The man credited with putting muscle into UN peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, will leave his position on June 1, according to Le Monde newspaper. Guehenno had been widely credited with the restoring the reputation of U.N. “peace operations” as an effective and relatively agency in helping conflict-torn countries in Africa and elsewhere return to stability after civil wars and other strife.

Under his auspices, UN peacekeeping forces increased in size to become the second-largest military force operating outside their country – behind the size of U.S. expeditionary forces.

Guehenno, appointed eight years ago by then-Secretary General Kofi Annan, played an important role in changing the philosophy of peacekeeping after a period in the 1990s when the UN’s reputation was damaged by fiascos in Bosnia and elsewhere. Guehenno told European Affairs in 2006, in an article entitled Contemporary Peacekeeping Is State-Building, that he had lead the UN toward more “robust peacekeeping” — meaning readiness to use force when necessary to implement a peacekeeping mission.

He also worked to see that UN peacekeeping forces contained elements from the broadest possible range of nations, including Western countries, so that their missions were backed by international legitimacy, political clout from the capitals of force-contributing nations and enough high-technology material to ensure that peacekeeping interventions were effective in crushing splinter forces seeking to be “spoilers” in peace deals.

But he also warned publicly against the temptation for governments to send in “UN forces” as a face-saving response to crises that in fact are beyond the powers of the peacekeepers to handle. Recently, Guehenno has made statements in this vein about the pessimistic outlook for the crisis in Darfur.

No successor has been announced. Traditionally, the influential post has been held by a Frenchman, and Paris demanded that it remain in French hands as a condition for supporting the new secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, who took office in January. According to Le Monde, both the United States and Britain want to see one of their nationals succeed Mr. Guehenno.

Tags: France, International Organizations, Kofi Annan, nation-building, peacekeeping, UN, United States

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