True Peacekeepers Are Protectors

Peacekeeping operations by the United Nations over the past decade have been more notable for their ineptitude than for their effectiveness. The reasons are many, and they begin, as a useful new report by a special U.N. panel notes, with the Security Council’s readiness to mandate operations before they ascertain whether the troops, equipment and resources needed to make them work will be provided. The panel recommends reversing this process, but the secretary general should first obtain commitments to support an operation. Only then should he present the case for intervention to the council and seek its approval for deploying troops.

Peacekeeping works best when peacekeepers have a clear sense of why they are there. “No failure did more to damage the standing and credibility of U.N. peacekeeping in the 1990s,” the panel reports, “than its reluctance to distinguish victim from aggressor.” When mass killing occurs, peacekeepers can’t be neutrals. A conflict’s politics are often murky. The morality of what’s happening is usually far clearer.

Among peacekeeping’s biggest shortcomings is the failure to deploy properly trained forces quickly. In theory, 87 countries have put a total of 148,000 troops on standby for U.N. missions. But what experience shows is that when help is requested, most countries fail to heed the call. The U.N. panel proposes a realistic change: get members to work together, to train and equip several multinational brigade-size forces--each of up to 3,000 men--that could be deployed within 30 days, with 100 senior officers available on one-week’s notice to plan such missions.

Next week U.N. members gather in New York for a two-day “millennium” summit at which 150 heads of state are expected. High on the agenda is the need to improve peacekeeping. The special panel’s report provides sound direction for what’s required for U.N. interventions to work: “political support, rapid deployment with a robust force posture and a sound peace-building strategy.” Without these, high-sounding resolutions count for next to nothing.