Please follow the summary of the article first published at Tomsk State University Journal, 2015, No 398. P. 131-139. DOI: 10.17223/15617793/398/22.
Smolenchuk Olga Yu. Tomsk State University (Tomsk, Russian Federation). E-mail: smolenchuk@gmail.com
HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE DUTCH PEACEKEEPING IN RESEARCHING OF NATIONAL AND FOREIGN SCHOLARS.
Keywords: Netherlands, Dutch peacekeeping, Srebrenica.
The definition of “Dutch peacekeeping” or “Dutch peacekeepers” which might be met very rarely in the Russian literature, in the first turn, it has become associated with the events in Bosnia-Herzegovina in July, 1995, when the DUTCHBAT could not prevent the tragedy and mass people killings, that further it is called the Srebrenica fall. In the given article the author tries to follow up the development of the Dutch peacekeeping as a historical process in international relations based on the foreign and Russian scholars’ works. The analysis of the Dutch foreign policy plays a significant role to consider that issue. The papers of the Dutch researchers present the major part in the foreign historiography. The Dutch policy think tanks asserted a main influence to discover the above-mentioned question. We should mention among them: the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael, as well as the Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV) created in 1979. It presents consultations for the Dutch government and parliament on questions of foreign politics, human rights, peace and security, cooperation in the field of development and European integration. One of the most significant work is the research which the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies prepared in 1996-2002 on the request of the Dutch government after while many countries, such as France and Canada, refused to take part in the causes investigations of the Srebrenica tragedy in 1995. In 2002, the scholars of that Institute published the report “Srebrenica, a ‘safe’ area – Reconstruction, background, consequences and analysis of the fall of a safe area”. Within the Russian historiography the Netherlands peacekeeping as an object might be examined only as a part of the Dutch foreign policy works and a conduct of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the international arena as a small country. At the present moment studying on the Netherlands Peacekeeping has been remained the exclusive prerogative to research for foreign researchers and think tanks, in the first place, it concerns the Dutch ones. If until mid-1990s the peacekeeping has been examined as a historical process in international relations, since 1995 and in 2000s the authors have implemented new methods: gender studies, anthropology, psychological analysis, and they have also used the results of medical investigations. Dutch public opinion, relations between executive and legislative powers, influence of internal political factors for a decision-making process how and when to deploy military forces in peacekeeping operations are considered. To sum up, researching of the Dutch peacekeeping by foreign authors has acquired a many-sided character, while there are only a few Russian papers: Soviet and then Russian scholars have taken up the issue over the Dutch participation in peacekeeping operations barely in the context of studying the history and foreign policy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.