Turning Again to UN Peacekeepers

...Over the past several years, though, Soviet diplomats and scholars have not only started to sound a bit like World Federalists but concrete actions have accompanied their words...

...Peacekeeping forces have had to be deployed within states...

...Though sometimes bent—notably in Cyprus where the British have played a significant role—there has been a tacit rule against the use of a permanent UN member's forces for peacekeeping...

...The apt question is: What is the cost of the alternative, not only in financial terms but in terms of the threat to regional stability...

...Butnotall conditions are so neat...

...The deceptive calm of stabilized disorder dissipates the momentum for concerted diplomacy and the stopgap of peacekeeping ends up being confused with a solution...

...In such situations the international community has to squarely face the reality of a long, controversial, costly peacekeeping presence...

...The USSR had traditionally been extremely skeptical about UN peacekeeping...

...The SecretaryGeneral should have a hip-pocket list of talented generals who can pass muster and will be released promptly by their governments when the balloon goesup...

...Marines from Lebanon and British troops from Jordan by increasing the number of UN military observers, a move not too dissimilar from the face-saving "fig leaf of UN observers in Afghanistan...

...Augustus Richard Norton, associate professor of social sciences at West Point, is doing research on peacekeeping under a MacArthur Foundation grant...

...willingness to give multilateralism a chance...

...These have included beginning to pay arrears on peacekeeping assessments, accepting UN participation in monitoring the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, and behind-the-scenes cajoling of Cuba and Vietnam to consider negotiated settlements in Angola and Kampuchea...

...As a minimum, he should insist on multiple nominations and actually choose the best man for the job...

...Peacekeepers can separate warring armies, observe cease-fires, report violations, even provide humanitarian services—but they may only use force as an unquestionable last resort...

...Moreover, initiatives by the SecretaryGeneral that lack a firm base of diplomatic support, especially from the superpowers, are likely to fail...

...Last year unarmed UN observers were dispatched to Afghanistan and the IraqiIranian border, and peacekeeping units are being planned for the Western Sahara...

...share of the Namibia operation will be $80 million over a one-year period...

...Yet, lest we start visualizing flights of doves, it must be stressed that the dispatch of UN forces or observers does not mark the end of a confrontation...

...It refused to financially support most operations and was seldom invited to be a participant...

...In the Western Hemisphere, a group of about 190 observers is planned for Central America, although its exact mission and composition is still under discussion...

...Typically, the involvement of one or more external powers in the conflict serves to promote or sustain the fighting, thereby grossly complicating the prospects for pacific settlement...

...The moral weight peacekeeping forces symbolize may not always hold great sway, but when it does these forces can make a stunning difference...

...The idea of true collective security—of international peace enforcement—has been filed away with the idealism of the 1940s...

...Questions are increasingly asked about the ability of the international community to finance an annual peacekeeping budget that could approach $2 billion...

...But the reluctance of troop-contributing countries to send their soldiers into combat, even in the name of peacekeeping, probably makes this impossible...

...A remaining major weakness is uneven field leadership...

...The Congo has become a negative lesson about the limits of peacekeeping, but peacekeeping operations in internal wars continue...

...In 1958 SecretaryGeneral Dag Hammarskjöld deftly helped to justify the exit of U.S...

...In contrast to disputes where the opponents are recognized members of the international community, the belligerents in intrastate conflicts often seek to redefine the authority and composition of an existing government, or to prevent that redesign from occurring...

...It is also a most demanding and trying task...

...Long-awaited forces are now deploying in the vast desert that was Southwest Africa as well as in Namibia, and yet another force may go to Cambodia...

...The breathing space a peacekeeping force affords is usually absolutely necessary to allow passions to quiet and enmities to dissolve...

...Javier Perez de" Cuéllar has recently reorganized the management of peacekeeping to ensure a more adequate linkage to peacemaking...

...The "preferred" and certainly least problematic position for an international force is astride state boundaries, separating belligerents who have agreed to stabilize an armed peace...

...Thus a key element has been the recent dramatic improvement of relations between Moscow and Washington: The Security Council has been reinvigorated and is functioning as the collégial body anticipated in the Charter...

...Even analysts who did not oppose it on ideological principle tended to compliment its economic and social agencies while dismissing its prospects for action on the political and security fronts...

...The Soviet shift, however, did evoke positive responses from the United States...

...Ironically, the USSR's new posture coincided with the Reagan Administration's legitimization of UN-bashing as political sport...

...Support for peacekeeping has reflected hardheaded calculations about national defense policy, not simply idealism, on the part of the troop-contributing countries...

...Violent internal battles among different ethnic, tribal or religious groups pose one of the most daunting challenges peacekeepers are likely to face...

...Then, with the changed international climate of 1988 and 1989, the UN began to show a new vitality in performing what may be its most important role, the peaceful resolution of international conflict...

...Its role changed dramatically when an Athens-sponsored coup in 1974 precipitated a Turkish invasion which, in turn, led to the division of the island into two communally homogeneous regions...

...In each case, the tireless, quiet efforts of a handful of UN diplomats, and the availability of the peacekeeping option, have been critical factors...

...The most chaotic situation to date occurred in the Congo (1960-64) when UN forces became embroiled in a civil war and were widely criticized for not imposing apolitical solution...

...For instance, although the United Nations Force in Lebanon (UOTFIL) was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from that country and the re-establishment of governmental authority in the southern region, it quickly found itself in the midst of a truly incredible array of gunmen and militiamen who, in the aggregate, represent nearly every active conflict in the Middle East...

...After a decade in the doldrums, peacekeeping has been taken off the shelf...

...BURDEN SHARING Turning Again to UN Peacekeepers BY AUGUSTUS RICHARD NORTON and THOMAS G. WEISS Rent by East-West and NorthSouth polarities, encumbered by a bloated bureaucracy, the United Nations by the 1970s became almost a mockery of its idealistic origins...

...Unfortunately, once established, some peacekeeping operations tend to take on lives of their own...

...For the participants in an internal war, the fundamental issue is seen as cultural or even physical survival...

...Since 1974 the United Nations Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) has served as a buffer separating Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus from the Greek-controlled southern part of the island, where the internationally recognized government resides...

...Peacekeeping is a means of facilitating peacemaking, not an end in itself—except insofar as it meets the commendable goals of saving lives and easing human suffering...

...Where peacekeepers are deployed in support of a settlement (as in the Sinai) or where they are to depart by a date certain (as planned in Namibia and the Western Sahara), they generally face little criticism, if predictable frustrations...

...In addition, the very fact that a force is put in place emphasizes the danger inherent in the particular situation—and at least the momentary intention of the international community to pull out all of the diplomatic stops to defuse the existing problem...

...On the face of it, the Namibia operation looks like a real bargain...

...They must operate with impeccable neutrality and exemplify military professionalism...

...By last September, President Ronald Reagan declared in his final speech to the General Assembly that "the United Nations has the opportunity to Uve and breathe and work as never before...

...It is important, therefore, that the limitations of the instrument be understood...

...The financial quibbling surrounding the formation of the United Nations Transitional Assistance Group (UNTAG) for Namibia suggests that myopia still characterizes the judgments of the major powers...

...From the perspective of the United States, that may beoneof the best arguments for continuing to lend firm support to United Nations peacekeeping...

...This can be every bit as challenging as engaging in warfare, despite the absence of body counts...

...The list of the World Organization's recent and potential successes is impressive: The Gulf War has sputtered to a close, Soviet troops have withdrawn from their costly misadventure in Afghanistan, the fighting in the Western Sahara is about to end, considerable headway has been made toward ending the strife in Namibia, there are promising signs in Cambodia, and the stubborn Cyprus dispute, which has dogged the UN for a quarter of a century, may also succumb to settlement...

...For instance, the Nordic nations (Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark), neutrals like Austria and Ireland, and Canada view peacekeeping as a realization of multilateralism and realistic training for their soldiers...

...This argues strongly for the predesignation of national contingents that are trained and ready to move on short notice...

...But from 1964-74 UNpiCYP was spread throughout the island and functioned—with considerable success—as a constabulary force attempting to quell intercommunal bloodshed...

...Yet with the Soviet Union showing a bornagain interest in peacekeeping, China showing interest for the first time, and the Western permanent members of the Security Council indicating a renewed dedication to the process, there will be new initiatives in this area...

...The new arrangements have strengthened the SecretaryGeneral's role as the focal point for negotiations, andhave centralized theconduct of ongoing peacekeeping operations and the planning of future ones in the Office of Special Political Affairs...

...As Urquhart and other practitioners shrewdly recognize, peacekeeping is often a sort of diplomatic sleight of hand, allowing states to extricate themselves from adventures they find burdensome or no longer sensible...

...Care must be taken, too, not to impede the flexibility of the Secretary-General as the day to day commander in chief, for one of the secrets of past successes has been the spontaneous adaptation of general peacekeeping principles to the specific needs of a new crisis...

...Indeed, this was dramatically underlined by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 198 8 to the United Nations' peacekeeping forces...

...Of course, the UN has not acted alone...

...Not surprisingly, some of the most effective UN peacekeeping undertakings have been conducted in tandem with bilateral peacemaking or disengagement efforts—for example, UNDOF...

...But here a distinction should be made between two quite different circumstances...

...This is sensible and does not at all exclude great power assistance, including logistical support and transport...

...Now UNFICYP is alternately condemned for freezing the partition and praised for forestalling further episodes of world-class crisis between NATO members Greece and Turkey...

...Where peacekeepers are interposed to stop hostilities and the belligerents have virtually no interest in negotiating a solution (as in Cyprus, Lebanon or, perhaps, on the Iran-Iraq border), their task is far more formidable and their contributions considerably more thankless...

...The United Nations Disengagement Observation Force (UNDOF), based on the Golan Heights between the Israeli and Syrian armies, isagood illustration...

...As former UN Under Secretary for Special Political Affairs Brian Urquhart, "Mr...

...Peacekeeper," wrote recently: "There have been times when the peacekeeping function was more like that of an attendant in alunatic asylum, and the soldiers had to accept abuse and harassment without getting into physical conflict or emotional involvement with the inmates...

...There is no opportunity for lengthy training programs...

...International peacekeepers serve as a form of moral suasion to justify nonviolence...

...Thomas G. Weiss is executive director of the International Peace Academy...

...Meanwhile internal tensions fester, frequently abetted by external powers undeterred by the presence of an international force...

...Hence the stakes are literally primary...

...Clearly UNIFIL has failed to fulfill its mandate, yet it has lent a modicum of stability to south Lebanon and few observers enjoy contemplating the consequences if it were to be pulled out...

...If they regress to combatants, they are likely to quickly be outgunned and will soon find themselves unwelcome...

...Naturally the non-use of force can be a disabling credo, if it is interpreted to preclude resolveandresourcefulness.Where savage violence reigns—as in Mozambique, Ethiopia, the Sudan, Kampuchea, and Afghanistan—less restrictive guidelines are in order if peacekeepers are to be used...

...In deciding to drastically reduce the complement of UNTAG personnel, the five indicated that the financial tail is still wagging the political dog...

...And his remarkable about-face was merely a prelude to the Bush Administration's return to the U.S...

...Third-party intervention is hopeless unless the participants in war choose peace...

...For its part, the Soviet Union apparently has come to the conclusion that UN conflict management is not such a bad thing after all, especially given Moscow's loss of appetite for new Third World adventures...

...Providing troops to a UN force is also a form of burden sharing in the view of such NATO allies as Norway, and probably deserves to be so recognized...

...A B-1 bomber costs the U. S. taxpayer $500 million, and the U.S...

...The very circumstances that spawn them are such that peacekeeping umts are usually created in utter haste...