Aryan master race. Known to his contemporaries as a novelist, diplomat and travel writer, he was an elitist who, in the immediate aftermath of the Revolutions of 1848, wrote "An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races". In it he argued aristocrats were superior to commoners, and that aristocrats possessed more Aryan genetic traits because of less interbreeding with inferior races.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Gobineau's writings were quickly praised by white supremacist, pro-slavery Americans like Josiah C. Nott and Henry Hotze, who translated his book into English. They omitted around 1,000 pages of the original book, including those parts that negatively described Americans as a racially mixed population. Inspiring a social movement in Germany named Gobinism, his works were also influential on prominent antisemites like Richard Wagner, Wagner's son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the Romanian politician Professor A. C. Cuza, and leaders of the Nazi Party, who later edited and re-published his work.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Gobineau came from an old well-established aristocratic family. His father, Louis de Gobineau (1784–1858), was a military officer and staunch royalist. His mother, Anne-Louise Magdeleine de Gercy, was the daughter of a non-noble royal tax official. The de Gercy family lived in the French Crown colony of Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti) for a time in the 18th century. Gobineau always feared he might have black ancestors on his mother's side.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Reflecting his hatred of the French Revolution, Gobineau later wrote: "My birthday is July 14th, the date on which the Bastille was captured-which goes to prove how opposites may come together". As a boy and young man, Gobineau loved the Middle Ages, which he saw as a golden age of chivalry and knighthood much preferable to his own time. Someone who knew Gobineau as a teenager described him as a romantic, "with chivalrous ideas and a heroic spirit, dreaming of what was most noble and most grand".


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Gobineau's father was committed to restoring the House of Bourbon and helped the royalist Polignac brothers to escape from France. As punishment he was imprisoned by Napoleon's secret police but was freed when the Allies took Paris in 1814. During the Hundred Days the de Gobineau family fled France. After Napoleon's final overthrow following the Battle of Waterloo, Louis de Gobineau was rewarded for his loyalty to the House of Bourbon by being made a captain in the of King Louis XVIII. The pay for a Royal Guardsman was very low, and the de Gobineau family struggled on his salary.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Magdeleine de Gobineau abandoned her husband for her children's tutor Charles de La Coindière. Together with her lover she took her son and two daughters on extended wanderings across eastern France, Switzerland and the Grand Duchy of Baden. To support herself, she turned to fraud (for which she was imprisoned). His mother became a severe embarrassment to Gobineau, who never spoke to her after he turned twenty.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: For the young de Gobineau, committed to upholding traditional aristocratic and Catholic values, the disintegration of his parents' marriage, his mother's open relationship with her lover, her fraudulent acts, and the turmoil imposed by being constantly on the run and living in poverty were all very traumatic.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Gobineau spent the early part of his teenage years in the town of Inzligen where his mother and her lover were staying. He became fluent in German. As a staunch supporter of the House of Bourbon, his father was forced to retire from the Royal Guard after the July Revolution of 1830 brought House of Orléans King Louis-Philippe, "Le roi citoyen", ("the Citizen King") to power. He promised to reconcile the heritage of the French Revolution with the monarchy. Given his family's history of supporting the Bourbons, the young Gobineau regarded the July Revolution as a disaster for France. His views were those of a Legitimist committed to a Catholic France ruled over by the House of Bourbon. In 1831, de Gobineau's father took custody of his three children, and his son spent the rest of his adolescence in Lorient, in Brittany.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Gobineau disliked his father, whom he dismissed as a boring and pedantic army officer incapable of stimulating thought. Lorient had been founded in 1675 as a base for the French East India Company as King Louis XIV had grand ambitions for making France the dominant political and economic power in Asia. As those ambitions were unrealized, Gobineau developed a sense of faded glory as he grew up in a city that had been built to be the dominant hub for Europe's trade with Asia. This dream went unrealized, as India became part of the British and not the French empire.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: As a young man, Gobineau was fascinated with the Orient, as the Middle East was known in Europe in the 19th century. While studying at the Collège de Bironne in Switzerland, a fellow student recalled: "All of his aspirations were towards the East. He dreamt only of mosques and minarets; he called himself a Muslim, ready to make the pilgrimage to Mecca". Gobineau loved Oriental tales by the French translator Antoine Galland, often saying he wanted to become an Orientalist. He read Arab, Turkish and Persian tales in translation, becoming what the French call a ""un orientaliste de pacotille"" ("rubbish orientalist"). In 1835, Gobineau failed the entrance exams to the St. Cyr military school.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: In September 1835, Gobineau left for Paris with fifty francs in his pocket aiming to become a writer. He moved in with an uncle, Thibaut-Joseph de Gobineau, a Legitimist with an "unlimited" hatred of Louis-Philippe. Reflecting his tendency towards elitism, Gobineau founded a society of Legitimist intellectuals called "Les Scelti" ("the elect"), which included himself, the painter Guermann John (German von Bohn) and the writer Maxime du Camp.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: In the later years of the July Monarchy, Gobineau made his living writing serialized fiction ("romans-feuilletons") and contributing to reactionary periodicals. He wrote for the "Union Catholique", "La Quotidienne", "L'Unité", and "Revue de Paris". At one point in the early 1840s, Gobineau was writing an article every day for "La Quotidienne" to support himself. As a writer and journalist, he struggled financially and was forever looking for a wealthy patron willing to support him. As a part-time employee of the Post Office and a full-time writer, Gobineau was desperately poor.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: His family background made him a supporter of the House of Bourbon, but the nature of the Legitimist movement dominated by factious and inept leaders drove Gobineau to despair, leading him to write: "We are lost and had better resign ourselves to the fact". In a letter to his father, Gobineau complained of "the laxity, the weakness, the foolishness and—in a word—the pure folly of my cherished party".


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: At the same time, he regarded French society under the House of Orléans as corrupt and self-serving, dominated by the "oppressive feudalism of money" as opposed to the feudalism of "charity, courage, virtue and intelligence" held by the "ancien-régime" nobility. Gobineau wrote about July Monarchy France: "Money has become the principle of power and honour. Money dominates business; money regulates the population; money governs; money salves consciences; money is the criterion for judging the esteem due to men".


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: In this "age of national mediocrity" as Gobineau described it, with society going in a direction he disapproved of, the leaders of the cause to which he was committed being by his own admission foolish and incompetent, and the would-be aristocrat struggling to make ends meet by writing hack journalism and novels, he became more and more pessimistic about the future. Gobineau wrote in a letter to his father: "How I despair of a society which is no longer anything, except in spirit, and which has no heart left". He complained the Legitimists spent their time feuding with one another while the Catholic Church "is going over to the side of the revolution". Gobineau wrote: Gobineau struck up a friendship and had voluminous correspondence with Alexis de Tocqueville. Tocqueville praised Gobineau in a letter: "You have wide knowledge, much intelligence, and the best of manners". He later gave Gobineau an appointment in the Quai d'Orsay (the French foreign ministry) while serving as foreign minister during the Second Republic of France.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: In 1841, Gobineau scored his first major success when an article he submitted to "Revue des deux Mondes" was published on 15 April 1841. Gobineau's article was about the Greek statesman Count Ioannis Kapodistrias. At the time, "La Revue des Deux Mondes" was one of the most prestigious journals in Paris, and being published in it put Gobineau in the same company as George Sand, Théophile Gautier, Philarète Chasles, Alphonse de Lamartine, Edgar Quinet and Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve who were all published regularly in that journal.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Gobineau's writings on international politics were generally as negative as his writings on France. He depicted Britain as a nation motivated entirely by hatred and greed and the extent of the British Empire around the globe as a source of regret. Gobineau often attacked King Louis-Phillipe for his pro-British foreign policy, writing that he had "humiliated" France by allowing the British Empire to become the world's dominant power. However, reports on the poor economic state of Ireland were a source of satisfaction for Gobineau as he asserted: "It is Ireland which is pushing England into the abyss of revolution".


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: According to Gobineau, the growing power and aggressiveness of Imperial Russia were a cause for concern. He regarded the disastrous retreat from Kabul by the British during the First Anglo-Afghan War with Afghanistan as a sign Russia would be the dominant power in Asia, writing: "England, an aging nation, is defending its livelihood and its existence. Russia, a youthful nation, is following its path towards the power that it must surely gain ... The empire of the Tsars is today the power which seems to have the greatest future ... The Russian people are marching steadfastly towards a goal that is indeed known but still not completely defined". Gobineau regarded Russia as an Asian power and felt the inevitable triumph of Russia was a triumph of Asia over Europe.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: He had mixed feelings about the German states, praising Prussia as a conservative society dominated by the "Junkers". But he worried increasing economic growth promoted by the "Zollverein" (the German Customs Union) was making the Prussian middle-class more powerful. Gobineau was critical of the Austrian Empire, writing that the House of Habsburg ruled over a mixed population of ethnic Germans, Magyars, Italians, Slavic peoples, etc., and it was inevitable such a multi-ethnic society would go into decline, while the "purely German" Prussia was destined to unify Germany.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Gobineau was also pessimistic about Italy, writing: "Shortly after the "condottieri" disappeared everything that had lived and flourished with them went too; wealth, gallantry, art and liberty, there remained nothing but a fertile land and an incomparable sky". Gobineau denounced Spain for rejecting "a firm and natural authority, a power rooted in national liberty", predicting that without order imposed by an absolute monarchy, she was destined to sink into a state of perpetual revolution. He was dismissive of Latin America, writing with references to the wars of independence: "The destruction of their agriculture, trade and finances, the inevitable consequence of long civil disorder, did not at all seem to them a price too high to pay for what they had in view. And yet who would want to claim that the half-barbarous inhabitants of Castile or the Algarve or the "gauchos" on the River Plate really deserve to sit as supreme legislators, in the places which they have contested against their masters with such pleasure and energy".


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: About the United States, Gobineau wrote: "The only greatness is that of wealth, and as everyone can acquire this, its ownership is independent of any of the qualities reserved to superior natures". Gobineau wrote the United States lacked an aristocracy, with no sense of "noblesse oblige" ("nobility obligates") as existed in Europe. The American poor suffered worse than the European poor, causing the United States to be a violent society, where greed and materialism were the only values that counted. In general Gobineau was hostile towards people in the Americas, writing that who in the Old World does not know "that the New World knows nothing of kings, princes and nobles?-that on those semi-virgin lands, in human societies born yesterday and scarcely yet consolidated, no one has the right or the power to call himself any greater than the very least of its citizens?"


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: In 1846, Gobineau married Clémence Gabrielle Monnerot. She had pressed for a hasty marriage as she was pregnant by their mutual friend Pierre de Serre who had abandoned her. As a practicing Catholic, she did not wish to give birth to an illegitimate child. Monnerot had been born in Martinique. As with his mother, Gobineau was never entirely certain if his wife, and hence his two daughters had black ancestors or not, as it was a common practice for French slave masters in the Caribbean to take a slave mistress. Gobineau's opposition to slavery, which he held always resulted in harmful miscegenation to whites, stemmed from his own personal anxieties that his mother or his wife might have African ancestry.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Gobineau's novels and poems of the 1830s–40s were usually set in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance with aristocratic heroes who by their very existence uphold all of the values Gobineau felt were worth celebrating like honor and creativity against a corrupt, soulless middle class. His 1847 novel "Ternove" was the first time Gobineau linked class with race, writing "Monsieur de Marvejols would think of himself, and of all members of the nobility, as of a race apart, of a superior essence, and he believed it criminal to sully this by mixture with plebeian blood." The novel, set against the backdrop of the Hundred Days of 1815, concerns the disastrous results when an aristocrat Octave de Ternove unwisely marries the daughter of a miller.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Gobineau was horrified by the Revolution of 1848 and disgusted by what he saw as the supine reaction of the European upper classes to the revolutionary challenge. Writing in the spring of 1848 about the news from Germany he noted: "Things are going pretty badly ... I do not mean the dismissal of the princes—that was deserved. Their cowardice and lack of political faith make them scarcely interesting. But the peasants, there they are nearly barbarous. There is pillage, and burning, and massacre—and we are only at the beginning."


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: As a Legitimist, Gobineau disliked the House of Bonaparte and was displeased when Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was elected president of the republic in 1848. However, he came to support Bonaparte as the best man to preserve order, and in 1849, when Tocqueville became Foreign Minister, his friend Gobineau became his "chef de cabinet".


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Shocked by the Revolution of 1848, Gobineau first expressed his racial theories in his 1848 epic poem "Manfredine". In it he revealed his fear of the revolution being the beginning of the end of aristocratic Europe, with common folk descended from lesser breeds taking over. Reflecting his disdain for ordinary people, Gobineau said French aristocrats like himself were the descendants of the Germanic Franks who conquered the Roman province of Gaul in the fifth century AD, while common French people were the descendants of racially inferior Celtic and Mediterranean people. This was an old theory first promoted in a tract by Count Henri de Boulainvilliers. He had argued that the Second Estate (the aristocracy) was of "Frankish" blood and the Third Estate (the commoners) were of "Gaulish" blood. Born after the French Revolution had destroyed the idealized "Ancien Régime" of his imagination, Gobineau felt a deep sense of pessimism regarding the future.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: For him the French Revolution, having destroyed the racial basis of French greatness by overthrowing and in many cases killing the aristocracy, was the beginning of a long, irresistible process of decline and degeneration, which could only end with the utter collapse of European civilization. He felt what the French Revolution had begun the Industrial Revolution was finishing; industrialization and urbanization were a complete disaster for Europe.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Like many other European romantic conservatives, Gobineau looked back nostalgically at an idealized version of the Middle Ages as an idyllic agrarian society living harmoniously in a rigid social order. He loathed modern Paris, a city he called a "giant cesspool" full of "les déracinés" ("the uprooted")—the criminal, impoverished, drifting men with no real home. Gobineau considered them to be the monstrous products of centuries of miscegenation ready to explode in revolutionary violence at any moment. He was an ardent opponent of democracy, which he stated was mere "mobocracy"—a system that allowed the utterly stupid mob the final say on running the state.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: From November 1849 to January 1854 Gobineau was stationed at the French legation in Bern as the First Secretary. During his time in Switzerland Gobineau wrote the majority of the "Essai".


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: He was stationed in Hanover in the fall of 1851 as acting Chargé d'Affaires, and was impressed by the "traces of real nobility" he said he saw at the Hanoverian court. Gobineau especially liked the blind King George V whom he saw as a "philosopher-king" and to whom he dedicated the "Essai"s. He praised the "remarkable character" of Hanoverian men and likewise commended Hanoverian society as having "an instinctive preference for hierarchy" with the commoners always deferring to the nobility, which he explained on racial grounds.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Reflecting his lifelong interest in the Orient, Gobineau joined the "Société Asiatique" in 1852 and got to know several French Orientalists, like Julius von Mohl, very well.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: In January 1854, Gobineau was sent as First Secretary to the French legation at the Free City of Frankfurt. Of the Federal Convention of the German Confederation that sat in Frankfurt—also known as the "Confederation Diet"—Gobineau wrote: "The Diet is a business office for the German bureaucracy—it is very far from being a real political body". Gobineau hated the Prussian representative at the Diet, Prince Otto von Bismarck, because of his advances towards Madame Gobineau. By contrast, the Austrian representative, General Anton von Prokesch-Osten became one of Gobineau's best friends. He was a reactionary Austrian soldier and diplomat who hated democracy and saw himself as a historian and orientalist, and for all these reasons Gobineau bonded with him. It was during these periods that Gobineau began to write less often to his old liberal friend Tocqueville and more often to his new conservative friend Prokesch-Osten.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: In his own lifetime, Gobineau was known as a novelist, a poet and for his travel writing recounting his adventures in Iran and Brazil rather than for the racial theories for which he is now mostly remembered. However, he always regarded his book "Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines" ("An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races") as his masterpiece and wanted to be remembered as its author. A firm reactionary who believed in the innate superiority of aristocrats over commoners—whom he held in utter contempt—Gobineau embraced the now-discredited doctrine of scientific racism to justify aristocratic rule over racially inferior commoners.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: In his "An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races," published in 1855, Gobineau ultimately accepts the prevailing Christian doctrine that all human beings shared the common ancestors Adam and Eve (monogenism as opposed to polygenism). He suggests, however, that "nothing proves that at the first redaction of the Adamite genealogies the colored races were considered as forming part of the species"; and, "We may conclude that the power of producing fertile offspring is among the marks of a distinct species. As nothing leads us to believe that the human race is outside this rule, there is no answer to this argument."


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Gobineau stated he was writing about races, not individuals: examples of talented black or Asian individuals did not disprove his thesis of the supposed inferiority of the black and Asian races. He wrote: Gobineau argued that race was destiny, declaring rhetorically:


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Gobineau's primary thesis was that European civilization flowed from Greece to Rome, and then to Germanic and contemporary civilization. He thought this corresponded to the ancient Indo-European culture, which earlier anthropologists had misconceived as "Aryan"—a term that only Indo-Iranians are known to have used in ancient times. This included groups classified by language like the Celts, Slavs and the Germans. Gobineau later came to use and reserve the term Aryan only for the "Germanic race", and described the Aryans as "la race germanique". By doing so, he presented a racist theory in which Aryans—that is Germanic people—were all that was positive.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: The "Essai" attracted mostly negative reviews from French critics, which Gobineau used as a proof of the supposed truth of his racial theories, writing "the French, who are always ready to set anything afire—materially speaking—and who respect nothing, either in religion or politics, have always been the world's greatest cowards in matters of science". However, events such as the expansion of European and American influence overseas and the unification of Germany led Gobineau to alter his opinion to believe the "white race" could be saved. The German-born American historian George Mosse argued that Gobineau projected his fear and hatred of the French middle and working classes onto Asian and Black people.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Summarizing Mosse's argument, Davies argued that: "The self-serving, materialistic oriental of the "Essai" was really an anti-capitalist's portrait of the money-grubbing French middle class" while "the sensual, unintelligent and violent negro" that Gobineau portrayed in the "Essai" was an aristocratic caricature of the French poor. In his writings on the French peasantry, Gobineau characteristically insisted in numerous anecdotes, which he said were based on personal experience, that French farmers were coarse, crude people incapable of learning, indeed of any sort of thinking beyond the most rudimentary level of thought. As the American critic Michelle Wright wrote, "the peasant may inhabit the land, but they are certainly not part of it". Wright further noted the very marked similarity between Gobineau's picture of the French peasantry and his view of blacks.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: In 1855, Gobineau left Paris to become the first secretary at the French legation in Tehran, Persia (modern Iran). He was promoted to "chargé d'affaires" the following year. The histories of Persia and Greece had played prominent roles in the "Essai" and Gobineau wanted to see both places for himself. His mission was to keep Persia out of the Russian sphere of influence, but he cynically wrote: "If the Persians ... unite with the western powers, they will march against the Russians in the morning, be defeated by them at noon and become their allies by evening". Gobineau's time was not taxed by his diplomatic duties, and he spent time studying ancient cuneiform texts and learning Persian. He came to speak a "kitchen Persian" that allowed him to talk to Persians somewhat. (He was never fluent in Persian as he said he was.) Despite having some love for the Persians, Gobineau was shocked they lacked his racial prejudices and were willing to accept blacks as equals. He criticized Persian society for being too "democratic".


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Gobineau saw Persia as a land without a future destined to be conquered by the West sooner or later. For him this was a tragedy for the West. He believed Western men would all too easily be seduced by the beautiful Persian women causing more miscegenation to further "corrupt" the West. However, he was obsessed with ancient Persia, seeing in Achaemenid Persia a great and glorious Aryan civilization, now sadly gone. This was to preoccupy him for the rest of his life. Gobineau loved to visit the ruins of the Achaemenid period as his mind was fundamentally backward looking, preferring to contemplate past glories rather than what he saw as a dismal present and even bleaker future.


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: His time in Persia inspired two books: "Mémoire sur l'état social de la Perse actuelle" (1858) ("Memoire on the Social State of Today's Persia") and "Trois ans en Asie" (1859) ("Three Years in Asia").


title: Arthur de Gobineau

text: Gobineau was less than complimentary about modern Persia. He wrote to Prokesch-Osten that there was no "Persian race" as modern Persians were "a breed mixed from God knows what!". He loved ancient Persia as the great Aryan civilization par excellence, however, noting that Iran means "the land of the Aryans" in Persian. Gobineau was less Eurocentric than one might expect in his writings on Persia, believing the origins of European civilization could be traced to Persia. He criticized western scholars for their "collective vanity" in being unable to admit to the West's "huge" debt to Persia.