ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the privatization of surveillance satellite technology since the Gulf War has challenged old orthodoxies about the benefits of a capacity for global monitoring. The issues are of particular relevance to the increasingly popular proposition that satellite imagery should become a staple of UN peacekeeping. In the case of satellite technology, potential benefits to peacekeeping can be inferred in the area of cost savings, force safety, and more comprehensive peacekeeping. A question of primary importance is whether commercial sources of imagery are more appropriate to the task of enhancing the practice of peacekeeping than traditional national technical means. Traditional observation and reporting now forms the core of fewer than half a dozen peacekeeping operations, including Cyprus, Lebanon (UNIFIL), Croatia (UNMOP), and India/Pakistan (UNMOGIP). While the Department of Peacekeeping Operations could certainly examine the merits of using overhead imaging in these missions as a means of rationalizing personnel, the potential economies involved are modest at best.
