Political Science United States Participation

Political Science

United States Participation in a Multinational Conflict Management Force

High-speed travel, instantaneous communication, and multinational corporations have made the world a much smaller place. What an individual or group does on one continent may produce profound consequences on another. Nations no longer operate in a vacuum, the sole agents and recipients of their insular policies. The Earth is becoming a single community. So, it is with good reason that America's political leaders concern themselves with the problems and potential conflicts of other countries and regions.

Trouble spots are monitored as ancient animosities erupt into open violence. Perennial feuds expand into larger conflicts. Movements begin in distant places that soon pose serious difficulties for people in America, Europe, and beyond. The United Sates and its NATO allies intervened in the Balkans during the 1990s as a result of Serbia's campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Bosnian Muslims. The media worked overtime to convince a skeptical public of the necessity of a war based largely on humanitarian grounds. Though many objected - Republican officials most prominently - the argument worked and American forces remain in Kosovo even today. Yet the campaign raises its won questions namely in regard to the truth of the various propositions presented. Not all agreed that the United States was right to intervene. Not all agreed that the actual events merited a military response. Not all believed the most common accounts of these events. There are many sides to any argument and all must be considered especially when one of the alternative solutions is war. A clear framework must exist for determining the rightness of any future American participation in multinational conflict management forces.

As noted above, it was primarily for humanitarian reasons that the United States and its allies intervened in Bosnia - or at least the was justification that eventually stuck with the public.

Countries may be come involved in multinational conflict management forces for a variety reasons founded on varying political philosophies. Humanitarianism is one, while realism might be a more traditional rationale. Governments have frequently resorted to the argument of "national interest" as a reason for becoming involved in conflicts that do not appear, on the surface, to concern them directly. The United States and its European partners had an abiding interest in European stability and the conflict in the Balkans was a potential threat to that wider stability,

With the threat to core interests in Bosnia now (momentarily) commensurate with the powers' continuing paramount interest, the international community reconfigured and redeployed the peacekeeping mission and reversed a previous decision not to intervene on the side of the Muslims.

That neutrality was no longer an option represented an obvious case of realpolitik, particularly as the alignment with a Muslim people against the Christian Serbs seemed an apparent conflict with other European and American interests. American had long faced difficulties with predominantly Muslim nations, such as Iran and Iraq, but in this instance, it was deemed better to side with the Muslims rather than against them. By the same token, the Bosnian Muslim beneficiaries of American military intervention were also forced to accept a realpolitik definition of the mission's goals - the creation of a secular state that would subsume under its control both Christian and Muslim citizens.

Essentially, the Clinton Administration made the case that the ending of the conflict between Christians and Muslims was in the geo-political interests of the United States. "As a consequence [of intervention], Washington secures a new client regime, major military bases and strategic geopolitical advantages while undermining an enemy to its uni-polar pretensions."

From this perspective, the "rescue" of the Kosovars was part of a larger game in which the United States was fighting against its real enemy, the geopolitical rivals that might have taken the side of Serbia in an attempt to expand their own influence in the Balkans. Of course, this "rival" was essentially Russia, the Clinton Administration's reaction to Milosevic's depredations being an attempt to counter a revival of traditional perceptions within Russia of that nation as leader and protector of fellow Slavs. Thus, Washington's moves countered Moscow's.

But assertions of realpolitik can be more for more than military reasons. The United States also possessed economic interests in that same region. With the continued struggles against rising Islamic nationalism coupled with fanaticism, Washington had every reason to look for ways to safeguard its access to Middle Eastern oil. Indeed Tariq Ali has argued in his collection of essays on the Conflict, Masters of the Universe, that the "humanitarian "arguments advanced by the West were nothing but the height of hypocrisy.

Ali actually urged against intervention on the grounds that the real motives of the United States and others were solely economic and military. Comparing the conflict in the Balkans to other theaters of United States intervention in Korea, Japan, and Iraq, Secretary of Defense William Cohen observed that such interventions converted those regions into stable markets for American goods, and in a summation of his remarks by the Associated Press, "The military's success in holding Iraq in check ensures a continued flow of oil from the Persian Gulf."

While Kosovo itself contained no particular resources, its importance was widely recognized by the Clinton Administration and the succeeding Bush Administration as a "gateway" to the Middle East. In the words of Robert I. Hunter, former United States Ambassador to NATO, "It is the gateway to areas of intense Western concern - the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iraq and Iran, Afghanistan, the Caspian Sea, and Transcaucasia. Stability in southeastern Europe must be a precursor to protecting Western interests and reducing threats from farther East."

American officials continue to speak of constructing a pipeline that would bring the oil wealth of the Caspian Sea Region directly through the Kosovo area or perhaps, as some have claimed, the invasion was necessary to prevent Russia from building its own pipeline through the region as a means of selling its own petroleum on the Western market.

The economic factors affecting Kosovo; therefore, extend far beyond the intrinsic importance o this relatively small territory. In similar fashion, the United States has been accused of fomenting difficulties in countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, Columbia, and other parts of Latin America where the supposed machinations of local rulers are disparaged as detrimental to the good order of the region and so to the operations of American corporations in still "friendly" neighboring nations.

Nevertheless, genuine humanitarian motivations cannot be ignored when considering the reasons for American intervention in Kosovo, Iraq, and other places around the world. The tragedy of "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda, and also Darfur, have all provoked calls for American military action. The media plays a significant role in making the public aware of these monstrous events. Graphic pictures and accounts, combined with the voice given to celebrity and humanitarian activists exert pressure on politicians "to do the right thing." Despite United Nations descriptions of Darfur as the "worst humanitarian crisis in the world," the response of the United States has been essentially humanitarian and not military, underscoring the belief on the part of some that where other reasons for intervention do not exits, the United States and other Western governments prefer to act in concert with non-governmental organizations (NGO's) to attack the solely human dimensions of the conflict.