Can U.N. Be Given Teeth Sharp Enough to Make a Difference? : As states disintegrate, Washington might find itself with fewer problems if it supported an international intervention force

Richard Falk of Princeton calls them the “black holes of geopolitics.” To others they are simply failed states, countries whose governments have become powerless or ceased to exist, countries collapsing in on themselves as ethnic, religious or tribal hatreds and fears surge over the tenuous structure of multiethnic community life. These are states experiencing or threatened with a reversion to barbarism that mocks the dream of a world where the rule of law prevails.

Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia, victims of frightful and even genocidal civil strife, are the most prominent examples of failed states. Haiti provides a different kind of textbook case. There, for the better part of two centuries, an indigenous rapacious political class has thwarted progress while using terror to condemn the mass of people to chronic economic misery.

ETHNIC FRICTION IS BUT ONE BREEDER OF VIOLENCE

But there are other potential members of this tragic club. By one estimate fully 40% of the world’s countries count five or more sizable ethnic minorities among their populations. Most of these are states whose boundaries were drawn in the latter half of the 19th Century by expanding colonial powers or those carved out of the carcasses of defeated empires in the first part of this century, without reference to the interests or the historical grievances of their inhabitants.

Heterogeneity does not, of course, make civil strife inevitable, any more than homogeneity--witness Haiti--assures domestic tranquillity. But it is a major component. Add economic crisis, selective and unforgiving historical memories and active political demagoguery--all of which exist in abundance in crucial parts of the world--and the stage is set for unrestrained conflict.

States whose disparate populations are unable to reconcile their differences can, of course, separate politically and territorially without collapsing.

British India divided at independence into mostly Hindu India and mostly Muslim Pakistan, though not without suffering a terrible toll during the accompanying mass population transfers.

More recently Czechoslovakia, one of a number of states to emerge out of the dissolved Austro-Hungarian monarchy in the aftermath of World War I, chose to split peacefully into two independent republics. But Czechoslovakia represents more of an anomaly than a model. It is hard to conceive of the feuding and sometimes closely intermixed populations of the states of the former Soviet Union or of sub-Saharan Africa, those in that “zone of conflict” where internal strife is most likely to occur, agreeing to peacefully put aside their suspicions and hatreds or suppress their often-ancient cultural differences.

The ugly fact confronting the world now is that the end of the Cold War has allowed the re-emergence of a narrow, exclusionary nationalism that demagogues in much of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have been eagerly encouraging. Simultaneously it is all too clear that longstanding ethnic, tribal or religious rivalries in much of Africa could explode in horrifying conflict at any time.

The terrible suffering and political instability that are characteristic of collapsing states are not going to disappear. What, if anything, can international efforts do to prevent other states from collapsing or, absent that, to alleviate the brutal and tragic human consequences of their failure?

GRIM FAILURES IN SOMALIA, BOSNIA AND RWANDA

Experience so far is anything but encouraging. Somalia, despite a $1.5-billion humanitarian rescue operation, appears even with 15,000 U.N. troops still in the country to have reverted to predatory clan warfare. Limited military “peacekeeping” operations in Bosnia under U.N. auspices have failed to stop the killing or deter Serbian territorial expansionism. In Rwanda quick and probably low-risk outside intervention mobilized by the United Nations or even undertaken multilaterally without official U.N. blessing almost surely could have prevented much of the slaughter of the Tutsi minority, which continued for months. But there was little stomach either in Africa or elsewhere for interposing a military shield between the Tutsis and their Hutu tormentors, so there was no organized lifesaving effort of sufficient scale.

Sir Brian Urquhart, former undersecretary general for special political affairs at the United Nations, likens dilatory U.N. actions when life-consuming crises erupt to a policeman getting to the scene of a crime weeks after it was committed. In these circumstances, he asks, how can the institution retain any public credibility? The Bosnia debacle gives added point to the question.

A fundamental part of the problem is of course institutional. The United Nations can act only when the Security Council authorizes it to do so, meaning only when there is a consensus among its five permanent, veto-empowered members. But even then the Security Council can only authorize; individual members must respond by voluntarily providing the actual military forces for intervening. Right now there are about 70,000 U.N. peacekeepers in the field. They have no trouble keeping the peace where the parties they stand between want the peace kept, as on Cyprus or the Golan Heights. But they cannot keep the peace where one or another belligerent would rather fight, as in Bosnia, nor can they make peace when--again as in Bosnia--the mandate under which they operate requires an impartiality that renders them all but impotent.

Urquhart’s proposed way around at least part of this problem is for the United Nations to have its own troops, a small, all-volunteer standing force with the ability to move quickly to deal with low-level political violence. Such a rapid deployment force (RDF) would constitute only an initial presence, a fire brigade that would serve as an earnest of international intentions. By its ability to intervene fast, it would eliminate that “sickening pause” that typically occurs between the time the Security Council authorizes military intervention and the actual arrival of troops in the area of conflict.

Yale historian Paul Kennedy supports a U.N. RDF, noting among other reasons that in the absence of such a mechanism for intervening “everyone will (continue to) look to the United States for leadership,” laying a moral and political responsibility on this country that in fact must be shared by the international community. Political scientist Richard Falk agrees, observing that a U.N. RDF “would actually help reduce U.S. involvement in regional crises while also responding to the ‘CNN factor’--the tendency of the public to agitate for action after viewing televised human disaster.”

PROBLEM OF ‘IMPARTIAL’ ARMED INTERVENTION

The notion, though, has its cogent critics. Michael Mandelbaum, professor of foreign policy at Johns Hopkins, notes that the conduct of military operations is strictly the business of sovereign states, and “sovereignty can’t be transferred by fiat to an international organization.”

Richard K. Betts of Columbia, writing in Foreign Affairs, argues forcefully that U.N. military operations--whether as currently conducted or employing a RDF--will fail to arrest conflicts so long as their mandate is to remain evenhanded and not take sides to help shape the outcome. Impartiality works only when two sides are ready to stop fighting. Otherwise it only helps the stronger and more aggressive party. In Bosnia, “the West’s attempt at limited but impartial involvement abetted slow-motion savagery.”

The fear--indeed, the high probability--of more savagery yet to come in volatile parts of the world demands hard thinking about what can be done to prevent or mitigate such calamities. Yale’s Paul Kennedy fears that Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, could fall apart within the next six months. He further points to Algeria, where success of the Islamic fundamentalist rebellion could jeopardize the more secularized middle-class Muslim population.

Worldwide, 50 million people have been displaced by the internal conflicts of recent years. Millions more may soon be threatened.

THE MOST BASIC QUESTION: JUST WHO WOULD DECIDE?

There are manifold practical problems with the notion of developing a standing U.N. interventionary force: How large would it be and how would its members be recruited? Where would it be based, what transport and logistics provisions would be made for it? How would it be paid for, who would give it orders, what would happen if it needed reinforcing?

Perhaps trickiest of all is the most basic challenge: How would it be decided where a U.N. force could be used most effectively? Plainly the number of possible crises in the world at any given moment that might call for intervention could exceed the capabilities of a U.N. rapid deployment force to intervene. How then would the hard choice of where to put possibly lifesaving resources be made? And by whom?

These are difficult questions that have to be carefully addressed before a U.N. force could become a reality. The world continues to look to the United States for leadership. Washington therefore should take the lead at the United Nations in directing thinking toward experimenting with an international RDF--and in offering logistics support for its missions. That such a force will not lack for future employment seems sadly, grimly all too certain.

Next week: Market forces changing the world order.