Interview : ‘Somebody Will Have to Play Policeman’

In an interview in his 38th-floor office late last week, U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali steadfastly defended the need for peace enforcement in the post-Cold War era and warned that he might have to pull the United Nations out of Somalia if the Americans go through with their withdrawal on March 31.

Here are some excerpts:

Boutros-Ghali: We have never done this before, and we discovered . . . that governments take the decision to do peace enforcement, but they are not ready to do it, for financial reasons or for psychological reasons. Because when one of their sons gets killed, they cannot understand. They say, “What? We are doing a peacekeeping operation and our boy is killed?”

. . . In the case of peace enforcements, if there is no political will from the member states, you have to be realistic. Let us withdraw. . . .

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Question: But when will the political will be there to have peace enforcement?

Answer: I can do nothing. It would be a mistake to construct an operation if there is no political will. I must have the courage to say, ‘Let us withdraw.’

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Q: Do you think that is likely to happen after March 31st?

A: . . . If we will not be able to fill the gap, I will just have to say you have to withdraw. This has been done before. In Beirut, ’83. Everybody withdrew. And in Angola.

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Q: If the political will isn’t there and you don’t have peace enforcement for a place like Somalia, what becomes the alternative?

A: . . . I can do nothing. I have no army, I have no money, I have no experts. I am borrowing everything. If the member states don’t want, what can I do? The reality is to avoid giving promises which you are not able to fulfill.

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Q: Does that mean we’re not going to have peace enforcement for a while?

A: No. If you have political will of the member states, if they are ready to pay the price, we will have peace enforcement. . . . They have had it in Kuwait. They have had it in Korea. At a certain time they were on the point to have it in Yugoslavia. You never know. They may have it. You see you’ve got ups and downs, you have moods. Now, for the time being, they have not. But I don’t know what will happen tomorrow.

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Q: So you haven’t given up on peace enforcement.

A: No, certainly not. You see, they are not aware that somebody will have to play the role of the policeman, that you cannot have, because of CNN, because of the television, because of the global village, you cannot any more have a deterioration in a situation in one country without having an impact directly or indirectly on the globe. So we will be compelled sooner or later to intervene. All this intervention will be done by one member state or by an alliance or it will be done by the forum of the United Nations.

. . . Let me give you another explanation. I believe it’s a question of education. During the Cold War you were ready to spend $1 billion every day, and you were ready to end in a military confrontation.

Now there is no more Cold War, you are not ready to spend the money and you are not ready to take the risk of losing your sons.

But the danger today is as great as the danger of the Cold War. . . . It has taken a different form. . . .

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Q: In other words, what’s happened in Somalia has not changed your basic philosophy.

A: No.

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Q: I’m curious if you feel your own personal role as secretary general has been undermined by all the criticism that came in the weeks after the killing of the Americans.

A: No. The role of the United Nations has been undermined because I am a part of the United Nations . . . because the secretary general is the personification of the United Nations.

The public mind likes personification, likes to have the hero and the bad boy and the good boy.

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Q: Have there been any overtures from the United States recently, any indication that they’re changing their attitude toward the withdrawal or toward taking risks?

A: No, not for the time being. I believe there is today this kind of big . . . isolationist crisis. And I hope that this crisis will pass and that the public opinion will see it is in their own interest to reinforce the United Nations.