Peacekeeping The Military and National Security - Peacekeeping As A Defense Strategy

Military responses and treaties are not the only ways the United States and the world community as a whole attempt to defend themselves. In many ways, it is more desirable to prevent military problems before they start than to wait until tensions boil over. To this end, since the early 1990s the world community has placed more and more emphasis on peacekeeping efforts.

What Is Peacekeeping?

The term "peacekeeping" encompasses many different types of actions. In the landmark report An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking, and Peace-keeping (June 17, 1992), the secretary-general of the United Nations (UN) delineated four main "areas of action" for the UN in peace activities: preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and post-conflict peace building. Preventive diplomacy aims to keep disputes or violence from arising. Peacemaking negotiates between states or other bodies that are already in an adversarial relationship, while peacekeeping consists of UN forces (which may not necessarily be military) actually positioned and active in a given location. Post-conflict peace building acts as a follow-up to peacemaking and peacekeeping to strengthen institutions such as law enforcement and judicial systems in order to ensure a lasting peace. In addition, the U.S. executive branch uses the term "peace operations," and in DOD terminology, peace-keeping falls under "operations other than war." For the sake of simplicity, this section will generally refer to all of these activities as "peacekeeping."

According to a December 2001 U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) report (United Nations Peacekeeping: Issues for Congress), a "second generation" of peacekeeping missions is coming into existence. These missions include "disarming or seizing weapons, aggressively protecting humanitarian assistance, and clearing land mines," along with "maintaining law and order (police), election monitoring, and human rights monitoring." This second generation of peacekeeping has overtaken first-generation peacekeeping missions, which involved monitoring cease-fires, reporting on situations, and, in some cases, intervention with limited means and resources.

Organizations Coordinating Peacekeeping Missions

UNITED NATIONS (UN). The UN is a multinational body most often associated with peacekeeping missions. As the GAO report U.N. Peacekeeping: Status of Long-Standing Operations and U.S. Interests in Supporting Them (April 1997) explains, under the auspices of the UN Security Council (led by permanent members the United States, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom),

the United Nations undertakes peacekeeping operations to help maintain or restore peace and security in areas of conflict. Such operations have been employed most commonly to supervise and maintain cease-fires, assist in troop withdrawals, and provide buffer zones between opposing forces. The main objective of peacekeeping operations, according to UN and U.S. policies, is to reduce tensions and provide a limited period of time for diplomatic efforts to achieve just and lasting settlements of the underlying conflicts.

Conditions of UN peacekeeping missions are generally set by the Security Council. Missions must have the

TABLE 9.1

Ongoing United Nations peacekeeping missions, August 2004
Operation name	Acronym	Location	Number of UN personnel	Number of U.S. personnel	Start date of action
SOURCE: Prepared by Information Plus staff from United Nations data, 2004
United Nations Trace Supervision Organization	UNTSO	Middle East	143	2	June 1948
United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan	UNMOGIP	India-Pakistan (Asia)	44	0	January 1949
United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus	UNFICYP	Cyprus (Europe)	1,242	0	March 1964
United Nations Disengagement Observer Force	UNDOF	Golan Heights (Middle East)	1,003	0	June 1974
United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon	UNIFIL	Lebanon (Middle East)	3,629	0	March 1978
United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission	UNIKOM	Iraq/Kuwait (Middle East)	1,098	12	April 1991
United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara	MINURSO	Western Sahara (Africa)	243	7	April 1991
United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia	UNOMIG	Georgia (Europe)	106	2	August 1993
United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina	UNMIBH	Bosnia and Herzegovina (Europe)	1,530	46	December 1995
United Nations Mission of Observers in Prevlaka	UNMOP	Prevlaka Peninsula (Europe)	27	0	February 1996
United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo	UNMIK	Kosovo (Europe)	4,548	537	June 1999
United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone	UNAMSIL	Sierra Leone (Africa)	17,484	0	October 1999
United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo	MONUC	Democratic Republic of the Congo (Africa)	4,233	0	December 1999
United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea	UNMEE	Ethiopia and Eritrea (Africa)	4,152	7	July 2000
United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor	UNMISET	East Timor (Asia)	5,847	67	May 2002
United Nations Mission in Liberia	UNMIL	Liberia (Africa)	15,174	N/A	September 2003

consent of the parties in conflict and the host government, which also must provide complete freedom of movement to UN personnel. UN members provide the voluntary peacekeeping personnel, usually consisting of personnel from some or all of the nations in the UN. The missions do not interfere in the host government's internal affairs and try to avoid the use of force to carry out their objectives.

From 1948 to August 1, 2004, the UN was involved in fifty-nine peacekeeping efforts around the globe, sixteen of which were still ongoing (see Table 9.1 for statistics about the ongoing missions). Through June 2004 the UN had spent a total of $31.5 billion on peacekeeping operations and, as of July 2004, had suffered a total of 1,934 fatalities. Examples of the types of actions taken during UN peace-keeping missions include enforcing cease-fires, improving living conditions for minority groups, observing and verifying national elections, disarming warring factions, assisting in the formation of unified national governments, assisting legitimate governments in reestablishing their authority, working for the release of political prisoners and detainees, and assisting with refugee repatriation.

The total number of UN military observers, civilian police, and troops to the sixteen ongoing missions as of July 2004 was 58,741. Only 427 members of the UN force, mostly civilian police, were Americans (see Table 9.1); the United States ranked twenty-sixth in the total number of participating UN peacekeeping forces among countries worldwide. Other Western powers contributed similar numbers of personnel: the United Kingdom (567), Canada (564), France (561), and Germany (297). In contrast, the five largest suppliers of contributors were Pakistan (with a force of 8,544), Bangladesh (7,163), Nigeria (3,579), Ghana (3,341), and India (2,934). Between them, these five countries comprised over 40% of the total UN peacekeeping force worldwide in mid-2004. (Poorer nations often find that contributing troops for UN duty, and allowing the UN to maintain those troops overseas, takes financial strain off their military budgets.)

THE NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION (NATO) IN THE BALKANS. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is another organization that has been taking on peacekeeping operations around the world. This is an expansion of NATO's original mandate, which was much more defense oriented. A September 2000 NATO fact sheet ("What Is NATO?") explained the change in focus: "following the momentous changes which occurred in Europe in the 1990s, [NATO] has become a catalyst for extending security and stability throughout Europe." Two of its most high-profile peacekeeping missions have been the Stabilization Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (SFOR) and the Kosovo Force (KFOR). According to European Security: U.S. and European Contributions to Foster Stability and Security in Europe (Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, November 2001), the United States provided the largest single national contingency to both of these NATO operations.

SFOR, which began in December 1995, marked the first time NATO had really played a leading role in peacekeeping. The SFOR mission, according to the NATO fact sheet "Bosnia and Herzegovina—Facts and Figures" (March 8, 2001), "is related to the maintenance of a secure environment conducive to civil and political reconstruction." Some of the programs SFOR is implementing or assisting with include collecting and destroying unregistered weapons, investigating and apprehending war criminals, assisting in the processing of property claims of returning refugees and displaced persons, maintaining and repairing roads to ensure freedom of movement, and both participating in the removal of mines and training others to do so.

According to NATO's SFOR Fact Sheet (May, 2004), there were a total of seven thousand NATO-led forces in SFOR. The number of personnel in the SFOR operation has been steadily dropping: a May 10, 2002, NATO press release listed the total number of participating troops at about nineteen thousand. In line with President George W. Bush's desire to reduce the U.S. presence in the Balkans, the number of U.S. troops has also dropped.

The KFOR operation began after NATO air strikes designed to end the conflict between Serbian forces and Kosovar ethnic Albanians. In January 2000, according to Balkans Security, KFOR had a total of 45,700 military personnel, 7,000 of whom were from the United States. As with SFOR, the number of participants in KFOR has been steadily dropping: As of October 2004 the KFOR Web site (http://www.nato.int/kfor/kfor/kfor_hq.htm) disclosed that more than seventeen thousand troops from thirty-six nations made up the force. As with SFOR, U.S. personnel numbers had fallen to an estimated two thousand by 2004. More than half of KFOR's manpower is dedicated to the protection of Serbs and other ethnic minorities, many of whom are refugees now returning to their homes. The KFOR force is also collecting and destroying weapons and helping establish a local civil emergency force, among other activities.

The Debate about U.S. Involvement in Peacekeeping Missions

Peacekeeping is a topic of frequent and vehement debate among American politicians, military leaders, and citizens. Some people believe that the United States should maintain a policy of noninvolvement and refuse to get drawn into conflicts that do not directly threaten U.S. interests. Others argue that the stability of the entire world does, in fact, directly relate to U.S. national security, so peacekeeping in distant nations is in our own best interests.

Other arguments center around the role of the United States in the community of nations. Some people suggest that since the United States is the leading superpower in the world, it should set an example for other nations by taking a leading role in peacekeeping operations. In addition, participating in peacekeeping operations with other nations can give the United States an idea, before a conflict breaks out, as to how its allies will perform in battlefield situations. According to former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen (in "Creating an Environment for Peace, Stability, Confidence," U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda, December 1999), peacetime military cooperation can also "yield increased levels of trust, confidence-building, and rapport that far outlive any operation…. In the Department of Defense, we refer to them as 'force multipliers,' and they can make substantial contributions to success during times of war."

Others argue, as former army officer John Hillen does in an article in NATO Review (Summer 2001), that "super-powers don't do windows." In other words, America's strength is "large-scale war-fighting," and it should take a leadership role in that capacity, allowing other nations to take larger roles in peacekeeping operations.

A February 2002 report from the Peace Through Law Education Fund (A Force for Peace and Security: U.S. and Allied Commanders'Views of the Military's Role in Peace Operations and the Impact on Terrorism of States in Conflict) reports the results of interviews with more than thirty American and allied generals about peacekeeping. They found that, generally, the commanders agreed that participation in peacekeeping is "in our national interests and will be a key ingredient in the war against terrorism." (Terrorists often thrive in countries without strong police and judicial systems, feeding off of organized crime networks to distribute materials and cash. As peacekeeping missions strengthen law enforcement institutions, those areas become less and less appealing to terrorists.) The United States needs to be heavily involved in peacekeeping, as does the UN. The military leaders generally agreed that peacekeeping missions teach leadership and other valuable skills—including skills useful in the war against terrorism—to participating troops.

U.S. INTERESTS IN UN PEACEKEEPING MISSIONS. The 1997 GAO report U.N. Peacekeeping: Status of Long-Standing Operations and U.S. Interests in Supporting Them closely analyzed U.S. participation in the eight UN peacekeeping missions that were then ongoing and more than five years old. Two of these dated back to the 1940s. Summarizing the results of its analysis, the report states:

Despite the long-standing operations' cost and mixed performance in carrying out their mandates, U.S. policymakers support continuing these operations because, in their view, they help to stabilize conflicts that could threaten U.S. foreign policy objectives. In their judgment, ending these operations—or even modifying them substantially—would risk renewed conflict and damage future peacemaking efforts.

The report goes on to explain that the costs of potential conflicts in strategically important areas, including the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, southern Europe, southern Africa, and southwest Asia, would be greater than the costs of maintaining the peacekeeping missions. Operations in the Middle East reduce tensions and keep Israel secure, both of which help keep the possibility of a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians alive. The Persian Gulf operations safeguard oil reserves and impede aggression from Iraq. Southern European operations maintain peace and stability in all of Europe. Therefore, the report concludes, while UN peacekeeping operations are by no means ideal, there are no better substitutes.

Yet debates surrounding peacekeeping missions are always present. Whether a current presidential administration is more focused on engaging the international community or maintaining an isolationist stance, U.S. relations with the outside world are directly pertinent to any peace-keeping involvement. Many Americans question the necessity of sending their troops abroad and getting soldiers killed in battles that have no importance (or consequence) to national security interests. In recent years, such sentiments were especially noticeable after eighteen U.S. soldiers were killed and eighty-four more wounded while enforcing Operation Restore Hope in Mogadishu, Soma-lia, in 1993. The losses suffered in Somalia led the American public to question the importance of fighting wars for others and continued support for UN operations. It was also a significant factor in American lack of intervention while ethnic massacres were being carried out in Rwanda in the mid-1990s.

A CHANGING NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY. The Clinton administration's A National Security Strategy for a New Century (White House, Washington, DC, December 1999) outlines some of the reasons the United States participated in peacekeeping missions in the 1990s. The GAO's Balkans Security applies these reasons specifically to SFOR and KFOR. According to the National Security Strategy, national interests can either be classified as vital, important, or humanitarian. Vital interests are those that are "of broad, overriding importance to the survival, safety, and vitality of the United States," while important interests are those that "do not affect the survival of the United States but do affect national well-being and the character of the world in which Americans live." Humanitarian interests that might merit U.S. military involvement include "(1) natural and manmade disasters; (2) promoting human rights and seeking to halt gross violations of those rights; and (3) supporting democratization, adherence to the rule of law, and civilian control of the military."

Peacekeeping missions can fall into any of these three categories. Vital interests include such things as the security of Europe, which might be threatened by instability in Bosnia/Herzegovina and Kosovo. Thus, the United States has an interest in participating in NATO's KFOR and SFOR operations. Vital interests, as listed in the National Security Strategy, specifically include NATO's operations in the Balkans. Humanitarian interests may be less specific and harder to pin down. They are not specifically listed in the National Security Strategy as reasons for participating in peacekeeping in the Balkans, but many U.S. government officials have informally mentioned humanitarian interests as a reason for involvement in SFOR and KFOR.

Released in September 2002, the Bush administration's The National Security Strategy of the United States of America changed the way the United States saw its role in keeping the world's peace. The new National Security Strategy saw a fundamental change in the world situation. With the cold war over, the United States stood alone as the world's only superpower. There was now a chance to promote political and economic freedom in areas of the world previously closed off because of the cold war standoff. "We will work to translate this moment of influence into decades of peace, prosperity, and liberty," according to the report. To achieve these goals, the United States will:

• champion aspirations for human dignity;
• strengthen alliances to defeat global terrorism and work to prevent attacks against us and our friends;
• work with others to defuse regional conflicts;
• prevent our enemies from threatening us, our allies, and our friends, with weapons of mass destruction;
• ignite a new era of global economic growth through free markets and free trade;
• expand the circle of development by opening societies and building the infrastructure of democracy;
• develop agendas for cooperative action with other main centers of global power; and
• transform America's national security institutions to meet the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century.

The Costs of Peacekeeping

MONETARY COST OF MISSIONS. One factor that plays a large role in the debate about peacekeeping missions is their cost. According to U.N Peacekeeping: Estimated U.S. Contributions, Fiscal Years 1996–2001 (U.S. General Accounting Office, February 2002), the United States spent $3.45 billion to support UN peacekeeping from fiscal years 1996 through 2001. Indirect U.S. contributions include unilateral peacekeeping activities in such countries as Sierra Leone and Haiti. (See Figure 9.1.) According to DOD estimates, the United States provided 30% of all funding for UN peace operations in 1999 (this does not count NATO operations such as SFOR and KFOR).

Another issue with UN peacekeeping missions and finances is that the United States refused for several years to pay its share. The United States demanded that the United Nations adopt certain reform measures, including a reduction of the U.S. peacekeeping assessment rate and the creation of results-oriented standards to measure the success of its peacekeeping missions. U.S. officials claimed that UN peacekeeping efforts were often disorganized and ineffectual. According to U.N Peacekeeping: Transition Strategies for Post-Conflict Countries Lack Results-Oriented Measures of Progress (GAO-03-1071, Washington DC: U.S. General Accounting Office, September 2003), "the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations acknowledges that it needs better indicators by which to measure the progress peacekeeping operations are making in attaining sustainable peace."

In regards to the NATO missions in Kosovo and Bosnia/Herzegovina, estimates are that the U.S. spent some $18 billion for stabilization measures (including air strikes) in

FIGURE 9.1

Bosnia and Kosovo from 1992 through 2000. Table 9.2 shows estimated 2001 costs. While not all this funding may be directly related to SFOR and KFOR, the numbers do demonstrate the importance the United States has placed on stability in this volatile region of Europe since the mid-1990s.

CONTRIBUTING PERSONNEL. Manpower is another of the concerns surrounding peacekeeping missions. Peace-keeping missions, despite their name, often take place in volatile locations, with the personal safety of the peacekeeping force often as at risk as that of actual combat troops. In UN peacekeeping operations, for example, 1,965 people have died since 1948, according to January 2005 figures posted at the UN Web site (http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/fatalities/totals_annual.htm). The total number of deaths of UN peacekeeping forces since the turn of the century are: fifty-two fatalities in 2000; sixty-four each in 2001, 2002, and 2003; and eighty as of October 2004.

According to Allied Contributions to the Common Defense, the United States contributed 11,138 people to UN and major non-UN peace operations in 2000. This was 6.8% fewer than were contributed in 1999, but it was still by far the largest number contributed by any country and made up about 18% of the total worldwide peace

TABLE 9.2

Estimated costs for Department of Defense's contingency operations, fiscal year 2001
Dollars in millions
	Military personnel	Operation and maintenance	Miscellaneous procurement	Total
SOURCE: "Table 1. Estimated Costs for DoD's Contingency Operations, Fiscal Year 2001," in Defense Budget: Need for Continued Visibility over Use of Contingency Funds, U.S. General Accounting Office, July 2001, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d01829.pdf (accessed September 23,2004)
Bosnia	153.4	1,234.4	20.8	1,408.6
Kosovo	194.5	1,455.9	62.6	1,713.0
Total Balkans	347.9	2,690.3	83.4	3,121.6
Southwest Asia	144.8	913.7		1,058.5
East Timor	0	3.9		3.9
Total	492.7	3,607.9	83.4	4,184.0

operation force. U.S. peacekeepers totaled 0.0001% of the U.S. labor force. When this peacekeepers-to-labor-force ratio is compared with that of other countries around the world, the United States ranks nineteenth. The nations providing the highest percentages of their labor force to peace operations in 2000 were United Arab Emirates (0.0008%), Norway (0.0005%), Greece (0.0005%), Denmark (0.0004%), and Italy (0.0004%).

POSSIBLE DETERIORATION OF COMBAT READINESS. According to Peacekeeping: Issues of U.S. Military Involvement (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2003), "The [George W.] Bush Administration's desire to reduce the commitment of U.S. troops to international peacekeeping parallels the major concerns of recent Congresses: that peacekeeping duties are detrimental to military 'readiness'; i.e., the ability of U.S. troops to defend the nation." Proponents of this argument note that military training teaches troops to be fighters, while peace-keeping skills are better learned through a law enforcement background. In addition, some argue, military action requires quick, decisive force, while peacekeeping generally calls for restraint. Can a soldier be both a good fighter and a good peacemaker?

Increasingly, many answer yes. As noted earlier, peacekeeping missions inherently require military skills to allow a quick and appropriate response to unforeseen risks. In addition, peacekeeping proponents argue, if the purpose of peacekeeping is to prevent conflict, who better to deter conflicts from starting than well-trained soldiers?

The demands of peacekeeping, though, differ from those of actual combat participation. While troops engaged in peacekeeping activities may be able to expand their skills in such areas as intelligence, leadership, logistics, transportation, and engineering, according to some critics their skills in more combat-oriented arenas, such as shooting, combined arms skills, and unit maneuverability, may degrade. Peacekeeping: Issues of U.S. Military Involvement points out that many efforts are now being made to provide peacekeepers with ongoing combat training to reduce this deterioration. According to Christopher Bellamy, professor of military science and doctrine at Cranfield University in the United Kingdom, local populations respond best to peacekeeping troops who are "also unmistakably professional soldiers," but not too "heavyhanded" (NATO Review, Summer 2001).