The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (149 page)
Authors: Adam Roberts,Vaughan Lowe,Jennifer Welsh,Dominik Zaum
23
Initially, Hammarskjöld had stressed that ‘the UN force could not become a party to an internal conflict and that its presence in Katanga would not be used to settle the constitutional issue.’ Quoted in Conor Cruise O’Brien,
Memoir: My Life and Themes
(London: Profile Books, 1998), 204.
24
Nicholas, ‘UN Peace Forces and the Changing Globe ‘, 331.
25
See also Richard Caplan’s discussion in
Chapter 25
.
26
As when taking sides and accepting the logic of war has been presented as a form of ‘impartial peace enforcement’. See below for further discussion of this in the context of the UN’s involvement in Bosnia.
27
David Malone, ‘The UN Security Council in the Post-Cold War World: 1987–97’,
Security Dialogue
28, no. 4 (Dec. 1997). See also G. R. Berridge,
Return to the UN: UN Diplomacy in Regional Conflicts
(London: Macmillan, 1991).
28
The important exception to this is the UN Transition Assistance Group in Namibia whose total personnel strength reached nearly 8,000 (see below for further discussion of this operation).
29
For a thorough study of the UN’s role in bringing the war to an end, see David Malone,
The International Struggle over Iraq: Politics in the UN Security Council 1980–2005
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 22–53.
30
SC Res. 644 of 7 Nov. 1989.
31
SC Res. 653 of 20 Apr. 1990.
32
SC Res. 632 of 16 Feb. 1989. This was in accordance with the UN plan set out in SC Res. 435 of 29 Sep. 1978, the ‘only internationally accepted basis for the peaceful resolution of the Namibian question’.
33
Javier Perez de Cuellar,
Pilgrimage for Peace: A Secretary-General’s Memoir
(London: Macmillan, 1997), 311.
34
Marrack Goulding,
Peacemonger
(London: John Murray, 2002), 154.
35
For an analysis and background to the Namibia question at the UN and the UNTAG operation, see Cedric Thornberry, ‘Namibia’, in David Malone (ed.),
The UN Security Council: From Cold War to the 21st Century
(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004), 407–22.
36
Contributing to that was also the ‘good offices’ and preparatory work undertaken by the UN for what would soon be the largest and most complex field operation to date, the UN Mission to Cambodia between 1992 and 1993.
37
Paul Lewis, ‘World Leaders, at the UN, pledge to expand its role to achieve a lasting peace’,
New York Times
, 1 Feb. 1992.
38
David Malone,
Decision-Making in the UN Security Council: The Case of Haiti, 1990–97
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 9.
39
‘An Agenda for Peace’, UN doc. A/47/277-S/24111 of 17 June 1992, para. 3.
40
Ibid., para. 20.
41
Adam Roberts, ‘The United Nations and International Security’,
Survival
35, no. 2 (Summer 1993), 13.
42
www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/
For budgetary information, see ‘Peacekeeping Operations Expenditures: 1947–2005’,
Global Policy Forum
,
www.globalpolicy.org/finance/tables/pko/expend.htm
43
The UN Aouzou Strip Observer Group (UNASOG) in 1994 could also be added to the list of peacekeeping operations dealing with interstate matters, as it oversaw the withdrawal of Libyan forces from a strip of land awarded to Chad through international arbitration. UNASOG consisted of nine observers. See
www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/co_mission/unasog.htm
44
Richard K. Betts, ‘The Delusion of Impartial Intervention’,
Foreign Affairs
73, no. 6 (1994), 20.
45
UN doc. A/50/60-S/1995/1 of 3 Jan. 1995, paras. 12–13.
46
On humanitarian issues providing part or whole of the justification for external military involvement in conflict after the Cold War, see Adam Roberts, ‘Humanitarian Issues and Agencies as Triggers for International Military Action’, in Simon Chesterman (ed.),
Civilians in War
(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 177–96.
47
For a discussion of the ‘humanitarian impulse as a driver of Security Council action after the Cold War, see Thomas Weiss, ‘The Humanitarian Impulse’, in Malone (ed.),
From Cold War to the 21st Century
, 37–54. For the continuing importance of state interest in explaining interventionist behaviour, see Neil MacFarlane,
Intervention in Contemporary World Politics
, Adelphi Papers, no. 305 (Oxford: Oxford University Press/IISS, 2002).
48
On a discussion of a possible ‘solidarist consensus’, see Nicholas Wheeler,
Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). On the Security Council’s response to Rwanda see Mats Berdal, ‘The United Nations, Peacebuilding and the Genocide in Rwanda’,
Global Governance
11, no. 1 (2005).
49
Blanca Antonini, ‘El Salvador’, in Malone (ed.),
From Cold War to the 21st Century
, 431.
50
See Annex 1 ‘UNTAC Mandate’ to the Agreement on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict. Copy available at
www.usip.org/library/pa/cambodia/agree_comppol_10231991_-toc.html
51
Mozambique – ONUMOZ, 31 Aug. 1996,
www.un.org/Depts/DPKO/Missions/onumoz_p.htm
52
SC Res. 1020 of 10 Nov. 1995, para. 2(f).
53
I discuss these, partly overlapping, categories more fully in
Whither UN Peacekeeping?
Adelphi Papers no. 281 (London: Brasseys/IISS, 1993), 12–25.
54
See Edward H. Bowman and James Fanning, ‘The Logistics Problems of a UN Military Force’,
International Organization
17, no.2 (Spring 1963), 368–76. An excellent, if deeply depressing, account of similar kinds of problems in the modern era are provided by Romeo Dallaire,
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
(Toronto: Random House Canada, 2003), 59, 106–7, 176.
55
This point is forcefully made by the UNTAC force commander, Lieut. Gen. John M. Sanderson, ‘The Lesson Learnt from UNTAC: The Military Component View’, in Ramesh Thakur (ed.),
The United Nations and Fifty: Retrospect and Prospect
(Dunedin, NZ: University of Otago Press, 1996), 162–3. See also Mats Berdal and Michael Leifer, ‘Cambodia’, in James Mayall (ed.),
The New Interventionism, 1991–1994: United Nations Experience in Cambodia, Former Yugoslavia and Somalia
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 25–59.
56
Aldo Ajello and Patrick Wittmann, ‘Mozambique’, in Malone (ed.),
From Cold War to the 21st Century
, 449.
57
Ibid., 448. On the role the of Council in Mozambique, see also the interesting and thoughtful ‘inside’ account of the ONUMOZ operation by Dirk Salomons who worked closely with Ajello. Dirk Salomons, ‘Probing the Successful Application of Leverage in Support of Mozambique’s Quest for Peace’, in Jean Krasno, Bradd C. Hayes and Donald C.F. Daniel (eds.),
Leveraging for Success in United Nations Peace Operations
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 81–117.
58
Ian Martin, ‘A Field Perspective’, in Malone (ed.),
From Cold War to the 21st Century
, 567.
59
Funmi Olonisakin,
Peacekeeping in Sierra Leone: The Story of UNAMSIL
(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2008), 93–5.
60
For the notion of ‘ripeness’, see I. William Zartman,
Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
61
SC Res. 776 of 14 Sep. 1992. The UN presence on the ground in Bosnia is referred to as UNPROFOR for the purpose of this chapter, even though, until Mar. 1995, this name was not confined to the Bosnia mission.
62
A brief summary of Security Council resolutions until Jan. 1995 can be found in B. G. Ramcharan (ed.),
The International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia: Official Papers, Vol. I
(The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1997).
63
Quoted in Umesh Palwankar (ed.),
ICRC Symposium on Humanitarian Action and Peace-keeping Operations
, Geneva 22–4 June 1994, (ICRC: Geneva, 1994), 20.
64
The first draft of that report was produced by UNPROFOR in the field and sent to DPKO in New York. The subsequent back and forth, the modifications and adjustments made to account for what the ‘political traffic’ might bear, generated an interesting exchange that provides, among other things, a window into the evolution of the mission.
65
‘Note to Mr Annan, UNPROFOR Mandate Renewal: Issues to Consider’, 31 Aug. 1994.
66
Ibid., 3.
67
‘Note to Mr Annan, Future of UNPROFOR – Issues to Consider’, 6 Dec. 1994.
68
‘Note to Mr Annan, Future of UNPROFOR – Issues to Consider’, 6 Dec. 1994, 2.
69
Ibid. 4. It should be added that the forceful option added by Tharoor in his December memo met with great scepticism within the UN at the time, including from the field.
70
For further details of these events, see Mats Berdal, ‘Lessons Not Learned: The Use of Force in “Peace Operations” in 1990s’,
International Peacekeeping
7, no. 4 (Winter 2000); and HQ UNPA, ‘Force Commander’s End of Mission Report’, 31 Jan. 1996.
71
According to Carl Bildt, European Union Co-Chairman of ICFY at the time, the Croatian attack against the Krajina Serbs was ‘an operation of ethnic cleansing, equally ruthless and more effective than what the Serbs had achieved inside Bosnia in 1992’. Carl Bildt,
Peace Journey: The Struggle for Peace in Bosnia
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998), 383. In Operation Storm, Maj. Gen. Ante Gotovina, Commander of the Split Military District from 1993 to 1996, was given the key task of capturing Knin, the capital of the self-styled Krajina Serb Republic. In May 2001, Gotovina was indicted by the ICTY charged with crimes against humanity as well as violations of the laws of war. For details of the indictment, see
www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/got-ii010608e.htm
72
When they are divided, the default position of the Council as a whole and the Secretariat is usually to ‘urge restraint’ and call for a ceasefire. In Rwanda in 1994, the Council responded to mounting and incontrovertible evidence of genocide by urging a ceasefire, in part because it was unprepared to take any other action. And yet it is clear that what brought the genocide to an end in Rwanda was the military victory of the Rwanda Patriotic Front; a ceasefire as called for by the Council would (in the admittedly unlikely event of it having been agreed) only have given the genocidiers more time to complete their grizzly task.
73
For background to events see UN doc. S/2000/455 of 19 May 2000; and Olonisakin,
The Story of UNAMSIL
, 53–73.
74
See also Richard Caplan’s discussion in
Chapter 25
.
75
Examples of non-UN multilateral peace-support operations include various NATO-led missions to the Balkans since 1995; the Italian-led operation in Albania in 1997 (Operation Alba); the 1997 Mission Interafricaine de Surveillance des Accords de Bangui (MISAB) in the Central Africa Republic; the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in Sierra Leone from 1998 to 2000; the International Force in East Timor (INTERFET) between 1999 and 2000; the Peace-Truce Monitoring Group in Bougainville (BELISI) from 1998 to 2003; the European Union Mission in the FYROM (Operation Concordia) in 2003; the EU Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Operation Artemis) in 2003; the African Mission in Burundi (AMIB) in 2003; and the (US-, South African-, and Moroccanled) ECOWAS mission to Liberia in 2003. In late 1993, out of a total of just under 70,000 troops, France contributed more than 6,000 and the UK nearly 3,000 to UN peacekeeping operations. See Davis B. Bobrow and Mark A. Boyer, ‘Maintaining System Stability: Contributions to Peacekeeping Operations’,
The Journal of Conflict Resolution
41, no. 6 (Dec. 1997), 735.
76
Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35 – The Fall of Srebrenica
, UN doc. A/54/549 of 15 Nov. 1999. December 1999 also saw the release of an inquiry into the Rwandan genocide. See
Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda
, New York: United Nations, 15 Dec. 1999.
77
For an initial assessment of the implementation of the report see William Durch, Victoria Holt, Caroline Earle, and Moria Shanahan,
The Brahimi Report and the Future of UN Peace Operations
(Washington, DC: The Henry L. Stimson Center, 2003). Some of the new missions since 2000, notably the mission to Liberia in 2003, have benefited from some reforms proposed by the Brahimi panel. See ‘Lessons Learned Study on the Start-Up Phase of the UN Mission to Liberia’,
www.peacekeepingbest-practices.unlb.org/pbpu/library/Liberia%20Lessons%20Learned%20(Final).pdf
78
‘Brahimi Report’, para. 64.
79
Ibid., para. 64(d)
80
‘Brahimi Report’, para. 55
81
‘Note to Mr Annan, Future of UNPROFOR – Issues to Consider’, 6 Dec. 1994.
82
Foreign Affairs Committee, 3rd Report,
The Expanding Role of the UN and its Implications for UK Policy
, Vol. 1, (London: HMSO, June 1993), xxvi.
