Fulfilling our Proper Leadership at the U.N.--and Paying Up

Over the last year, there has been much heat, but little light shed on the United Nations and America’s role therein. Misperceptions are rampant across the political spectrum. Now that the U.S. elections are over, and we have both a new U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan of Ghana, and a new U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), it seems appropriate to examine a public debate that has largely missed the mark.

When it comes to criticism or praise of the United Nations, it tends to be all or nothing. Some fear the U.N. as a sinister threat to our national sovereignty; others promote it as an easy panacea for all the world’s ills. It is neither. Rather, the United Nations represents one instrument among many for the advancement of the U.S. national interest. The U.N. is a means, not an end, of U.S. foreign policy.

This was the approach we took toward the U.N. during the Bush administration, one firmly grounded in a realistic understanding of the U.N.’s strengths and weaknesses. During the crisis in the Persian Gulf, for example, we used the United Nations to rally world opinion and isolate Iraq through diplomatic and economic sanctions. But the U.N. remained essentially a vehicle for American leadership, a fact often forgotten by those who cite the Gulf War as an example of a more assertive U.N. security role in the post-Cold War era.

It is in the specific area of international peacekeeping that hopes for--and fears of--the U.N. are most distorted. In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number, scale and danger of peacekeeping operations. There has also been intense pressure on the United States to increase our support for expanded U.N. peacekeeping activities in terms of money, materiel and, not least, personnel. We should resist this pressure; there are pragmatic, not ideological, grounds for doing so.

First, our military forces run special risks simply by virtue of being American. All countries are not equal. The United States is the world’s only remaining superpower and, as such, the object of immense admiration but also intense resentment. Our troops, by definition, represent an appealing target to local belligerents and international terrorists alike. We need only recall the tragic kidnap-murder of Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins in Lebanon.

Second, it is also uncertain that the U.N. possesses the competence to undertake the sort of ambitious peacekeeping--or, more accurately, peace-enforcement--operations that many of its supporters envisage. In places like Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda, the performance of the U.N. has, to put it charitably, been mixed, at best. Objectives have often been unclear, command-and-control mechanisms inadequate, exit strategies vague. Such confusion can have deadly consequences for U.S. service personnel involved, as was tragically demonstrated in Somalia.

Third, expanded U.S. participation in U.N. peacekeeping risks undermining our military’s role as final guarantor of our own security and, we should not forget, international stability. Only the United States can project substantial military force globally. Only the United States can lead multinational coalitions like the one that triumphed in the Gulf War. Excessive U.S. involvement in U.N. peacekeeping operations can damage our capacity to do either by diverting critical resources in an already tight military budget and by eroding public support for U.S. military intervention abroad.

Does this mean the United States should never participate in U.N. peacekeeping activities? Certainly not. There may be circumstances that will demand a U.S. military role. But they should be the exception, not the rule. And they should be guided by a few key principles.

First, U.S. military personnel should always serve under U.S. command. Since 1981, we have successfully created the finest military establishment in the world, including an experienced officer corps of unparalleled excellence. We do a disservice to our personnel by entrusting their safety to the command of anyone else, especially since they do represent a special target by virtue of being American. Our troops deserve the best leadership available. And, for the foreseeable future, that means U.S. leadership.

On a related front, it would be counterproductive to dedicate specific U.S. military forces to serve in any multinational peacekeeping or enforcement operations the U.S. decided to participate in. While it is imperative to train our troops for all contingencies, earmarking specific units for multinational peacekeeping will almost certainly increase the urge to use them--something we should avoid.

Second, American participation in U.N. peacekeeping should, whenever possible, be limited to areas where we possess a clear military advantage, specifically, logistics, air-support and intelligence. By confining our role to these areas, we can lower our exposure to casualties while still making an important contribution to the success of the effort.

Third, American personnel should never be committed without a clear set of objectives, sufficient resources and an explicit exit strategy. There are such things as open-ended military commitments--we have given them to Western Europe and Japan--but they should be limited to situations truly decisive to the security of the United States itself.

Fourth, U.S. participation in peacekeeping operations must be justified in terms of a sober assessment of U.S. national interests. This may sound like a truism, but it is often ignored by both the advocates and opponents of the U.N. When such justification is present, there are times, such as the Gulf War, when it is to our distinct advantage and in our national interest to use the U.N. Without such justification, we risk becoming the world’s policeman, trying to settle intractable disputes in every corner of the globe. And this is something we must avoid at all costs, notwithstanding the understandable humanitarian arguments for doing so. Indeed, a sober assessment of U.S. national interest should be the starting point for any foreign-policy decision, whether related to the U.N. or not.

There are those, both here and abroad, who suggest that hesitance to assume a greater role in U.N. peacekeeping somehow reflects an abdication of U.S. leadership. This is ludicrous. At 31.7% of the total U.N. peacekeeping budget, our assessment is not just high but disproportionate. I strongly support efforts to reduce it to 25%. But our overall contribution to international peace and stability far transcends any support we could ever give to U.N. peacekeeping.

Today, in Western Europe and the Far East, our armed forces stand as bastions of regional stability, as they have for years. U.S. fleets ensure the freedom of international sea lanes around the world. We are the only nation able to act decisively militarily when a true threat to regional or global security emerges. This century alone, in addition to major actions in Korea, Vietnam, Panama and the Persian Gulf, we have fought three world wars--two hot and one cold--to ensure international stability. We remain its guarantor of last resort.

Having said that, the U.N. often plays a very important role in global conflict resolution, for example, in Cambodia. Its humanitarian, economic and social agencies perform effectively in many areas of the world. Yes, its bureaucracy is bloated and needs to be streamlined and reformed. As the leading proponent of reform, however, America would be far more credible and effective if we were not at the same time refusing to pay the hundreds of millions of dollars in dues and assessments we owe, which are overdue.

Our U.N. membership is important to the United States and to our leadership role in world affairs. That leadership role is, in turn, important to global peace, stability and prosperity. It is simply not right that the world’s only remaining superpower--and the world’s largest economy and the beacon of hope to so many others--should at the same time be the world’s biggest deadbeat.