Analyzing international stabilization and Canada’s mission in Afghanistan

Abstract

This essay analyses international stabilization missions as contemporary forms of crisis management in conflict and post-conflict environments. While maintaining some similarities and differences, ‘stabilization has emerged as an alternative approach to ‘peacebuilding’ and ‘statebuilding’ for certain governments engaged in international military operations. Drawing from Philipp Rotmann’s ‘stabilization-as-crisis-management’, the essay proceeds with an analysis of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan and its three primary chronological phases of operation. Rotmann’s concept serves as an analytical framework to evaluate successes and failures of Canada’s twelve-and-a-half-year mission which ended in 2014. This essay concludes that Canada’s application of stabilization was broader than the crisis management’ approach and with its broad scope and was therefore unable to accomplish many of the goals to stabilize Afghanistan