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UNU Update | |
The newsletter of United Nations
University and its network of research and training centres and programmes |
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Issue 25: June 2003 |
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COMMENT U.S. considers U.N. approval of force optional
U.S.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was recently reported as having
participated in discussions on a possible U.S.-organized standing
international peacekeeping force outside the auspices of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations. The idea would need
to overcome deep-seated skepticism within the U.S. Army, which tends to
view peacekeeping as a distraction from its real job of war fighting, and
among other countries reluctant to participate in such operations outside
the comforting umbrella of the United Nations and NATO. The
United States is the world's indispensable power; the United Nations, the
world's indispensable institution. The United Nations has unmatched
legitimacy and authority on the one hand, and convening and mobilizing
power on the other. But the United Nations does not have its own military
and police forces. A multinational coalition of allies can offer a more
credible and efficient military force when robust action is needed and
warranted. The United Nations would be hard pressed to achieve anything of
note without active U.S. engagement, let alone against its vital interests
and determined opposition. The
benefits of U.N. peacekeeping to the United States, although uneven, are
considerable. For decades, U.N. peace operations have served U.S. security
interests from the Middle East to southern Africa, Central America,
Southeast Asia and Haiti. By their very nature, peacekeeping operations
cannot produce conclusive results either on the battlefield--they are
peace operations, after all, not war--or around the negotiating
table--they are military deployments, not diplomatic talks. Conversely,
the disengagement of the United States from U.N. peacekeeping has had a
spillover effect, eroding partially the legitimacy of U.N. operations and
therefore the effectiveness of the United Nations as a manager of
international security. This, in turn, has reduced U.S. leverage by
spreading the burden of providing international security and lessening the
demands and expectations on the United States to take up the slack. At the
same time, scapegoating the United Nations has produced a backlash among
other nations and so reduced the ability of the United States to use the
United Nations in pursuit of U.S. goals, where the interests of the two do
coincide. The
power, wealth and politics of the United States are too deeply intertwined
with the crosscurrents of international affairs for disengagement to be a
credible or sustainable policy posture for the world's only superpower.
Moreover, the war against global terrorism is one from which America can
neither stay disengaged, nor win on its own. Nor is it one that can be won
without full U.S. engagement. A world in which every country retreated
into unilateralism would not provide a better guarantee of U.S. national
security, now and for the foreseeable future, than multilateral regimes. Exceptionalism
is also deeply flawed. Washington cannot construct a world in which all
others have to obey universal norms and rules, whereas the United States
can opt out whenever, as often, and for as long as it likes from global
norms with respect to nuclear tests, land mines, international criminal
prosecution, climate change and other regimes in a sort of disposable
multilateralism. Because
peacekeeping is likely to remain the United Nations' instrument of choice
for engaging in the characteristic types of conflicts in the contemporary
world, the U.S. approach to peace operations will continue to define the
nature of the U.S. engagement with the United Nations. Perceptions of U.S.
disengagement will in turn erode the U.S. ability to harness U.N.
legitimacy to causes and battles that may be more important to the United
States than peacekeeping in messy conflicts in far-away countries. Because
the United States, in addition to being the pivotal member of the five
permanent members in the U.N. Security Council, will also remain the main
financial underwriter of the costs of U.N. peacekeeping, it will continue
to exercise unmatched influence on the establishment, mandate, nature,
size and termination of U.N. peace operations. At the same time, the level
of informed interest about the United Nations is so low in the American
body politic that any administration will always be able to distance
itself from spectacular failures of U.N. peacekeeping. The
overarching U.S. policy goal with respect to U.N. peace operations is to
make them efficient, cost effective and selective. Part of the last point
includes leaving war-fighting--peace enforcement--to multinational
coalitions acting under U.N. authority. Part of the efficiency drive
includes a campaign to increase the professional military capabilities of
the Peacekeeping Operations Department at the expense of other units that,
in Washington's view, are bloated and top-heavy. U.S.
participation in Chapter 7 military enforcement operations under direct
U.N. command are ruled out in the foreseeable future. Contributions of
U.S. infantry troops to U.N. peace operations are also unlikely. U.S.
participation in U.N. peace operations, whose creation and continuation
requires U.S. consent, is likely therefore to remain limited to the
provision of unique capabilities like transportation, communications and
logistics units and skills, as well as bearing the main burden of the
costs of the operations. U.N.
peace operations are only one of many foreign policy tools available to
the United States, others being multilateral action through standing
alliances like NATO, or an ad hoc multinational coalition as in the Gulf
War, or even unilateral U.S. action if the interests involved are
sufficiently vital to the United States. Peace operations constitute a
continuum of international responses to disorder and poverty. They permit
Washington to choose its preferred mode of involvement between
international and U.N. responses and U.S. engagement on a spectrum of
intensity and geographical theater (differentiating in particular between
Europe and Africa) of international involvement. At
the end of the spectrum, if the United Nations is unable or unwilling to
acquit itself of the responsibility to protect victims of genocide, ethnic
cleansing or other egregious humanitarian atrocities, Washington can forge
multilateral coalitions of the willing to lead military interventions to
stop the atrocities. In
the case of non-U.N. operations, the United States would prefer to obtain
the legitimating approbation of the United Nations if possible, in the
form of Security Council resolutions authorizing the operations. But the
United States is most unlikely to accept a Security Council resolution as
a mandatory requirement for the use of military force overseas. Ramesh Thakur is UNU Vice Rector and director of the Peace and Governance Programme. This commentary first appeared in the July 9 edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun. These are his personal views. |
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