THE NEW PEACEKEEPING
The history of UN peacekeeping to this point had been brief and limited in its scope. It had begun in June 1948, when 259 peacekeepers were deployed to oversee an armistice between Israel and the Arab states. Subsequently, Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld drew up principles that shaped peacekeeping efforts in the Suez Crisis in 1956 and long afterward. UN peacekeepers would
oversee compliance with a cease-fire or armistice agreement that had already been negotiated…patrol a border or serve as a buffer between parties to a conflict;
be deployed with the consent of the parties to the conflict;
be neutral;
operate under the supervision of the secretary-general;
be lightly armed and use force only sparingly; and
not be drawn from the five permanent members of the Security Council.
Conventional peacekeeping under these principles was a useful tool for containing certain kinds of conflicts, though these missions did not solve problems and rarely, if ever, ended. Nearly every peacekeeping force dispatched in the postwar years is still serving to this day, fulfilling essentially the same function for which it was originally deployed. The forces deployed in 1948 to monitor the Arab-Israeli cease-fire were still there decades later; so were those deployed to the India-Pakistan border in 1949, to Cyprus in 1964, to the Golan Heights in 1974, and to Lebanon in 1978. Since very few troops were employed in UN peacekeeping, and none were American, the concept and practice of peacekeeping was not well understood in the United States, though support for UN-based collective, nonviolent use of force had begun to grow in American foreign policy circles by the end of the cold war.
By the early 1990s, such missions were multiplying thick and fast. As George H. W. Bush noted in a speech to the UN General Assembly in September 1991, “The United Nations has mounted more peacekeeping missions in the last thirty-six months than during the first forty-three years.”29 The increase had reached critical mass during Bush’s tenure, when the number of UN peacekeepers quadrupled—from 11,000 to 44,000. By December 1994, the number had reached 80,800, and the U.S. share of peacekeeping costs was set at 31.7 percent of total UN spending on such missions.
In congressional hearings and in the press, Secretary of State James Baker defended the Bush administration’s request for $460 million for peacekeeping in fiscal year 1993, up from $107 million in 1992—in addition to a supplementary request for $350 million for 1992. “Peacekeeping is a pretty good buy in my view,” he said.30 Baker defended the UN decision to assess the United States almost a third of the entire peacekeeping budget as consistent with the country’s leadership role. “We have a preeminent and unique role in the United Nations as one of the Permanent Five.”31
In calling for increased peacekeeping expenditures, Baker ventured an argument that his successors, Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher, would echo later—that “common problems demand a collective security response from the international community” and that “multinational collective engagement is a bargain.”32 Peacekeeping, Baker predicted, would prove an important tool in resolving post–cold war regional conflicts—and it would be less expensive than war. This argument incorporated two dubious presumptions: (1) that peacekeeping would prevent war, and (2) that conflicts would inevitably lead to war in the absence of peacekeeping.
Baker was not the only official who was more enthusiastic than cautious in his judgments about the potential utility of peacekeeping; many members of the foreign policy elite shared his optimism. On August 28, 1992, the United States joined in Security Council Resolution 775, which increased the number of UN forces in Somalia from five hundred to thirty-five hundred at the request of the secretary-general. Because of high hopes that the UN would play an important future role, the response was generally favorable, even though intervention in the internal affairs of a member state seemed to be a clear violation of the UN Charter and would take U.S. forces into a country where we had no vital interests.
The parameters of peacekeeping, too, were expanding. In An Agenda for Peace, a monograph he published shortly before taking office, Boutros Boutros-Ghali described a new vision of UN peacekeeping—one that included operations normally considered as war.33 During Boutros-Ghali’s tenure, peacekeeping came to refer to almost any activity in which conflict resolution was carried out by a multinational force under the auspices of the UN. This new conception dissolved the lines between humanitarian missions, peacekeeping, and military engagement. Some peace operations would involve no use of force, no danger, and no armed conflict; others would be coercive and dangerous. Boutros-Ghali even tried to absorb war itself into the category of peace operations, to change the goals from victory to accommodation, and to vest command and control in the secretary-general.
Somalia would be the first test of this new model of peacekeeping. Previously, peacekeeping operations had taken place under Chapter VI, which did not authorize the use of force. Security Council resolutions 688, which classified human rights within Iraq as a threat to international security, and 775, the resolution on Somalia, both authorized the use of force in interventions in the internal affairs of nations. Boutros-Ghali proposed to give the Secretariat jurisdiction over the conflict in Somalia, which required some unprecedented concept-stretching to cover intervention in the internal affairs of a member state. The decision by the Security Council that “the magnitude of the human tragedy” constituted a threat to international peace and security (thus justifying the use of force under Chapter VII) was also new, though it had some precedent in Resolution 688.34
There were other differences, too. Boutros-Ghali believed that precedent, and Chapter VII, gave him the authority to recruit and organize forces, and to determine the rules of engagement under which they operated. Surprisingly, the Security Council accepted most of his claims, including his “right of oversight…in return for legitimizing the operation,” and his contention that he was equipped to deal with a civil war.35
In An Agenda for Peace and a later essay, “Empowering the United Nations,”36 Boutros-Ghali made a concerted effort to expand the jurisdiction of the secretary-general to include the resolution of disputes before they escalated into conflict. Under the rubric of preventive diplomacy, he grouped together the functions of peacemaking (as defined in Chapter VI); peacekeeping by military forces; peace-building actions that seek to prevent disputes; preventive deployment for a wide range of purposes, including facilitating the delivery of humanitarian assistance; peace enforcement; and broader functions of fact finding, intelligence, and analysis. More heavily armed missions to respond to aggression would be available on call, under the command of the secretary-general. Boutros-Ghali proposed a general shifting of authority, including financial authority, from the regional organizations to the secretary-general, in spite of the Charter’s specific encouragement of regional arrangements to solve local disputes.37 He also proposed offering “peacekeeping services” for the settlement of longstanding conflicts in regions including Angola, Cambodia, El Salvador, and Mozambique, as well as the ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
The same tendency to expand the authority and powers of the secretary-general was present in Boutros-Ghali’s discussion of “intrusive” operations dealing with ethnic conflicts, failed states, new states, development, and sovereignty. The new definitions quickly led to new practices, which were then treated as established procedures. Yet this new conception was about to be tested as the United States moved toward action in Somalia—and problems soon followed.
Alternatives in Somalia: Boutros-Ghali’s View
As the situation worsened, the secretary-general wrote to the Security Council on November 29, 1992, proposing five options. He obviously favored the fifth, which was to organize “a countrywide enforcement operation to be carried out under UN command and control…which would be consistent with the recent expansion of the Organization’s role in the maintenance of international peace and security and which would
strengthen its long-term evolution as an effective system of collective security.”38
One aspect of this proposal raised red flags in Washington: it would give the secretary-general control of U.S. troops and the rules of engagement. Boutros-Ghali wanted the authority to determine when U.S. troops should be deployed to Somalia, and to decide when a secure environment for humanitarian relief had been established, clearing the way for U.S. troops to withdraw and UN troops to take over.39
But George Bush had no intention of relinquishing control over U.S. troops or over decisions about their weapons, rules of engagement, deployment, and withdrawal. He also clashed with Boutros-Ghali over how peacekeeping operations in Somalia should be conducted. At every stage in the development of UNITAF, Bush resisted efforts by Boutros-Ghali and others to expand the scope of the American mission. When Bush presented the original U.S. plan in late November, the secretary-general urged the United States to disarm the Somali factions before handing control of the operation over to the UN.40 When American forces arrived in Mogadishu in December, Boutros-Ghali pressed the U.S.-led coalition to defuse all land mines, train a civilian police force, and create a civil administration. The Bush administration resisted the pressure, confining the discussion to the logistics of the upcoming transfer of the operation to UN control.41
In Boutros-Ghali’s view, U.S. troops would have to disarm the country before a secure environment could be said to exist. Bush thought otherwise. “[T]he mission of the Coalition is limited and specific,” he wrote to the secretary-general, “to create security conditions which will permit the feeding of the starving Somali people and allow the transfer of this security function to the UN peacekeeping force.”42
Bush knew he had to set limits, because it was clear that the UN Secretariat saw Somalia as only the first in a series of potential military operations in African states threatened by social breakdown, civil war, and famine. Mozambique, Liberia, Sudan, and Angola were among the other failed states in perilous condition, and even before U.S. troops landed in Somalia, a State Department team was in Africa surveying problems far beyond Somalia’s borders.
Despite political pressure to do something about Somalia, many in Congress were wary of the proposed military operation. Up to the day before the authorizing resolution was passed, serious doubts were expressed about the operation, whose first phase would be carried out under U.S. command and in whose second phase the United States would participate but not command. Senator Hank Brown (R-CO) spoke for many when he pressed questions about command of the troops and the rules of engagement, including the authority of U.S. leaders to decide when to withdraw.
Do they fire back if they are fired upon? If we are attacked, do we call in air support? If troops are captured, do we pursue?…I think it is a mistake to commit military personnel to combat without a clearly defined mission and without the ability to protect themselves.43
The United States and the United Nations were entering new territory. Who would define the goals of a UN force? Who would decide when the job was completed? Who would determine the relationship between national and UN command? Peacekeeping in a war zone was a new idea with many unknowns.
Even the day before the Security Council passed Resolution 794, which authorized UNITAF, no agreement on the major questions had been reached. Boutros-Ghali continued to state his preference for a military operation under the control of the UN Secretariat and the secretary-general, but Bush knew that the Secretariat lacked the resources and experience to command a military operation of that size and complexity, and he refused. Boutros-Ghali acquiesced, but demanded that once UNITAF had established a secure environment for the delivery of humanitarian aid, the military command would be turned over to the United Nations. He emphasized that countrywide disarmament and enforcement was required, not just the establishment of order at ports, and that “member states would have to be ready to accept that the United Nations would command and control the operation.”44 Bush stated his doubts that the UN had the military capacity to carry out such an operation, but the secretary-general countered that China would veto any operation under U.S. command.
The Bush Phase in Somalia: Resolution 794
Even after Resolution 794 was passed on December 3, 1992, disagreement persisted on its wording and interpretation. The resolution featured a military dimension that called for the use of “all necessary means to establish as soon as possible a secure environment for humanitarian relief operations in Somalia.”45 The United States agreed to deploy approximately twenty-five thousand troops to satisfy this condition, alongside twelve thousand troops from other countries. The resolution called on member states to contribute troops and establish mechanisms for coordination between their military forces and the UN. By this point President Bush had lost his reelection bid to Bill Clinton, but the president-elect quickly endorsed the new resolution: “The United Nations has provided new hope for the millions of Somalis at risk of starvation. I commend President Bush for taking the lead in this important humanitarian effort.”46
The next day, Bush took to the airwaves to announce Operation Restore Hope to the American people, announcing that the United States had decided to intervene in Somalia because 250,000 Somalis had died from famine and war and 1.5 million more were threatened, and because the humanitarian organizations couldn’t handle the problem alone. Bush explained that the United States would lead an international coalition, providing it included clear Chapter VII authorization enabling U.S. forces to defend themselves effectively, and with the understanding that the UN would take over as soon as possible. He emphasized the limits of the undertaking, and its humanitarian purposes:
Our mission has a limited objective—to open the supply routes, to get the food moving, and to prepare the way for a UN peacekeeping force to keep it moving. This operation is not open-ended. We will not stay one day longer than is absolutely necessary.47
On December 10, he wrote to the leaders of Congress:
We do not intend that U.S. armed forces deployed to Somalia become involved in hostilities. Nonetheless, these forces are equipped and ready to take such measures as may be needed to accomplish a humanitarian mission and defend themselves if necessary; they will also have the support of any additional U.S. Armed Forces necessary to insure their safety.48
The Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, Thomas S. Foley, promised congressional backing for Bush’s stance. “There is strong bipartisan support among the leadership for the action the president is taking,” he told CNN. “I think that should be reemphasized. It should also be emphasized again that there is going to be international participation in a major way, including not only the present military operations but the carryover activity of the peacekeeping forces following our departure.”49
Early signs were encouraging. The first U.S. Marines and Navy Seals entered Somalia on December 8; within a week, they had secured the airport and the port of Mogadishu without casualties. French, Turkish, Egyptian, and Algerian forces soon joined the U.S.-led coalition. Five hundred UN security personnel were assigned around Mogadishu. Eventually, there were twenty-five thousand American troops in Somalia and nine thousand troops from approximately twenty-eight other countries.
A CBS poll showed that 81 percent of the U.S. public supported the operation, 50 which the American people saw as a humanitarian relief mission, not a use of force or an act of war. Most Americans probably never noticed the difference between Bush’s description of the mission and Boutros-Ghali’s statement to the people of Somalia on December 8, in which he promised that “the unified military command…comes to feed the starving, protect the defenseless, and prepare the way for political, economic, and social reconstruction.”51 In a letter to Bush on the same day, Boutros-Ghali again sought to expand the U.S. commitment, emphasizing the need to disarm the lawless gangs and neutralize their heavy weapons to ensure security throughout Somalia.52 He told the New York Times of “private commitments” made by the United States to pacify
the country, implying that Bush was reneging on those commitments.53
But Bush had made it clear that he had always envisioned Operation Restore Hope as a brief operation with a clear goal: the rapid delivery of food to starving Somalis. His intention was to make the port, the capital, and the surrounding areas safe enough to deliver food. He was not willing to take on the more complicated and dangerous tasks of disarming the clans, undertaking political reconciliation, and creating a civil administration.
Bush believed that an effort to disarm Somalia—even if it were possible—would lead the United States deeply into the country’s internal politics, and burden the United States and the UN with broad responsibilities for nation building. He stated as much when he first made the decision to send troops to Somalia. In his December 4 address, he said, “To the people of Somalia…. We come to your country for one reason only: to enable the starving to be fed.”54 He knew Congress would not support an open-ended commitment. As one senior official of the Bush team said, “If we go out and try to physically disarm people who don’t want to be disarmed, we’re talking about going to war against all the factions in Somalia. That isn’t what we came over to do.”55
In spite of Bush’s efforts to be clear about the mission, however, misunderstandings multiplied between his administration and the UN Secretariat. And both had underestimated the difficulties of the operation and the amount of weapons in Somalia. What Eagleburger had called a “doable” operation seemed less doable every day.56 Almost everything proved more difficult than expected. The extent of social, political, and economic collapse in Somalia came as a surprise to the Americans. The U.S. troops were more vulnerable to attack than expected, confronted by looters and armed bandits in Mogadishu and elsewhere. From the start of the operation, journalists raised concerns that the U.S. and UN forces would be inadequate to the task. Still, airdrops of food quickly made the difference between life and death for the starving Somalis, and these immediate results made U.S. officials eager to deliver the food and get out.
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