Demise of a Peacekeeping Initiative

The White House wants it. The State Department backs it, even though it was Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s idea. Democrats in Congress love it, and President Bush has promised it to his allies.

So why is it that a much-touted plan to spend $660 million over five years to train Africans to serve as international peacekeepers -- so U.S. soldiers don’t have to -- is now thought to be in danger of dying in a Republican-controlled Congress?

The curious case of the Global Peace Operations Initiative appears to be a classic lesson in Washington turf wars, the perils of violating congressional protocol, and, critics say, Bush administration bungling.

Administration supporters say they still hope the program can be saved when Congress returns after the election. But advocates are scratching their heads over why an idea with such bipartisan support is languishing when the U.S. military is stretched painfully thin, genocide stalks Africa and peacekeepers are in desperately short supply.

“U.S. troops are not going to go to Africa, so who is?” asked Beth C. DeGrasse, executive director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. “Why we can’t make this happen is a total mystery to me.”

“This is one of the most wonderfully creative things done by this administration,” said former Pentagon official Joseph J. Collins, who was in charge of the plan until he resigned in July. “I just hope it keeps going.”

However, congressional staffers as well as others following the bill said the measure was likely to fail this year because of opposition from the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John W. Warner (R-Va.), and others in the House and Senate. Warner spokesman John Ullyot declined to comment.

Opponents reportedly object to a provision to transfer Department of Defense funds to the State Department, which is in charge of training peacekeepers.

The Senate version of the bill calls for the transfer of $80 million for the program next year.

But that provision violates congressional rules and protocol, and has run afoul of lawmakers who see it as their job to defend the Pentagon budget, especially in wartime, said two Senate staffers who spoke on condition they not be identified. So the measure probably will be killed quietly in a House-Senate conference committee.

“The administration made a mistake in the way they requested the money,” one staffer said.

The United Nations has authorized 54,000 troops for 16 peacekeeping missions, including 37,000 for six conflicts in Africa. As many as 30,000 more troops may be needed for crises in the Darfur region of Sudan, Congo, Ivory Coast, Liberia and Burundi, according to the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington.

“The crisis in Darfur can be expected to place even greater demands on an already overtaxed global capacity to provide troops for international peace missions,” the institute said in a briefing paper released last week. It warned that uncertainties over funding of the Bush administration initiative “leave its future in doubt.”

President Bush promised the other Group of Eight industrialized nations in June that the United States would contribute $660 million to an international effort to train and equip 75,000 peacekeepers over the next five years. The program focuses on Africa, but African peacekeepers eventually could be deployed to other nations as well.

Bush touted the program in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September.

“Because we believe in human dignity, the world must have more effective means to stabilize regions in turmoil, and to halt religious violence and ethnic cleansing,” Bush said. “We must create permanent capacity to respond to future crises.”

The State Department has trained 12,000 African peacekeepers under a $15-million annual program. But a chronic shortage persists. And since the failure of the U.S. operation in Somalia, American officials have shown a bipartisan resistance to deploying troops to Africa.

However, the U.N. has been urging countries to break with tradition and send peacekeepers for duty far from their home regions. In response, the Chinese sent 100 riot police to Haiti and are sending five police officers to Liberia next month.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has been working since last year on ways to increase the supply of peacekeepers and improve their quality in order to reduce the pressure on U.S. forces, said Collins, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations.

“This idea comes straight from Rumsfeld,” Collins said.

The Italian government has offered to run training programs, and the State Department has promised it $10 million of the $80 million for that purpose. DeGrasse said State Department officials now are worried about their ability to give the money to Italy, which has been a staunch member of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.

A State Department official declined to comment, saying only, “The president is committed to ensuring that this initiative moves forward.”

Collins said he had never heard of another case of one government agency volunteering to fork over some of its budget to another because it thought a program was so important.

“Twelve years in the Pentagon, I’m pretty sure this is the first time the Department of Defense has ever done it,” he said.

The White House still could overcome congressional resistance by “spending time and money and political capital and talking to the key people” said the Senate staffer. “But so far they haven’t done it.”