The Rugged Road of the Peacekeeper : U.N. must find courage in face of setbacks in several areas

All in all, it has not been the best of times for U.N. peacekeeping operations. In Bosnia U.N. forces have been on the defensive--and there even have been calls for them to be withdrawn for their own safety. In Somalia U.N. troops wound up shooting at the very people they were sent to protect. And in Cambodia there have been threats to reject the results of the arduously achieved multi-party election supervised by the United Nations.

For many Americans, taught from school days to view the United Nations as an institution for keeping the peace, recent events undoubtedly are sobering and possibly disillusioning. Are we expecting too much from the world organization?

In the last few months the United Nations clearly has faced many challenges to its peacekeeping missions. In no small part that’s because the nature and number of those missions have grown so greatly. With the Cold War’s end and the withering away of the bipolar geopolitical world, it is as if history had cut off the current for two huge electromagnetic fields--forces that, rightly or wrongly, kept the world pretty much in line--and then sucked the United Nations into an international vacuum. The results have not always been pretty.

The core of U.N. political strength is, as always, the Security Council. But the council tends to excel not in precision of instructions--a virtual prerequisite of any successful military mission--but in minimum consensus-making and studied ambiguity--a virtual prerequisite for what’s regarded as successful diplomacy. It thus becomes a less than ideal overseer of peacekeeping operations.

But that job continues to fall to the Security Council. So perhaps it is better to emphasize the positive. The organization did a creditable job in Cambodia, and its efforts in Bosnia were not only well-intentioned but at times heroic. In Somalia no one was under any illusion about the risks that remained after most American troops were withdrawn, leaving peacekeeping to a multinational force that included a greatly scaled-down U.S. presence.

No doubt the organization has made mistakes. From its inception the United Nations always has had to contend with the gap between its abundant good intentions and its scarcity of means to achieve them. But on balance these latest, high-profile efforts at peacekeeping were unavoidable. The world needed them. In consequence, the United Nations should not be scared out of Somalia, or demoralized by the challenge to the election results in Cambodia. Indeed, perhaps it should even try to do a bit more. In the former case U.N. forces may have to begin the arduous process of disarming the lawless militias. In the latter it may have to consider applying strong pressure on the Cambodian government.

In any event it should stay the course in both assignments. That first of all requires a continuing commitment from the member countries, which now, in total, contribute 57,000 troops to peacekeeping operations in 18 countries. And it requires a continuing flow of financial support for those operations. Finally, it requires finding the political courage to stick it out in such thankless and inhospitable arenas as Bosnia. Keeping the United Nations involved there doesn’t guarantee an end to the terrible civil war. But a U.N. pullout almost certainly would assure a prolongation of the brutality.