UN Action: Clark

UN Action: Lectures and Forums: Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

Spring 1994

UN Action in a Disorderly World

Joe Clark

iscussions on the United Nations occur on two levels. One level concerns the wisdom of particular decisions: in or out of Bosnia, in or out of Somalia, in or out of Iraq, yes or no to a standing UN force, who pays for what, that kind of question. The other level is about whether the UN is seen as an asset or as something less. A nation like Canada sees the United Nations quite unequivocally as an asset that is essential to international security. Most nations share that view. Some, like the United States, and occasionally former colonial powers like the United Kingdom, are a little more skeptical.
have to say that a Canadian finds it curious to hear Americans argue that no American should be found in harm's way under foreign command. Our soldiers have been in harm's way and have died in places like Korea under United States', that is to say, foreign, command. In the eighteen UN peacekeeping operations that are now under way, some of long duration, more than seven hundred soldiers of various nations have died in the service of the United Nations. In all of those cases, the United States was a member of the Security Council which authorized the risk, and usually the governments whose citizens died were not. That is not to minimize the American concern, but to put it into perspective.
erhaps it is not appropriate for the United States to take towards the United Nations the same attitude which a country like Canada does. And certainly, if the United States ever moves toward that position, it will obviously be the result of persuasion, of arguments won, not of coercion. But the age is over in which superpowers policed the world and kept a kind of peace. Yet the need for that peace has not diminished. Indeed it has become more urgent, and that escalating disorder is a threat to every nation's vital interests. In light of that, let me offer some observations about the UN role.
irst, the problem we are discussing today is not the UN per se; it is, rather, the escalating disorder and the role of the UN as one institution among others trying to manage that disorder, because disorder is contagious. It leaps across old barriers, and most dangerously, it creates its own psychology of insecurity, exactly the opposite of what we so recently anticipated when the old walls came down. It creates its own standards that are peculiar, aggressive, and often hostile to compromise and accommodation. The menace in the world's present situation is not that there is some particular atrocity or threat so horrible that it must be stopped. The menace now consists of two conditions. First, the sense that the trend is going in the wrong direction, that we seem less able to contain conflict, not more able. And second, that the responsibility for managing disorder is more diffuse, not only among nations and institutions, but within them. That in turn is made more important by two related developments affecting individual countries. The first is that the Cold War imposed an immense responsibility upon the two superpowers. They were policemen who sought to exert their authority in every corner of the world, sometimes in unpleasant ways. Now, for better and for worse, no one is exerting that authority, including where it is needed.
second development relates to television and democracies. A generic change has taken place in the context in which foreign policy is decided in developed democracies. I say this as someone has had the great privilege of serving for six and a half years as the Canadian foreign minister. If foreign policy was once a preserve of elites, it is now very much public policy which must take account of publics which are more knowledgeable, more assertive, and for good or for ill, more influenced by modern media. Indeed, television may be a wilder card in foreign policy debates than in other policy fields because our publics, North American publics particularly, have scant personal experience which might filter the stark images of famine, civil war, and terror. Some have argued that the United States and the UN are in Somalia largely because television created a public demand for intervention. That may be, but what concerns me more is that television's reporting of what peacekeepers must endure will inspire calls for withdrawal. You know the reaction here after television audiences saw American bodies dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. In my own country, which modestly claims to have invented peacekeeping, images out of Bosnia-Hercegovina have caused public opinion now to support Canada pulling out, whatever the consequences for the United Nations, whatever the consequences for the victims of the conflict. That has never happened before in Canada, and to their credit, members of parliament in a very recent debate took a longer view. But any military engagement requires a longer view, and the combination of television and populism pulls in other directions. Public opinion is rarely a deterrent for peace-breakers, and it would be a terrible irony if it became one for peacemakers.
hird, as the world becomes a village, we are gradually losing the option of ignoring inconvenient crises because they are a long way away. The threat to security today is not a superpower with an arsenal but rather local wars that can spread, distant degradation that can change all of our climates, the new mobility of terrorism and of disease and of extremist ideologies, and the incalculable consequences of breakdown in a state of the former Soviet Union, or in India, or in Southern Africa.
ourth, national sovereignty isn't what it used to be. Treaties like the acid rain agreement or NAFTA limit sovereignty explicitly. And the simple day-to-day requirements of various multinational enterprises, by which I don't mean simply the General Motors of this world but also the activities of UNICEF or the policy coordination of the Group of Seven economic summit, limit sovereignty implicitly. So how does the international community establish confidence that disorder can be managed? Specifically, what can the UN do? Four comments, I hope, might be helpful.
irst, the UN and particularly its developed country members must not be distracted from the reality that the real roots of disorder lie in poverty, disease, and desperation. There is no reason to believe that the UN and its agencies will draw back from that priority, at least not do so deliberately. But there is a very real danger, a cause for alarm, that individual countries are not sustaining their commitment to international development, and there is not in fact even much coordination to the way in which they are withdrawing. That could exacerbate problems particularly in smaller communities that are now on the edges of the official development commitment of several countries and could suffer the cumulative impact of everyone drawing back.
econd, whatever the role of the UN, other nations and other institutions must continue to accept a large responsibility for resolving conflict. I think there is an increasing role for unofficial and private institutions, of which one of the best examples is the Carter Center in Atlanta.
hird, while it would be comforting to rely more upon regional organizations like the OAS or the Organization of African Unity, or indeed like the European Union, none has yet demonstrated anything like the weight or the will of the UN in peacemaking. So far, they should be seen at best as support, not as substitutes.
ourth, there is a critical and difficult question as to whether the United States should be involved directly in the front lines of UN peacekeeping operations. In a conflict, American presence increases both the risk and the authority of the operation. Moreover, the United States is a dominant member of the Security Council, which decides what the United Nations does. Many nations make large contributions to the UN, but only five sit permanently on its executive committee. The prospect of involvement in an operation might improve the quality and the credibility of those Security Council decisions.
know as a foreign minister who presided over the debate in his own country that friends of the United Nations disagreed genuinely about the appropriateness of the Gulf War. I don't intend to open that discussion on its merits here, but I believe that decision substantially increased the capacity of the United Nations to function effectively today. Everyone accepts that the Cold War seriously constrained the UN, but it did not necessarily follow that the end of the Cold War would lead to a stronger role for the UN. It was, for example, not at all inconceivable that there could have been a multinational response to Iraq outside UN auspices. That would have marginalized and divided the UN. It is not marginal now. Indeed it is one of the small handful of institutions whose reputation is stronger today than it was a decade ago. One could ask, how many legions has the secretary-general? In fact, in tangible terms, he has more than any of his predecessors, because countries like Canada have now made standby commitments to the United Nations. And there are serious proposals, however merited, to have a standing UN force. But the more relevant answer is that the authority of the UN has become more real, not just moral authority. No writ runs everywhere and naturally there will be forces the UN cannot persuade, but it is an actor now in center stage to a degree it was not before. That is a very risky place to be. And too many mistakes will erode both public confidence and the confidence of the member states. But the United Nations was not established to stay out of trouble. On the contrary! Its willingness to become involved is particularly important in this time when there are relatively more troubles and fewer institutions able to deal with them. I'm not qualified to comment specifically on reform and the organization of UN peacekeeping. Given the recent burst of demand, it would not be surprising that practical reforms are necessary.
ut there is a generic problem too, and its elements are worth considering. Most nations are organized so it is clear where the buck stops, where the ultimate authority to decide resides. The UN is not a nation and does not have one final authority. As a practical matter, major decisions require the active support of both the secretary-general and the Security Council, and they require the acquiescence at least of the General Assembly. A lot can be done in the name of more efficiency, but I strongly doubt that any of those three institutions will fold their claims. In the case of both the Security Council and the General Assembly, collective decisions require individual decisions by member states, which means consulting home governments and debates at home. So UN decision making is inherently more complex than in any domestic government.
nother difference from domestic governments is that the United Nations has limited direct access to the kind of military and political advice that would be available to a president or prime minister. When Canada made decisions respecting peacekeeping, the departments of external affairs and national defense were fully involved; UN headquarters has no equivalent. Originally the military committee was to play that role, but it has not, and no substitute has been developed. To a degree that would be highly unusual in any nation, UN force commanders often question the military viability of their instructions or their missions. That suggests the problem is real and must be addressed.
s the UN's authority increases, so does its capacity to make peace, not just keep it, not just enforce the status quo. By its nature, peacemaking is a more political activity. It must maintain a fine impartiality with respect to the parties to a dispute, but be activist in seeking a solution. Often individual countries or other institutions can help resolve a specific dispute, but no one else can so regularly provide both auspices and activism. That can occur after a conflict has been stabilized or before one breaks out. I have the great honor of serving in one such circumstance as the special representative of the secretary-general in Cyprus. I came back last week, and in fact (though one has to be careful of overstating anything), there seems to be a glimmer of hope that we may able to get the parties back together to discuss developments in the current round of confidence-building measures that would be agreed between the two parties. This is an example of the kind of peacemaking role that the UN can play.

The Right Honorable Joe Clark served as Prime Minister of Canada in 1979 and 1980. He was appointed Secretary of State for External Affairs (foreign minister) from 1984 through 1991. He was visiting Berkeley as a 1993-1994 Regents' Lecturer at the time of this forum.

In the eighteen UN peacekeeping operations that are now under way, more than seven hundred soldiers of various nations have died in the service of the United Nations. In all of those cases, the United States was a member of the Security Council which authorized the risk, and usually the governments whose citizens died were not.

The United Nations was not established to stay out of trouble. On the contrary! Its willingness to become involved is particularly important in this time when there are relatively more troubles and fewer institutions able to deal with them.

Presentation by Tom Farer | Presentation by Ernst Haas