Peacemaking and Democratization in the Western Hemisphere: Multilateral Missions

Latin American Politics and Society, Summer 2002 by Schulz, Donald E

Tommy Sue Montgomery, ed. Peacemaking and Democratization in the Western Hemisphere: Multilateral Missions. Coral Gables: North-- South Center Press, 2000. Maps, figures, index, 334 pp.; paperback, $26.95.

With the end of the Cold War, peacemaking operations have become a cottage industry. In part, this is because of an illusion; namely, that the end of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry offered an unprecedented opportunity for the international community to create a "new world order." The United Nations and regional organizations, experts believed, could be strengthened and activated to promote democratization, political stability, and human rights in troubled areas where the Great Powers' rivalry had previously prevented such intervention. In that heady atmosphere, anything seemed possible. Only with the wisdom of experience and hindsight would the costs and limitations of these ambitions become evident and more sober judgments emerge.

Tommy Sue Montgomery's most recent book is the product of an April 1996 conference on "Multilateral Approaches to Peacemaking and Democratization in the Hemisphere," sponsored by the University of Miami's North-South Center. The volume is divided into three main parts, the first of which is devoted to political missions (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, and Guatemala), the second to electoral missions (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico), and the third to diplomatic-military missions (the Ecuador-Peru border war). The contributors include both social scientists and practitioners with extensive experience in these matters. Yet the result is mixed. This is a volume of mostly descriptive case studies which, while providing much useful information, tends to be a bit thin on the kind of analysis and insight that might have made it a major contribution to our understanding.

The most notable exceptions to this generalization are two fine chapters on El Salvador, the first by David Holiday and William Stanley on the U.N. Observer Mission (ONUSAL) and the challenges of verification and institution building; the second by Montgomery and Ruth Reitan on OAS and U.N. efforts at electoral observation.

Holiday and Stanley stress, as do several other contributors, the uniquely fortuitous circumstances that made success possible in the country they are looking at but that are unlikely to be repeated in other such ventures. They also underline the limitations of this success: the historically high levels of public insecurity that followed the war, as violent crime soared and the new and inexperienced civilian police struggled to cope with highly organized criminals. The authors note that by 1997, violent death rates exceeded those of the war years, an ironic reminder that the attainment of "peace" does not always accompany the formal termination of conflict.

Similarly, Montgomery and Reitan take a critical look at the U.N. and OAS election observation experiences (in 1991 and 1994, respectively), which they label "the good, the bad, and the ugly." They emphasize the distinction between legitimating the electoral process and ensuring its legitimacy. Both missions, they argue, tended to focus on the former at the expense of the latter, certifying the validity of elections that were substantially undermined by the incompetence and politicization of the authorities responsible for conducting them.

Montgomery and Reitan argue that observing agencies must use what leverage they have to make the government honor its own laws, and that this leverage should be negotiated into the terms of the observation agreement from the very beginning. Especially in a case like El Salvador, where the government has a heavy stake in obtaining an international stamp of approval, such leverage might be used to obtain a somewhat fairer outcome. This being said, the authors conclude that electoral observation played an important role in fostering democracy (imperfect though it is) and the transition to a postwar era.

Also of special note is a solid essay by Shelley McConnell on U.N. electoral observation in Nicaragua. She, too, emphasizes the unique circumstances of the country she is looking at, and cautions against using it as a model for future U.N. electoral missions. In Nicaragua, she argues, Clausewitz's famous maxim "war is the continuation of politics by other means" was stood on its head. There, politics became the continuation of war. She cites (as do Holiday and Stanley) the importance of a "mutually hurting stalemate" on the battlefield in convincing both the primary domestic actors and their foreign patrons that ending the conflict was desirable. But she also raises the issue of dependency: the danger that countries like Nicaragua, with little experience in democratic government and limited material and human resources, may become unhealthily dependent on international observers to ensure the validity of future elections.

This dependency problem is especially prominent in the chapters on Haiti. Both Johanna Mendelson Forman and Colin Granderson suggest that whatever the initial success in deposing the military dictatorship and restoring constitutional government, the international community's work is far from done. Forman suggests that the Achilles' heel of the intervention has been the failure to create a national police force and judicial system capable of fostering the sense of security that is the key to a successful transition.