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CIAO DATE: 04/01
International Affairs:
A Russian Journal
Can the UN Fight a War?
V. Shustov *
It is often the case that the UN judged not by the hundreds of resolutions adopted by its numerous agencies but by actions of "blue helmets" or "blue berets" — officers from various states deployed, on the basis of Security Council mandate, to various "hot spots" on the planet to monitor cease-fires, to eliminate threats to regional peace, to avert armed conflicts, and to achieve other peace-making objectives. Since 1948 this world organization has conducted 50 such operations, 37 of them since 1988, approximately 750,000 people taking part all in all, with the bill that UN member states had to foot running into $17 billion. In 1988, UN peacekeeping operations were awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
At present the Organization is conducting 15 peacekeeping operations. Meanwhile, there is growing demand for UN peacekeeping activities. In 1999, the UN Security Council set up new large-scale peacekeeping operations in Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra-Leone, and Congo. This goes to show that states need UN peacekeeping operations as an important instrument of ensuring global and regional stability.
The Need for Change
The experience accumulated in conducting such operations and, most important, changes in the international situation required strengthening and enhancing of the UN peacekeeping capacity. Aware of that need, Secretary-General Kofi Annan, this past March, made a decision to appoint a panel of international experts to study UN operations. The aim (he wrote in a letter to the Security Council chairman) was to review the UN’s entire activity in the sphere of peace and security — from conflict prevention with the help of monitoring and fact-finding missions to peacekeeping to humanitarian operations to post-conflict peace-building with a view to making these operations more viable and effective.
Admittedly, a considerable part of peacekeeping operations has been quite successful. In the Cold War era, as some researchers note, with good reason, many operations were politically possible because the opposing superpowers — the United States and the Soviet Union — sought to avoid armed confrontation and therefore, sought UN assistance.
The first such action, which in fact was called "peacekeeping operation," was the deployment of a UN emergency force to Sinai in the wake of the settlement of the 1956 Suez crisis. It monitored the pullout of British, French, and Israeli troops and enforced a buffer zone between Egypt and Israel. The force had to stay in the area for 11 years before Egypt demanded its withdrawal, shortly prior to the Six-Day War. UN peacekeepers did not return to the area until October 1973, completing their mission in 1979, when Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty. Oftentimes both UN officials and researchers refer to these operations as "classic" or "traditional."
As is known, a peacekeeping operation in Congo, in the early 1960s ended in complete failure: As a result, it came to be known as the "UN Vietnam."
Two operations deployed back in the Cold War era continue to date. These are the UN military observer mission, which began in 1949, on the Indian-Pakistani border, and the deployment, in 1964, of UN forces in Cyprus to enforce the disengagement of Greek and Turkish communities along the so-called green line.
As of the late 1980s-early 1990s, the Cold War abated while confrontation between the two blocs became history, but regional conflicts began to proliferate regardless. The UN had to contend with strong pressure from various states to deploy peacekeeping missions to various parts of the world: the Persian Gulf, South Africa, South Asia, and Central America. The tasks and purposes of peacekeeping operations also changed considerably. In 1989, the UN carried out the first successful operation that came to be known as a "peace-building operation," in Namibia, in the course of which peacekeepers not only supervised the disengagement of warring sides but also monitored the country’s first democratic election. The following year the UN provided assistance to Nicaragua in disarming the Contras.
Other success stories include operations in Mozambique, Cambodia, Salvadore, and Haiti, where the flame of conflict was put out and development of society steered into a peaceful course. The UN made a substantial contribution to defusing a crisis in Guatemala and expedited the signing, in 1996, of a peace agreement restoring democratic institutions in the country, thus marking the settlement of the last conflict in Central America.
The UN operation in East Timor in 1999 received high appraisal as a classic example of peacekeeping. The UN Security Council resolution and the performance by UN forces on the ground provided a basis for the territory, which had gained independence, to make a transition to real statehood.
There was a need to summarize the new tasks and new experience so as strengthen and fine-tune the UN’s peacekeeping capacity. That was in fact the mission of a panel of experts from 10 states (the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations), led by Lakhdar Brahimi, Under-Secretary-General for Special Assignments in Support of the Secretary-General’s Preventive and Peacemaking Efforts and former foreign minister of Algeria. It was also called upon to draw lessons from failures of UN operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and especially in Rwanda, where in 1994, approximately 800,000 people were killed in tribal violence. That open genocide was happening before the eyes of the entire international community. The need for change became all the more urgent in the wake of aggravation of a conflict in Sierra-Leone, in 2000.
The Panel worked from March until August of this year, presenting a report containing 60 recommendations to the Millennium Summit at the UN headquarters in New York. Some of them were addressed to UN member states while others, to the UN Secretariat. They are in strict conformity with the spirit and letter of the UN Charter, raising some basic conceptual problems of peacekeeping, but mostly they concern operational, organizational, and other practical needs. The report’s pragmatic orientation is among its strongest points. We realize, its authors stress, that there will be no successful reform unless UN member states work hard to carry it out.
Preventive Diplomacy
The report says that UN peacekeeping operations involve three basic types of activities: conflict prevention and peace-making, peacekeeping, and peace-building (incidentally, the term peace operations encompasses all types of its peace-making activity).
In this triad, conflict prevention, which is the subject of preventive diplomacy, takes center stage. The Panel calls for more effective conflict-prevention strategies, pointing out that prevention is far preferable for those who would otherwise suffer the consequences of war, and a less costly option for the international community than military action, emergency humanitarian relief, or reconstruction after a war has run its course.
The report makes a distinction between long-term and short-term conflict prevention.
The first category includes efforts to minimize the effects of such factors as poverty and economic backwardness, which oftentimes leads to crises. The panel noted on the positive side the fact that a target specific group was set up within the UN framework on peace and security matters and long-term conflict prevention. It prepared a concept whereby UN agencies dealing with development matters should regard activities in this sphere as well as in the humanitarian sphere through the prism of conflict prevention, making it a core of their activities. Nonetheless, the report notes, to make conflict prevention a really effective vehicle, it is necessary to provide for a more systematic accumulation of knowledge and information concerning conflicts and to ensure strategic planning in conflict prevention.
The report highlights the complexity of the peace-building process owing to the diversity of sources of conflicts, such as: economic problems (e.g., poverty, distribution of income, discrimination or corruption), political problems (power struggles), natural resources and other environmental problems (e.g., the struggle for water resources) or ethnic or religious problems or gross violations of human rights.
Within the framework of short-term conflict prevention activity, the UN should deal with problems at an early stage, in areas where tensions are emerging. Useful instruments in this respect could be fact finding missions and other suchlike initiatives as well as good offices of the UN Secretary-General. Under the provisions of Article 2 (Point 5) of the UN Charter, UN member states "shall give it every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the Charter."
Peace Maintenance Doctrine and Strategy
This doctrine and strategy is based on Chapter VI of the UN Charter, calling for peaceful adjustment of disputes, and Chapter VII, granting the Security Council authority to repulse acts of aggression, requiring member states to make available, in accordance with a special agreement, armed forces to maintain international peace and security.
No doubt, national armed units under the UN flag and command have unquestionable advantage owing to their impartiality and their truly international character. When, in 1992, an operation in Somali was led by the United States, it failed dismally, because it was represented by just one state.
At the same time experience shows that with the UN's objectively limited resources peacekeeping operations in some cases proved viable and even justified within the framework of "one-time" (ad hoc) coalitions or multinational forces of states ready to participate in such an operation. The UN can also engage in peacemaking in interaction with regional organizations, which is in conformity with Chapter VIII of its Charter. To be sure, such coalition-based or regional operations should be fully in conformity with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, strictly accountable to the Security Council.
In light of these circumstances, the report says: "The Panel recognizes that the United Nations does not wage wars. Where enforcement action is required, it has consistently been entrusted to coalitions of willing States, with the authorization of the Security Council, to coalitions of states ready for that, acting under Chapter VII of the Charter…
The Charter clearly encourages cooperation with regional and subregional organizations to resolve conflict and maintain peace and security."
This of course does not mean that the UN fully renounces the use of enforcement measures as part of traditional UN-supervised operations. This possibility, provided for under the UN Charter, naturally remains within the Organization's set of tools.
Any peacekeeping operation may only be started on the basis of a Security Council resolution. In his report to the 54th Session of the UN General Assembly, K. Annan stressed that enforcement action without Security Council sanction threatens the very essence of the international security system based on the UN Charter. Only the Charter provides a generally recognized legal basis for the use of force.
About a year before the Panel began its work, the United States and NATO introduced the concept of "humanitarian intervention." Its basic premise was that genocide might never be seen as a purely internal affair. Nonetheless, neither NATO documents nor statements by its leaders contained any reference to Security Council mandate, which, under the provisions of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, is the sole international body that may, on behalf of the international community, sanction the use of force.
NATO member countries sought to invoke humanitarian intervention in a bid to justify unilateral use of force against Yugoslavia, including air strikes on targets located on its territory, which, in NATO logic, were supposed to be seen as "humanitarian strikes."
It was argued, in light of the changes that had taken place, that "traditional" understanding of national sovereignty did not answer the need of ensuring basic human rights.
To its credit, the Panel, in its report, makes no mention of humanitarian intervention — unlike some delegations at the 54th Session of the UN General Assembly, which tended to speculate on the subject.
One of the most controversial and sensitive issues is the use of force in the course of peacekeeping operations. As the report stresses, the Panel agrees that the consent of the sides concerned, impartiality, and the use of force only for purposes of self-defense should remain the core principles of international peace maintenance.
Nonetheless, the Panel could not possibly ignore recent experience in peacekeeping operations. It took into account the fact that sometimes this or that side (as was the case in a number of African countries) gave consent to UN presence only in a bid to play for time and reconstitute its forces — only to retract its consent later on and to demand the withdrawal of the UN contingent, threatening to use force. In some instances peacekeepers were insufficiently trained and equipped to implement a Security Council mandate, or in the event of attack against them, failed to retaliate effectively to wipe out the source of attack on UN forces or people that they were assigned to protect. Genocide in Rwanda acquired such monstrous proportions because the international community, as represented by the UN, failed to deploy or conduct the operation effectively enough.
New multinational peacekeeping operations, which have to contend with present-day challenges to international security that are most of the time to do with intra-state conflicts, provide for not just simple monitoring or the presence of "blue helmets." Resolution 1289, on Sierra-Leone, passed by the Security Council in February 2000, envisions, in addition to monitoring of cease-fires, a number of integrated missions, including protection of government buildings, key crossroads, and main airports; ensuring the free movement of people, goods, and humanitarian aid; and protection of weapons, ammunition, and other combat equipment used by ex-combatants.
The Security Council resolution attributes the need for such measures to the fact that the situation in Sierra-Leone continues to pose a threat to international peace and security in the region.
Performance of such missions means that Security Council mandates should clearly define authorization for the use of force. This also presupposes that UN troops should be appropriately equipped in order to provide credible deterrence, in contrast to a symbolic presence that typically characterizes traditional peacekeeping operations.
Today, peacekeeping forces can sustain substantial losses (from 1948 until now, 1,610 peacekeepers have been killed). UN member states making available troops for peacekeeping operations should be ready to risk such losses in the interests of securing international peace. Experts believe that such risk should be appraised by the UN Secretary-General.
Some recommendations in the report are addressed to the Security Council. The basic principle is that before a decision to assist implementation of a cease-fire agreement is made, parties to it should make sure that it is viable in terms of its objectives and time frame. In another recommendation, the Panel urges the Security Council not to finalize resolutions authorizing large peacekeeping missions until Member States have pledged the necessary troops and resources; and recommends an increase in funding to strengthen the peacekeeping support staff at United Nations Headquarters.
The Panel acted on the premise that mandates for peacekeeping operations are agreed on the basis of compromise. Hence some lack of clarity in wording and definitions. It would be desirable that UN troops be deployed to conflict areas with clear-cut mandate for action. To this end, in defining and using mission mandates, the Panel further "recommends that the Secretariat tell the Security Council what it needs to know, not what it wants to hear, when formulating or changing mission mandates."
Naturally, a mandate approved by the Security Council should be carried out in good faith. Unfortunately, not all countries follow this principle: This applies, above all, to NATO, in the multinational operation in Kosovo, under Security Council Resolution 1244. The Kosovo force is comprised of 29 battalions with servicemen from 36 countries. Nonetheless, NATO member states account for the largest share — 31,000, as compared to 7,700 servicemen from non-NATO countries. Control of the operation is in the hands of Western representatives, led by Frenchman Bernard Cushner.
Airstrikes on Kosovo as well as the fact that NATO was in effect calling the shots in the area led to ethnic cleansing. According to various estimates, between 250,000 and 350,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians left Kosovo. NATO showed such "concern" about human rights in the area that more than 800 non-Albanians were killed during the year. Kosovo has been effectively cut off from Yugoslavia. Negotiations designed to define its status as part the FRY with effective self-government and broad autonomy are yet to begin. Thus, key provisions of Security Council Resolution 1244 are not being implemented. This approach, essentially, undermines the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping operations — in defiance of Panel recommendations aimed to enhance their effectiveness.
Peace-Building
The UN Security Council defined peace-building as action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict, and to prevent the recurrence of violence among nations and peoples. In December 1998, the Security Council approved a statement by its chairman calling on the UN Secretary-General to study the possibility of creating post-conflict peace-building structures within the framework of UN efforts to ensure long-term conflict settlement.
The Panel on UN peacekeeping operations could not but elaborate on this matter. The Panel welcomed the decision to set up peace-building elements as follow-up to other peace operations such as, for example, in Tajikistan or Haiti or as independent initiatives, as, for example, in Guatemala or Guinea-Bissau.
For a peace-building operation to produce the required result, the Panel recommended a number of practical measures, viz.:
Peace-building problems necessitated the creation of a transitional civil administration. In June 1999, the Secretary was entrusted, under a Security Council resolution, to set up such an administration for Kosovo and, three months later, also for East Timor. In either case, the problem of "applicable law," defining the law enforcement functions of judicial and legal agencies, arose — basically, from a conflict with the local code of law. Concerning transitional civil administration, some Western experts stated that a panel of international legal experts should explore the idea of an interim criminal code, for use in places where the United Nations is given temporary executive powers (as currently in Kosovo and East Timor), pending the re-establishment of local rule of law and law enforcement capacity — ignoring the fact that Kosovo is an inseparable part of Yugoslavia, recognized by the UN, while East Timor is an emerging state formation. The Panel proposed a more cautious line, taking this regional difference into account, recommending the UN Secretary-General to urge international law experts to study the situation to restore law and order on the ground and to rebuild local law enforcement agencies.
Ensuring Effective Peacekeeping Operations
Meeting the timelines for deployment of peacekeeping operations in conflict areas is a serious problem for the UN. With a view to ensuring a prompt response to these conflicts, as of the mid-1990s, a system of the so-called standby arrangements was set up — basically, data banks on military, police, and civilian personnel that can be used in UN operations. At present the data bank includes 147,900 personnel from 87 member states that are parties to these standby arrangements. Even so, it often happens to be the case that these figures exist only on paper and in computer memory while once a decision has been made to conduct an operation, the Secretary is unable to mobilize the necessary forces.
With a view to addressing this problem, undermining the whole of the UN peace-making system, the Panel proposed a number of specific recommendations that could enable the UN to ensure the deployment of a typical peacekeeping operation within 30 days and of a complex operation within 90 days of the adoption of a Security Council resolution establishing its mandate. This rapid and effective deployment of field operations, however, will require serious efforts on the part of states as well as realization of the importance of UN peacekeeping operations in present-day conditions for maintaining international stability.
The report devotes considerable attention to logistical and financial support for peacekeeping operations. In particular, it is recommended that additional ready-made mission "start-up kits" should be maintained at the United Nations Logistics Base in Brindisi, Italy. In matters of funding for peacekeeping support, the Panel remarks that, after 52 years, it is time to treat peacekeeping as a core activity of the United Nations, rather than a temporary responsibility. Headquarters support for it should, therefore, be funded mainly through the regular United Nations budget, instead of the current Support Account, which has to be justified year by year and post by post. The Panel also proposed that the UN Secretary-General be authorized, with consent from the Organization's inter-governmental financial committee, to provide, from a peacekeeping operations reserve fund, up to $50 million as soon as an operation has been approved.
These are just two examples from a set of detailed recommendations made by the Panel.
The Panel also stressed the need to improve the information gathering and analysis capacity of the Secretariat, with a view to improving the quality of advice to both the Secretary-General and the Security Council, and welcomes, in this regard, the clarifications provided by the Secretary-General in his implementation report on his plans for the establishment of the Executive Committee on Peace and Security Information and Strategic Analysis Secretariat. The relevant parts of the Secretariat had been asked to use the time lines proposed by the Panel as the basis for evaluating the capacity of existing systems to provide field missions with the required human, material, financial and information assets
It is recommended to streamline the UN Secretariat, reorganizing its subdivisions dealing with peacekeeping operations, above all its department for peacekeeping operations, the political department, and analytical departments. On the whole, these recommendations are substantial and highly relevant from the point of view of rationalizing and streamlining UN activity. Member states themselves admit that they need to give greater consideration to methods and working procedures at least insofar as concerns UN activities in the sphere of peace and security.
Russia’s Position
Considering that the report would be presented to the Millennium Summit, the Panel appealed to Forum participants to reaffirm their commitment to UN ideals and to pledge themselves to strengthen and consolidate the UN capacity to carry out a mission that is, essentially, its raison d’être: to provide assistance to conflict stricken communities and to support and rebuild peace.
The report received positive appraisal at General Assembly and Security Council sessions in the course of the Summit from many world leaders. Thus, RF President V. Putin said: "It is very important to improve the UN’s crisis management capacity. In this context, the Brahimi Report, presented by the UN Secretary-General, appears to be very useful. We need to develop the ‘culture of conflict prevention,’ taking a hands-on, proactive approach. It is especially important to identify the root causes of conflicts, including in the economic and social sphere."
This is of course only initial reaction. The report — a comprehensive and multi-tiered document — will require serious consideration by all UN member states and will become a subject of extensive, in-depth discussion.
Russia’s position of principle with respect to the UN’s peace-making activity is presented in the RF Foreign Policy Concept.
Russia sees international peace-making as an effective instrument of dealing with and resolving armed conflicts, favoring the consolidation of its legal basis in conformity with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. While supporting measures to build up and modernize the UN rapid crisis response capacity, Russia intends to take an active part in peacekeeping operations conducted both under UN auspices and by regional or subregional organizations. The need for and extent of such participation will be contingent on the country’s national interests and international obligations. Russia acts on the premise that only the UN Security Council may authorize the use of force as a means of enforcing peace.
The Russian side believes that the use of force in violation of the UN Charter is unlawful, threatening stability of the entire system of international relations. It rejects as utterly unacceptable any attempts to invoke concepts such as "humanitarian intervention" or "limited sovereignty" to justify unilateral use of force in circumvention of the UN Security Council.
Of 15 peacekeeping operations currently conducted by the UN, Russia is taking part in 10. Importantly, its military and civilian specialists are represented in all components of these operations: military, civilian, and police components.
Our delegations at UN agencies support the efforts of its Secretariat to enhance the effectiveness of coordination within the framework of integrated mission operations and to develop standard approaches to deploying and conducting peacekeeping operations.
Russia has repeatedly come out in favor of a system of standby arrangements, declaring its readiness to make available its military and specialized units — engineers, medical service, and transport — to these standby forces. Russia believes that peacekeeping operations should actively tap UN international civilian police that constitute an important element of modern integrated mission peacekeeping operations.
Also noteworthy is Russia’s attitude to the principles of funding peacekeeping efforts. As a Russian delegation recently stated in New York, it is now time to put in place a reliable and stable financial basis for UN peace-making activity. Russia intends to assist this in every possible way, including by making its contributions to the UN budget in a full and timely manner as well as by consistently discharging its outstanding debt on peacekeeping operations.
Russia believes that reform of the UN contribution system should be based on the principle of states’ effective solvency. It does not object to special financial responsibility of permanent members of the UN Security Council for UN peace-making activity.
Note: * Vladimir Shustov is Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, member of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations Back