NATO and Peace Maintenance in Africa

Since the end of the Cold War NATO’s role includes also crisis prevention, conflict management and post-conflict peace-building. Recently the Alliance has carried out in Africa some specific peace maintenance operations that can be divided in two groups: (a) the Alliance has intervened responding to a request from the African Union; (b) NATO has acted implementing a resolution of the UN SC. The legitimacy or not of NATO’s interventions in Africa under International Law seems to depend respectively on the existence of a UN SC resolution and on the legitimacy of the AU’s action. The cooperation between a local regional organization (the AU) and another organization which acts ‘out of area’ but has more financial means and military capability (NATO) seems not only to be legitimate but also hoped for, since it allows to conjugate the reasons in favor of a contribution by a local regional organization to the settlement of disputes with the material needs of a peace maintenance operation, reducing at the same time the risk of degeneration inherent to enforcement actions. Generally speaking, when NATO operates solely on the basis of a SC Resolution the risk of abuse seems to be greater (see Libya). The cases examined show how NATO might better reach the objectives designated in its own post-Cold War Strategic Concepts observant of international law when it acts in support of regional organizations competent for the area where peace is at risk.