What are token forces? How did they come about, and how should they be conceptualized? Written by UBC Political Science Profs. Katharina Coleman and Xiaojun Li, Token Forces: How Tiny Troop Deployments Became Ubiquitous in UN Peacekeeping defines, examines the rise of, and evaluates the significance of ‘token forces’ to UN peacekeeping missions. Their work contributes to a growing field of research and analysis on the role of the UN and other international organizations in global politics.
Together, Prof. Katharina Coleman and Prof. Xiaojun Li further discuss the content of their book and its implications. Read what they and their book have to say about UN Peacekeeping, ‘token forces’, and the significance of these military coalitions.
What prompted you to investigate the role of ‘token forces’?
Katia first noticed token forces when she was writing her PhD thesis two decades ago. She argued that burden sharing couldn’t explain why states launched peace enforcement operations through international organizations, because the burden-sharing was so uneven – all these tiny troop contributions! Since then, the incidence of token forces has continued to increase. We looked at this trend and felt that it raised a real puzzle: why have token troop contributions become so common? That means not only, “why do states want to make such tiny troop contributions?”, but also, “why do coalition builders accept these contributions?”. We couldn’t find a satisfactory answer in the scholarship on coalition building, so we decided to investigate.
How do you think the usage of token forces ties into/reinforces your thoughts on the role of the UN in international politics?
The UN is a deeply political organization but also occupies a unique normative position in world politics. UN peace operations continue enjoy considerable international legitimacy, and even states that are not interested in making substantial troop contributions often prefer to at least be present through a token contribution rather than not participate at all. At the same time, the UN has only limited influence over its member states: it is far less able than NATO, for example, to persuade states to move from token to non-token contributions. The UN Secretariat thus has to adapt to accommodate states’ interests in participating at token levels.
Exploring token forces serves as a reminder that while UN coalitions are central to peacekeeping effectiveness they are not solely built for capability aggregation. United Nations force generation is deeply political, both from the point of view of TCCs (whose interests extend, often in multiple ways, beyond the success of the mission to which they are contributing) and from the perspective of UN coalition builders managing relationships with member states and seeking to bolster support for UN peacekeeping as a whole. To focus solely on capability aggregation leaves a majority of contemporary troop contributions to UN missions fundamentally underexplained.
What significance do these forces play in the scope of international peace missions?
Token forces rarely contribute substantially to mission capabilities given their small sizes, with the possible (and contested) exception of some high-level staff officer contributions. In fact, they risk negatively impacting peacekeeping effectiveness by bringing multinational tensions into operational military units, increasing the number of states seeking to shape mission policies and multiplying the challenges of coalition management for UN officials. Moreover, personnel shortfalls may be exacerbated as states capable of deploying large contingents instead choose token participation. That said, the UN has evolved a sophisticated system for managing token forces to maximize their operational benefits – or at least minimize their operational risks. Furthermore, token forces can enhance peacekeeping effectiveness in non-military ways, notably by building the political support a mission can muster for its initiatives.
Your book describes the rise of token forces in UN peacekeeping specifically. Do you have predictions/inferences about the influence and usage of token forces in future UN operations?
The rise of token forces mostly occurred between 1999 and 2005. Since then, the share of token contributions in UN peacekeeping missions have stabilized at around 60 per cent. One limitation of our book is that the quantitative data we collected ends in 2018. Since then, UN peacekeeping has contracted quite a bit: troop deployments are down over 30 per cent from the peak in 2015. Remarkably, token forces appear to have been largely preserved during this contraction – at least so far. Large troop contributors have had to shrink their deployments – in some cases to token levels – but most token contributors have been able to continue participating in missions. We don’t know yet whether this will continue to be the case, and whether tokenism will evolve as UN peacekeeping overall changes, either through continued contraction or through a new wave of peacekeeping similar to the re-emergence we witnessed in the early 2000s. These are things we hope to investigate in a follow up study.
What would you consider to be the main takeaway of your book for the average reader? How do your findings impact the average citizen?
Citizens often view UN peacekeeping positively and favour their state contributing to UN missions. Especially in North America and Europe, however, policy makers often fear that this support will not extend to committing large numbers of troops or assuming substantial risk. These policy makers may also prefer to commit these resources to other conflict management initiatives, including those led by NATO. A relatively brief European “return” to more substantial UN peacekeeping – in Mali – ended with the announcement of withdrawals from the mission in June/July 2022. The war in Ukraine has probably further depleted Western states’ interest in contributing to peace operations. Token troop contributions allow policy makers to square the circle: they can claim to still be contributing to UN peacekeeping without committing substantial resources to these missions.
Our book’s key take-away for the average citizen is to think not just about whether they wish their state to contribute to UN peacekeeping but also about how and how much they wish their state to contribute. The book alerts readers that token forces are common. If the reader’s state is participating in a peacekeeping operation, they may wish to ascertain whether it is doing so at token or non-token levels. The reader will also gain a better understanding that in most missions, only a small handful of states contribute large contingents. Asking missions to “do more” or undertake more dangerous tasks generates an unequal burden among troop contributing countries: if the additional tasks are military, it’s the large troop contributors that assume most of the additional burden and/or risk. This division of labor is deeply controversial among some troop contributors, especially given that most large troop contributors are not represented on the UN Security Council, which makes mandating decisions for UN missions.
