UN Peacekeeping Limitations After Five

UN Peacekeeping Limitations

After five decades of international conflict, waged between the imperial champion of the communist ideology and the frontrunner for western democracy, the latter prevailed in the peaceful revolution of 1989. With the reunification of Germany, and two years later, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cold War had ended with little immediately apparent violence or resistance. And from the perspective that the invasive and draconian presence of Soviet supported regimes had fallen in Hungary, Romania, Czechloslovakia and Poland, the end of the Cold War certainly appeared to light the way toward the pervasion of civil liberty, capitalist evolution and democratic policy representation.

In the midst of this deservedly optimistic atmosphere, however, loomed a large range of challenges which would obstruct any direct transition into the promises seemingly inherent to the post-War era. The collapse of communism had been a consequence of short-sighted economic appropriation, an unnaturally overbearing approach to individual freedoms and a neglect of infrastructure, human rights or basic Marxist principles regarding social equality. In the fallout of these systemic misapplications, "the removal of Soviet domination offered little in the way of a positive programme for reconstruction. The social legacy -- or damage -- of communism had to be addressed. In 1989, freedom had a bitter taste and the price that needed to be paid seemed exorbitant. Economically ruined, socially dislocated, corrupted, and demoralized by forty-odd years of communist rule" the populist movements of Eastern Europe would be left with a considerable vacuum in terms of resources, infrastructural capability or experiential wherewithal to create a 'new reality' for the former Soviet sphere. (Lovell, 67) in the fallout of the Cold War, a new reality had been forged in which countless states were thrust into an abyss of self-governance and, consequently, in which a great many local and regional conflicts would be provoked by a vacuum of power. Here, the role of the United Nations and of such world powers as the United States and the former Soviet Union would be essential in attempting to broker stability and peace in impacted regions.

The expansiveness of the Cold War meant that there were few parts of the world which had not been impacted. Such is demonstrated by the numerous examples in the 20 years since the end of the Cold War where UN peacekeeping efforts have been necessitated and/or applied.

Upon its creation following World War II, the United Nations took on the crucial responsibilities of mediating world conflicts, intervening with crises in which human rights were being violated and doling out justice for violators of international law. In order to serve in this capacity, the U.N. has had to maintain a mutable scope of power and responsibility, often to be shaped by the course of events and the demands of world circumstances. As such, the U.N. is equipped with what are referred to as 'implied powers.' Such are capacities that, through a loose interpretation of the U.N. charter, designate to the organization the ability to take actions and to make decisions which, while not explicitly entitled it by any constructed bylaws, would nonetheless be considered justified under its explicit responsibilities to the world community. In this way, recognize some, the U.N. charter is remarkably similar to the U.S. Constitution:

The foundational doctrine of the U.N. "presents sufficient similarities to federal constitutions, and especially to that of the United States, to justify - and to justify in law - the application to UN organs of that same doctrine of implied powers which provided the basis for the gradual extension of powers of the two most important organs of the United States central government." (Arangio-Ruiz, 1)

This helps to highlight the role which the United States has played in the philosophical and practical makeup of the United Nations, offering a model for the designation of a force with certain unspecified and generalized powers.

The outcome of these powers would be the establishment of a convention by which the U.N. would come to take action in the face of practical challenges to peace and global security. Its maintenance of global security is, of course, a markedly ambitious course of responsibility with its implied powers tending to the push the U.N. To a more moderated and pragmatic orientation toward peacekeeping rather than total global defense. This has rendered its role somewhat selective with respect to the missions which it adopts and executes.

This conforms with Durch's understanding of a force that has evolved only marginally with the changing of geopolitical logistics following the Cold War. Indeed, it would assume a role in world politics somewhat dictated by the restraint of the ongoing conflict between the U.S. And the U.S.S.R. As Durch denotes, "during the Cold War, the United Nations could not do the job for which it was created. Global collective security, the organizing precept of its Charter, was impossible in a world divided into hostile blocs. But the UN did manage to carve out a more narrow security role. As a 'neutral' organization it could sometimes help to bring smaller conflicts to an end, keep them from flaring anew, and keep them from leading to a direct and potentially catastrophic class of U.S. And Soviet arms." (Durch, 1)

It would be within this context of balance of selectivity that the United Nations would assume its current form and approach, which may be characterized by its frequently apparent limitations with respect to intervention and the provision of security. The juggling act whereby it has sought not to intervene with the affairs of the United States or the Soviet Union -- owing in no small part to the presence and influence of both in the permanent Security Council which renders crucial operational decisions for the United Nations -- has resulted in a capacity only to intervene in conflicts of a more modest scale. Durch characterizes this as the formulation of 'realistic objectives' which relate to the establishment of ceasefire agreements and the provision of a distinct go-between and separator of two aggressive parties. (Durch, 1)

The assumption of this role has formulated the United Nations as an organization which is fundamentally unfit for preservation of total global peace, so demonstrated by the conflicted identities, ideologies and interests of the U.S. And the Soviet Union. However, as a peacekeeping force, the U.N. can be identified to have both categorical strengths and weaknesses that in the period following the Cold War have manifested in its peacekeeping missions in the face of some challenges and in its fundamental failure to act in other instances.

As these examples are here considered, it is with the understanding that the United Nations would be innovative and progressive in its initial compromise with respect to its own limitations, which may be seen as particularly positive for preventing the U.N. from having become simply another warring faction driven by priorities based on global alliances such as had perpetuated the Cold War. To the contrary, "novel kinds of field operations were developed to support this work, which can be grouped into two categories: unarmed military observer missions (first utilized in the Balkans in 1947) and armed peacekeeping missions (first utilized in the Sinai in 1956). In this study, the term 'peacekeeping' is used as shorthand to reference both." (Durch, 1)

Among the most significant examples of U.N. peacekeeping intervention since the end of the Cold War, those which are indicative of both its strengths and its vast shortcomings seem also to have been directly produced by the half-century global conflict. In Somalia, Kosovo and Rwanda, we are given prime examples of the type of 'isolated' and idiosyncratic conflicts that Durch has described as appropriately figured for U.N. intervention. The ethnic tensions and violent hostilities which had unfolded in these locations in the early 1990s are indicative both of the problematic limitations which have handcuffed the effectiveness of the U.N. And of the opportunities which have been realized by way of urgent necessity. Further examples of U.N. shortcomings where peacekeeping was ultimately prevented by the failure of the U.N. To reconcile its collected individual interests as opposed to its shared charter goals may be seen in such contexts as Iraq and the Sudan today.

Somalia is a useful example both for illustrating the issues which have ultimately prevented the U.N. from acting with full latitude and necessary force where challenges emerge and for demonstrating the value in its long-term intervention. In the pullout of Soviet authority and the unraveling of its civil order with the retraction of the Cold War, Somalia entered into a dangerous power vacuum which left its citizens vulnerable to roving warlords who drew the African nation into distinct ethnic hostilities. This would be one of many modern examples of an impotent peacekeeping force which must stand helplessly as witness to ethnic atrocities while representatives vacillate over policy in the safety of the U.N. headquarters. Indeed, though the apparent challenges to the locale were sufficient to draw the arrival of a peacekeeping force in 1991, it was immediately clear that the mission lacked either the instructive experience or the political license to contend with the complex and deeply ingrained hostilities there apparent. Thus, "by late 1992, the catastrophic situation in Somalia had outstripped the UN's ability to quickly restore peace and stability, mainly because the UN was hamstrung by insufficient forces and UN peacekeeping principles and methods could not cope with the need to use force in such complex situations. On 3 December 1992, UN Security Council Resolution 794 authorised a coalition of UN members led by the U.S. To form UNITAF and intervene to protect the delivery of humanitarian assistance and restore peace." (ANZAC, 1)

Here is an interesting orientation which begins to the more clearly illustrated one of the core conflicts here discussed. In our research, we come repeatedly across evidence that the United Nations has essentially failed to ever achieve a real autonomy from the interests of its most powerful member states. Most specifically in this instance, as in a great many others which have persisted throughout the history of the United Nations, we can see that such nations as the United States have a greater influence on proceedings than many of their counterparts. Though in the instance of Somalia it soon becomes apparent that the resources and flexibility uniquely availed to the powerful U.S. would be necessary in the face of U.N. shortcomings, future instances such as Iraq will demonstrate that where the will of such a nation is contrary to that of the U.N., the former will prevail over the latter.

This discussion will return to this idea hereafter. In the instance of Somalia, the limitations to peacekeeping would ultimately be redressed through the individual commission of specific national forces. And to the point, the outcome in this instance must surely be seen as a positive indicator of that which peacekeeping missions can hope to provide in the long run. Indeed, though Somalia was, 15 years ago, ensconced in disarray and violence, "Somalia today is a very different place... The chaos that followed the massive UNBOSOM intervention has been replace by security and stability in the north of the country and glimmers of hope for peace in the central and southern areas." (ANZAC, 1) Indeed, in the case of Somalia, all indications are that the ultimate outcome of the U.N. presence would be to save lives as intended. An argument, nonetheless, can still be made that a greater flexibility and autonomy from the outset would have allowed it to save yet more lives by the prevention or curtailing of initial violence.

Still, as Durch ably points out, and Somalia begins to illustrate, "part of the UN's problem is its basic lack of autonomy and its habituation to rhetoric, a learned response from its first forty years of political stalemate (first East-West, and then North-South). The Organization has rarely seemed more than the sum of its arguing parts." (Durch, 3) This core problem has rendered it in many instances incapable of acting before significant damage has already been perpetrated.

Another example where this argument can be made would be in the splintered former Yugoslavia. Here, the regions of Kosovo and Serbia were engaged in an ongoing conflict in which ethnic cleansing and the violent dictatorship of Slobedan Milosevic had produced despair and widespread death in the former Soviet state. Once again, this was an example of a power vacuum which had allowed for the warring factions of the nation to slide into irreconcilable aggression. In this instance, the peacekeeping force would not only come too late to restrain internal destruction but would also be too late to prevent intervention in the form of a heavily criticized NATO bombing campaign. (Wikipedia, 1) Here, the violence had begotten further violence with the U.N. incapable of stepping in before the smoke had cleared. The reactionary inflexibility may also be the reason why Yugoslavia continues to experience tension, with 16,000 U.N. forces still there a decade after the initial mission in order to maintain stability. (Wikipedia, 1) There is, however, a positive example in the instance of the Kosovo War in the form of the trial of Milosevic. Here, peacekeeping forces demonstrated their capacity for intervention to the extent of removing problematic or criminal leadership. This concerns the use, once again, of implied powers. And indeed, Milosevic was the precedent setting defendant in a war crime s tribunal.

Thus, the role of implied powers for the U.N., in general terms, has been to enable the organization to grow in strength as it matures. Its world security responsibilities detail that the U.N. is authorized to bring about peaceful resolution of conflicts, to create and utilize peace-keeping forces where needed and to enforce decisions made against conflictive states. In order to achieve these goals, the often beleaguered organization has been forced to extend its authority in ways that Charter composers could not have foreseen. This accounts for the forethought which requires the expansiveness of implied powers.

This has proved a double-edged sword in a way though, with the undefined nature of the international governing body's powers leaving it vulnerable to subversion and ineffectiveness. The shortcomings of the organization itself are often made most visible in the space between an implied power and the achievement of the U.N.'s fundamental goals. In cases both where implied powers have been neglected and where they have been exploited, it is apparent that such play a defining role in the way the United Nations functions in the service of its principles.

By considering the role of the U.N.'s implied powers in such conflicts, there is demonstrable evidence that such are vastly important in ensuring the needed pragmatism and flexibility of an organization designed to represent so many different cultures and interests. Conversely though, the 'implied' status of many key responsibilities such as the applicable enforcement of Security Council Resolutions and the capacity of its military-branch to contend with variant global conflicts has blunted the authority of the United Nations, which in conflicts both long and short-term has often proved itself too bureaucratic and culturally relativist to serve its defined function. Two useful examples to this end, made so by their respective illustration of implied power neglect and exploitation, suggest that the United Nations is a necessary organization but a flawed one, incapable of preventing the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and thoroughly undermined by the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. In each case, the role of the United Nations' implied powers is open to exploration, with the situations polarized to opposite ends of a spectrum which renders the U.N. impotently stranded in the middle. And indeed, this is the condition which Durch laments throughout his text. From a philosophical perspective, he denotes that "peacekeeping supplements the self-help system of international politics with an element of disinterested outside assistance that can help the parties to a conflict disengage themselves from it. Peacekeeping missions may involve, in ascending order of complexity and intrusiveness: uncovering the facts of a conflict; monitoring of border or buffer zones after armistice agreements have been signed; verification of agreed-upon force disengagements or withdrawals; supervision of the disarming and demobilization of local forces; maintenance of security conditions essential to the conduct of elections; and even the temporary, transitional administration of countries." (Durch, 3) in this array or responsibilities, it is argued that the U.N. should be a powerfully situated organization. However, all evidence suggests that where the will of its largest individual members is either lacking or overwhelming, these functions are fully diminished in their relevance.

There is a firm basis for the United Nations to empower its own forces for the purpose of enforcing its provisions. Its Charter was designed to make the organization a consequential rather than strictly theoretical advocate of peace, and although "the Charter does not expressly provide powers to the Council for peace-keeping forces, the International Court of Justice in a 1962 case found that the Council has an implied power for this purpose." (Sarooshi, 1) This is an implied power, though, which over a period of decades has earned a misconception of roles. Identifying itself as a peace-keeping organization, the U.N.'s armed enforcement agency is often perceived as a military force. Though equipped with weaponry, peace-keeping forces are only modestly armed and thus not truly endowed for large-scale hostile confrontation. For this reason, these forces are typically only deployed to a conflict site when a ceasefire agreement has been established. Thus, such forces are intended to work in direct supplement of the diplomacy modes used to establish compromise between conflictive parties.

In some ways though, this renders such 'implied powers' as subject to hazy and consequently problematic considerations. Not truly prepared to partake in warfare and yet serving as the only militarily-oriented extension of the central body for provision, enforcement and sustenance of world peace, U.N. peacekeeping troops have often proved incapable of either truly intervening in the course of urgent conflict or preventing the onset of imminent violence. At its worst, this unrefined formulation of its military role has undermined the practicable power of the U.N. And cost the world countless innocent lives.

The purpose of its implied powers to allow the U.N. To take immediate peacekeeping action when necessary experienced its most glaring Cold War failure when, "Between April and June 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the space of 100 days." (BBC, 1) When ethnic tension between Hutu and Tutsi cultures caused the indiscriminate massacre of the latter by the former, the United Nations was legally authorized by its Charter and the implied powers afforded it therewith to take intervening action. Here, the role of its implied powers should have been sufficient to entitle the organization to call upon its member states to deploy forces oriented toward the prevention of further violence.

U.N. peacekeeping forces, already present, stood by and watched helplessly as innocent civilians were murdered by roving death squads. Subsequently, Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, an official for the Security Council at the time of the genocide, would acknowledge that "there was a United Nations force in the country at the time, but it was neither mandated nor equipped for the kind of forceful action which would have been needed to prevent or halt the genocide." (Annan, 1) This speaks to the ineffectiveness of implied powers without the concrete resources to act upon these assumed extensions of authority.

Beyond its neglect to take military action, the U.N. defied its own implied power to monitor and prevent human rights abuses through its Human Rights Commission (HRC, 1). "The HRC derived its authority from the doctrine of implied powers, pursuant to which any international instance must enjoy certain implied powers." (CERD, 1) the situation in Rwanda elucidates an outright failure to act upon that which its bylaws would have considered justifiable invocation of implied powers, not just from a military perspective, but also according to the impetuses which inform the Human Rights Commission. This clarification was drawn up in 2005, with such issues as the Rwandan genocide, and the more recently occurring and significantly unchecked genocide which unfolded in the Darfur region of Sudan, at the forefront of its purpose. Thus, it remains yet to be seen whether or not this legal clarification will orient the organization with the scarce unity which it would require to act as a whole to prevent international or civil acts of genocide.

An implied power of the United Nations has long been to entitle its member states that authority to act upon international and civil crises which such states deem to demand such intervention. This, due to its relative shortcomings of resource and actionable power, is intended to serve as a functional compensation for the absence of a real internal mechanism for military action. Thus, the capacity of the U.N. To intervene in the provocation or execution of hostile acts is dependent in no small part upon the willingness of its member states to voluntarily offer members of their own military forces to matters of international concern.

Initially, this implied power was considered only temporary, with the original intent being to add to the Constitution of the United Nations a proportionally-based quota of troop designations from its members. "It was envisaged that States would conclude agreements with the United Nations, enabling the Council to require troop contributions to create and carry out military enforcement operations. Due to the Cold War this procedure was not implemented." (Sarooshi, 1) Thus, in its stead, the United Nations has been forced to rely upon 'coalitions of the willing' in order to create the necessary military forces to combat individual cases of international violence or civil unrest.

This approach means that one of the primary roles of the United Nations' implied powers is to host a forum in which member states can pragmatically authorize and assemble forces with which to take on appropriate actions. That is a role which has often undermined the collectivist intent of the organization though, with the interests of specific member-states taking primacy in the determination of military action. Such has been demonstrated both by the failure of member states to act when necessary such as in Rwanda and by the impulse of some nation-states to seek United Nations authorization to use their own forces against states or parties argued to have run afoul of international convention. Naturally, the general difficulty which the United Nations Security Council has had in finding unanimity on various international questions has been a major factor in creating internal division over that which constitutes a violation worthy of intervention. In lieu of an international force acting to intervene when deemed necessary, the U.N. has far more often since the end of the Cold War authorized nation-states to use. "While the drafters of the Charter without doubt envisaged a more active and effective role for the Council, nevertheless by giving the right of veto to the permanent members they also excluded such a role if there was no consensus between these five." (Blokker, 1)

Thus, the implied nature of the U.N.'s power to utilize force when necessary has resulted on numerous occasions in a circumstance where the political strength of one nation-state will prevail over the will of the Security Council. Perhaps never in the post-Cold War era has this been so evident as with America's 2003 approach of war. Under the banner of the War on Terror, permanent Security Council member, the United States sought to take military action against Iraq. Claiming it to be in violation of previous Security Council resolutions regarding its firing upon U.N. peacekeeping planes in Iraqi 'no-fly zones,' its stockpiling and production of weapons of mass destruction and its harboring of terrorists, the United States sought to justify entering Iraq by force and decapitating its central leadership. Though the U.S. had been incapable of concretely demonstrating that any of these allegations was true of Iraq, its insistence upon a United Nations approved condemnation of dictator Saddam Hussein was motivated by the implied powers bestowed upon it as a Security Council member of the international organization.

In November of 2002, the Bush Administration made the case before the United Nations that Iraq had never fully complied with the set of conditions imposed upon it preceding and following the first Gulf War. Requirements that it disclose its weapons production and stockpiling programs, as well as various terms of disarmament were, according to the United States, never fully met. Drafting Resolution 1441, stating that Iraq was guilty of non-compliance, the United States earned a majority vote in the Security Council, in spite of declarations of extreme reservation from member states who believed the U.S. intended for this resolution to warrant military engagement.

This apprehension would prove justified, with the United States using this resolution to proceed in assembling its 'coalition of the willing' for forcing the disarmament of Iraq. Though as an organization, the UN viewed Resolution 1441 as authorizing it to enter Iraq in order to undertake weapons inspections, the United States continued to press for a more military-oriented approach.

According to American President George W. Bush, the purpose of the resolution had been to "obtain prompt and decisive action by the Security Council to ensure that Iraq abandons its strategy of delay, evasion and noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies with all relevant Security Council resolutions." (Bush, 1) Even as weapons inspectors entered Iraq and reported a relative compliance of the Hussein regime to its efforts, the United States approached the situation with bellicose language and a visible buildup of troops on the Iraqi border.

Here, a rift between the United States and the United Nations began to make itself apparent. What had first been reservations from such permanent Security Council members as France, Russia and China had evolved into vigorous protest against what became very clearly an American war under the auspices of the United Nations' implied powers. After bringing Great Britain, Australia and a very small number of additional states into its coalition, the United States determined that it had drawn enough support to undertake its military invasion with the stated consent of the U.N. In early 2003, the United States, pressured by its more moderate British ally, made one last attempt at gaining a more explicit U.N. support for its war. Unable to convince three permanent Council members to sign a joint resolution determining that Iraq had failed the conditions of Resolution 1441 and was therefore subject to invasion under the implied powers of the U.N., the U.S. abandoned the diplomatic route.

Even in the absence of a second resolution though, members of the Bush Administration, and the Department of Defense under the hawkish Donald Rumsfeld, "believed they had all the authority they needed under Resolution 1441" to justify a full-scale invasion of Iraq. (Baker, 1) the invasion began on March 19th, 2003, with the U.S. illustrating that the implied powers of the U.N. To authorize its member states to utilize force when necessary is dangerous in its scarcely defined parameters. To date, it has been categorically reinforced that the U.S. lacked the evidence or urgency for backing its claims against Iraq with military action. Nonetheless, the continued violence there, the stagnant reconstruction effort and the civil war which is surfacing in the power vacuum are demonstrating that without international support, the situation in Iraq will only worsen.

Thus, it is evidenced that the implied powers of the United Nations are not being implemented to their proper extent. Worse, by exploiting the poorly constructed approach of the international force, the U.S. has shown it to be fundamentally weak. The absence in its Charter for the mandate of troop designation, and the consequently implied nature of such powers as military enforcement of its resolutions, mean that the U.N. is naively dependent upon the good will of its most powerful nation states to properly implement such authority. In the case of the War in Iraq, it is clear that the United States did not exercise such good will, instead forcing de-legitimization of the international governing body while taking on an initiative which appears to violate Human Rights Standards.