Adapting to global demand

Marching Orders
How Canada abandoned peacekeeping – and why the UN needs us now more than ever

Adapting to global demand

The idea of an inept, inert and wasteful United Nations is utterly debunked by the findings of the 2005 Human Security Report. As noted, the 1990s saw a dramatic upsurge in demand for UN activities, and despite some tragedies such as that in Rwanda (where donor countries refused to contribute troops to prevent the genocide), the United Nations has quickly adapted to unpredictable demands.

The following accomplishments have gone practically unreported in the last 15 years:

1) A dramatic increase in preventive diplomacy and peacemaking activities

UN preventive diplomacy missions (those that seek to prevent wars from breaking out in the first place) increased from one in 1990 to six in 2002.

UN peacemaking activities (those that seek to stop ongoing conflicts) also increased nearly fourfold – from 4 in 1990 to 15 in 2002. The increase in preventive diplomacy helped prevent a number of latent conflicts from crossing the threshold into warfare, while the rise in peacemaking activities has been associated with a major increase in negotiated peace settlements. Approximately half of all the peace settlements negotiated between 1946 and 2003 have been signed since the end of the Cold War. The average number of conflicts terminated per year in the 1990s was more than twice the average of all previous decades from 1946 onwards.

2) An increase in international support for UN peacemaking

The number of “Friends of the Secretary-General,” “Contact Groups” and other mechanisms created by governments to support UN peacemaking activities and peace operations in countries in – or emerging from – conflict increased from 4 in 1990 to more than 28 in 2003, a sevenfold increase.

3) An increase in post-conflict peace operations

There has been a major increase in complex peace operations, not just UN missions but those of regional organizations as well. These have involved an ever-growing range of peace-building activities that are designed in part to prevent the recurrence of conflict. Since 40 per cent of post-conflict countries relapse into political violence within five years, any policy initiatives that can minimize this risk will in turn reduce the risk of future wars.

The number of UN peacekeeping operations more than doubled between 1988 and 2004 – from 7 to 16. The peace operations of the post–Cold War era are not merely larger and more numerous than Cold War peacekeeping missions, they are also far more ambitious. Whereas the Cold War missions typically involved little more than monitoring ceasefires, many of today’s operations are more akin to nation building.

4) A much greater willingness to use force

The Security Council has been increasingly willing to authorize the use of force to deter “spoilers” from undermining peace agreements and in so doing to restart old conflicts. UN peace operations are now routinely mandated to use force to protect the peace, not just their own personnel.32

It’s not just the Human Security Report that found success in UN peacekeeping operations. Even the Rand Corporation, a U.S.-based private think tank, has high praise for the United Nations. “The United Nations provides the best suitable institutional framework for all but the largest and most demanding of nation-building missions, due to the UN’s comparatively low-cost structure, high success rate, and high degree of international legitimacy,” found a report released in February 2005.33 The same report stated:

Among those studied, two-thirds of UN nation-building operations can be counted as successful at this time, compared with half of such U.S. operations . . . .

Within its limits, UN peacekeeping is a highly efficient means of placing post-conflict societies on the path to enduring peace and democratic government, and the most efficient form of international intervention so far documented . . . .

UN nation-building efforts tend to be smaller, shorter, and cheaper and, at least among those studied, more often successful than the American efforts . . . .34

Despite derision from the defence lobby, the United Nations is widely recognized as playing a vital role in mitigating global conflict and promoting peace. And while the UN’s behind-thescenes work may have gone largely unnoticed for years, it was hard to miss the important role that the UN played in the debate leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

No longer a body that was inconsequential to international politics, the UN became the central focal point for the debate in 2003. As many commentators have stated, it was remarkable that an international debate took place over the very legitimacy of war, in the case of the U.S. proposal to invade Iraq. The United Nations was the centre point of the debate – not NATO, or any other international body for that matter.

Ramesh Thakur and Andrew Mack wrote in March 2003, only three days after the terrible “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad began, “A funny thing happened on the road to Baghdad. The people of the world defected from the U.S. and converted to the UN. Instead of being a pro forma test of UN relevance, the agenda shifted to become a litmus test of U.S. legitimacy . . . . The UN has been front and centre in the debate, the focus of hopes, fears and the media’s most pressing attention.”35

Thakur and Mack wrote in the Japan Times that “a globalized public opinion mobilized in opposition to the war before it even began . . . . The UN as a global forum provided a platform for voicing domestic dissent within the U.S. For the first time ever in human history, the international community united to wage peace before a war started.”

« previous | next »

SECTIONS