Peacekeeping as a growth industry

National Interest, The, Summer, 1993 by Laurence Martin

GEORGE BUSH'S proclamation of an impending New World Order in the midst of the Persian Gulf crisis was more than a celebration of rebirth for the United Nations' system, now released from its Cold War freeze by the emerging consensus on the Security Council. It was the third international-organization, collective-security based utopia to be announced to the world by an American president this century.

The classic 1919 and 1945 versions of that utopia were based on the idea of collective resistance to the traditional type of aggressor state. Today, in vastly altered circumstances, the preferred fashion is "peacekeeping" and a set of related concepts trading under perhaps deceptively similar sounding brand names, such as "peacemaking" and "peace enforcement." Because so many of the conflicts attracting attention are no longer of the classic interstate type, the current surge of enthusiasm for peacekeeping goes along with an almost lighthearted readiness to trample across borders and the idea of sovereignty, intruding into hitherto domestic affairs in the name of human or, increasingly, "minority" rights.

As more usual than not in political matters, the purposes are admirable, even compelling. There are, however, increasing grounds for concern about the practicality, prudence, and even morality of the means which some enthusiasts want to adopt. Cautionary notes need to be sounded, not least because bureaucratic euphoria, coupled with empire building, increasingly tempts the UN establishment (though usually not its cautious and perceptive secretary-general). The newly appointed under-secretary for peacekeeping, Mr. Kofi Annan, a man whose entire career, one notes with some misgiving, has been in the UN, strikes an understandably bullish note: "Our cooperations are now so large and complex that we are redesigning the whole department. The days of gifted amateurism are over." Again:

Just look where we've got to now. A force

of heavily armed soldiers is keeping order and

distributing food in Somalia [not, of course,

actually a UN operation!, and another 25,000

armed soldiers are doing similar work in the

former Yugoslavia. Who would have believed

that two years ago? And yet again:

The Security Council is moving toward

greater interventionism because in many

tragedies public opinion perceives a human

imperative that transcends anything else. We

are using more force because we are encoun-

tering more resistance. Mr. Annan's last remark is a very succinct summary of one approach. Can only good come of this trend? It may be worthwhile considering some pitfalls. The point is not necessarily to bring the whole of the recent peacekeeping movement to a halt, but to suggest that it would be more appropriate to proceed in a spirit of caution and gloom rather than zeal and delight.

Old Style, New Style

THE OLD TYPE of peacekeeping operation (PKO) was invented to cool a range of disputes during the Cold War. These were usually to be found in the gray areas between the two blocs and, with the chief and not very auspicious exception of the Congo/Katanga crisis that sent Dag Hammarskjold to his death, were of a carefully defined and limited kind. In particular the armed forces used were very small, normally drawn from lesser powers with no local interest, and the operations were conducted with the consent of the parties. The operations were devoid of directly coercive content, though there might be accompanying political and economic pressure from the sponsoring great powers. The PKO forces worked by observation, separation, limited mediation and so on to facilitate agreements already arrived at by the parties to a dispute, even if that agreement was often merely not to fight, rather than to resolve the underlying dispute. Success in achieving such resolution rarely accrued to PKOs. If the role was, for instance, to supervise an evacuation or disarmament, the force might eventually get out. Otherwise it was all too likely to remain stuck in situ as in Lebanon, Cyprus, and other virtually forgotten operations.

What is typically going on today is very different. As the increasingly heavy armor and growing size of UN forces in several places testify, the element of consent is no longer regarded as essential. In small part this is because the Cold War is over. The sponsors of a force no longer need fear the automatic exploitation of any local resistance by the opposed ideological bloc. Even more important is the fact that more and more of the cases dealt with involve domestic or civil strife, in which there is frequently no clear cut or at least recognized body to give its consent. More decisive still, in civil war, which someone has recently well characterized as nasty, brutish, and long, the stakes are often paradoxically higher than in interstate boundary disputes. In the latter some percentage deal is often conceivable; in the former it is frequently all or nothing.

While forces are getting larger and more heavily engaged, the stakes for the peacekeepers are obviously rising. Such terms as "peacemaking," to denote the advance beyond facilitation and toward enforcement, are clearly designed to minimize the distinction. They also suggest differences of only small degree, often with the implication that we can choose, step by step, what we are getting into. In practice, however, the difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking is that between peace and war, and the flight of steps turns out to be a slippery, if at first gentle, slope.