United Nations Peacekeeping Offensive Operations: Concepts and Command Centres By Antonio Garcia Journal Article | Feb 6 2018 - 4:34am United Nations Peacekeeping Offensive Operations: Concepts and Command Centres Antonio Garcia Introduction The decision to strategically mandate offensive operations in the post-cold war peacekeeping era, is for the most part unchartered territory and will require forward thinking and some amount of trial and error. This article is a continuation of the research published in my previous paper, ‘United Nations Peacekeeping Offensive Operations: Theory and Doctrine’ . Where theory provides a construct for the conduct of operations, doctrine should guide the execution of operations without being overly prescriptive (US, 2014: 70). Doctrine provides the ‘how to’ in the conduct of operations where concepts look to the future of peacekeeping offensive operations. The study of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping offensive operations is at a critical moment and is highlighted by a higher operational intensity as indicated in the recent battle in Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where 15 peacekeepers were killed and approximately 40 were injured. The UN Secretary General (SG) Antonio Guterres condemned the attack stating that, “this is the worst attack on UN peacekeepers in the Organization’s recent history” (SG, 2017). The increasing casualties of UN peacekeepers in Mali as well as the Central African Republic are further examples of a higher operational tempo in African theatres. The aim of this paper is to put forward a proposed future peacekeeping offensive operations cornerstone and operating concept and command infrastructure amendments on the strategic and operational levels of peacekeeping. United Nations Future Peacekeeping Offensive Operations Cornerstone and Operating Concept This paper proposes the creation of a future peacekeeping offensive operations cornerstone and operating concept which should guide the application of peacekeeping offensive operations. Concepts consider the use of future capabilities to achieve missions while providing intellectual foundation for modernisation (US, 2014: 7). The cornerstone concept should indicate the UN’s overarching philosophy regarding the use of force in peacekeeping. The UN future operating concept should be subordinate to the cornerstone concept, and it should guide the way that UN military forces operate in peacekeeping. The suggested concepts draw from the practical experience and historical context of the Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) as the first modern offensively mandated UN peacekeeping offensive force. Following the initial success of the FIB in their attainment of strategic and tactical objectives, its performance has been lacklustre. The proposed peacekeeping cornerstone concept could thus provide