- Group Three: countries whose participation would be controversial: Israel, Syria, North Korea, Myanmar, Cuba and Libya.
Group Three consists of countries whose participation in PKOs would be controversial. There are many reasons why. First, all these countries have very well developed defence forces engaged in some type of conflict, they also have support from one or more members of the UN Security Council, and because geographically they are in political unstable zones that still have their print from the Cold War.
Those factors combined to current international affairs agenda such as: the war against terrorism, North Korea’s nuclear weapons, the Middle East conflicts, and the USA’s foreign policy towards former communist remaining countries such as Cuba; made their participation almost impossible. Besides the fact that could intensify the current debate in international politics. Thus, based on this data collection process, these countries do not contribute troops due to a combination of their internal political environments and their foreign policies which under the current elements of the international political system, their participation will create controversy. A similar category was created by Daniel and Caraher (2006), in which included countries like Myanmar (2006, 4).
In the case of the variables of the data collection process, most of the countries do not participate in UN/UN peacekeeping policy reform. With regards to perceptions, the main issue is how other countries perceive their armies. Potentially, deploying soldiers (from this group) to other countries could create or even increase local tensions. It could also create tensions within the members of the international troops of the peace operation. There are no records about these types of situations, but there are probabilities. On economics affairs, social and economic issues are underdeveloped compared with the high level of military development. On military affairs, they all have strong armies and they are strongly linked to the government. With regards to foreign policy, their foreign agendas are focused on controversial issues on international security such as wars between states, nuclear issues, and have their foreign policy agenda based on the ties to the members of the Security Council.
The rest of the variables of the data collection process have no significant impact on the willingness to send troops to UN peace operations: 1) Independent negotiations taken by DPKO to seek troops, 2) Independent negotiations taken by contributor countries to engage non-contributor countries, 3) Meetings organized by other international organizations to engage in dialogue about peacekeeping, and 4) Climate changes.
The question here is if any of these countries will ever contribute troops to UN peace operations. It depends on each country. Israel has offered to DPKO its expertise on military affairs, but not its troops. Libya is in the process of opening up. Cuba has offered humanitarian aid to several countries (including the USA after Hurricane Katrina). Nevertheless, it is not likely that we will see the troops of these countries involved in UN peace operations.
