[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 84 (Tuesday, June 28, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 28, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
   UNITED NATIONS, DIVIDED WORLD: THE CHALLENGE OF SELECTIVE SECURITY

  Mr. PELL. Mr. President, Adam Roberts, professor of international 
relations at Oxford University in England, recently provided a 
remarkably cogent analysis of the future of U.N. peacekeeping, with 
particular reference to the issues raised in Presidential Directive 25.
  The Clinton administration unveiled its new policy on May 5, 1994, in 
a White House document entitled ``Policy on Reforming Multilateral 
Peace Operations,'' which is basically the text of PD 25, but without 
some annexes. Professor Robert's analysis was presented at a Face-to-
Face meeting at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 
Washington on May 9.
  While noting that there can be many criticisms of this U.S. policy, 
Professor Roberts states:

       I strongly agree with the overall approach, which is to 
     view peacekeeping and other U.N. operations as a scarce 
     resource. Such operations do indeed need to be used 
     discriminately and supported judiciously, by states.

  Professor Roberts expresses agreement with National Security Advisor 
Anthony Lake's ``expression of caution'' when the policy was announced, 
namely that ``the reality is that we cannot often solve other people's 
problems; we can never build their nations for them.''
  Professor Roberts introduces the useful concept of selective security 
as a new version of the collective security goal that was the general 
objective of much of international security policy during the 
generation of the cold war. He makes clear that as the world changes, 
so our policies and goals must change to adapt to new realities.
  Professor Roberts brings the perspective of a scholar and, as he put 
it, ``a puzzled foreigner'' to these subjects. He raises questions and 
adds historical and international considerations to what for us are 
issues of current responsibility and concern.
  In San Francisco in 1945, I served with the staff of the commission 
responsible for drafting the U.N. Charter provisions on military 
cooperation for U.N. peacekeeping. I believe Professor Roberts' 
comments provide a timely and useful analysis of the issues facing 
those responsible for peacekeeping policies today.
  To bring his comments to the attention of a wider audience, I ask 
unanimous consent that they be printed in the Congressional Record at 
this point.
  There being no objection, the analysis was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

 United Nations, Divided World: The Challenge of ``Selective Security''

                           (By Adam Roberts)

       My purpose here is to ask some basic questions about the 
     United Nations, and to suggest that its security role is 
     necessarily selective more than collective.
       The questions are: What is the role of the United Nations 
     in international relations in general, and in security 
     matters in particular? And what are the special problems of 
     US policy toward the UN, particularly in the aftermath of 
     Presidential Directive 25?
       Serious thinking about the UN's role, and about the US role 
     within the UN, involves coming to terms with a tragic 
     reality. With some reluctance, we must recognize that what 
     the UN can offer is not a general system of ``collective 
     security'', but something more limited, which might be termed 
     ``selective security''.
       The broad issue of ``collective'' versus ``selective'' 
     security is reflected today in the sharp dilemmas posed by 
     events in former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda and elsewhere. The 
     international responses to these and other conflicts expose 
     limitations in what the UN and its members can do. I do not 
     have any simple solutions to offer in respect of these 
     conflicts. The emphasis here on selectivity is intended to 
     help understand why there are inevitably limitations in the 
     UN's response to crises, not to argue that there should be no 
     response, or to prescribe what form any response should take.


                             divided world

       Despite many elements of transnationalism, to most of which 
     the United States has traditionally been deeply attached, the 
     world we inhabit remains deeply and obstinately divided: not 
     just into 184-plus sovereign states, but also into peoples 
     with very different social norms and world-views; and also 
     into different communities whose bloody struggles, within as 
     much as between states, have so often in history been a 
     serious threat to international order.
       In the USA, thanks to its revolutionary origins and 
     commitment to universal values, there is a perennial belief 
     that certain noble American ideals are, or ought to be, 
     universal. There is also a tendency toward self-righteous 
     distrust of evil and outdated power politics. This distrust 
     leads the US into alternative periods of messianic zeal and 
     isolationism. Foreigners can perhaps be forgiven if they are 
     sometimes baffled by the American capacity to move in less 
     than three years from the new world order to the clash of 
     civilizations.
       The special characteristics of the American world-view can 
     lead to wildly inconsistent policies, not least towards the 
     U.N. Sometimes Americans have seen the U.N. in a teleological 
     light as a place where the values of democracy, human rights 
     and world order can be advanced, and a huge range of problems 
     tackled on a cooperative basis. At other times, other 
     Americans, or perhaps even the same ones, have seen it as a 
     place which is far too full of quarreling foreigners 
     representing dubious regimes and causes.


                    the roles of the united nations

       We are at now a stage of retrenchment in American public 
     attitudes to, and of administration policies, towards the 
     U.N. This retrenchment could serve a useful purpose: there is 
     indeed a need to focus attention not on lofty schemes to 
     completely transform international relations (schemes which 
     can easily be harmful in their effects), but on a more 
     mundane and practical evaluation of what the U.N. can 
     actually achieve.
       On 5 May, the Clinton Administration's ``Policy on 
     Reforming Multilateral Peace Operations,'' which is virtually 
     the text of Presidential Directive 25 less the various 
     annexes, was at long last unveiled by the National Security 
     Advisor, Anthony Lake. It is a document of which there can be 
     many criticisms. However, I strongly agree with the overall 
     approach, which is to view peacekeeping and other U.N. 
     operations as a scarce resource. Such operations do indeed 
     need to be used discriminately, and supported judiciously, by 
     states. I also agree with Tony Lake's expression of caution 
     in introducing this peacekeeping review: ``The reality is 
     that we cannot often solve other people's problems; we can 
     never build their nations for them.''
       The common criticism of the document is the one that has 
     been highlighted in articles in both the New York Times and 
     the Washington Post: namely that it establishes criteria for 
     participation in U.N. operations that are so stringent that 
     no peacekeeping operations could be expected to get off the 
     ground at all. This criticism does not stand up to a careful 
     reading of the document itself. It is full of exception 
     clauses such as: ``These factors are an aid in decision-
     making; they do not by themselves constitute a prescriptive 
     device.''
       A second and perhaps more justified criticism of the 
     peacekeeping review might be that the attempt to develop very 
     general criteria for involvement or non-involvement in 
     particular crises only takes one a small way in the direction 
     of effective policymaking. A reading of the document does not 
     give much guidance on what U.S. policy should be towards 
     Bosnia, or Haiti, or Rwanda. A checklist of criteria can 
     never be a substitute for the qualities of wisdom and 
     decisiveness which remain as much in demand as ever they were 
     in the conduct of international politics.
       A third criticism is that the traditional American concern 
     over how operations can be ended, strongly reiterated in the 
     review, actually makes serious strategic thinking about such 
     crises more difficult: sometimes there has to be a 
     willingness to stay the course if adversaries are to be faced 
     down effectively, and if an operation is to have any chance 
     of success. Some of the problems of both the U.S. and U.N. 
     operations in Somalia since 1992 have flowed directly from 
     the stated concern of the U.S. about getting out, and from 
     the lack of clear long-term purpose in such key matters as 
     cooperation with the factions, disarming the factions, and 
     the degree of involvement in administration both centrally 
     and locally.
       Finally, there is relatively little guidance in the 
     peacekeeping review about the way in which the U.N.'s role in 
     international relations generally, or in security affairs in 
     particular, is conceptualized. Here are fundamental tangles.


                  collective versus selective security

       The United Nations is episodically forging a historically 
     unique pattern of involvement--and sometimes non-
     involvement--in international security matters. The debates 
     about U.N. actions in Rwanda, Haiti and Bosnia are just part 
     of a long-term but uneasy development of a U.N. system which 
     in my view can only be called, depressingly, ``selective 
     security''.
       Since the peace negotiations in 1648 after the carnage of 
     the Thirty Years War, there has been a succession of 
     proposals for modifying the anarchic international system 
     through the institution of ``collective security''. Such 
     proposals, despite many differences, all envisage a system 
     (whether regional or global) in which each state accepts that 
     the security of one is the concern of all, and agrees to join 
     in a collective response to aggression.
       Paradoxically, the collapse of Soviet versions of economic 
     collectivism contributed to a revival of international 
     collectivism in the security field. From the late 1980s 
     onward, there was much enthusiastic advocacy of alluring but 
     imprecise concepts: global security, a new world order, an 
     enlarged U.N. role in peace-keeping and peace-making. All of 
     these contained elements of collective security doctrine. 
     Whether because of a comforting belief that history was at 
     last moving this way, or because of a pragmatic preoccupation 
     with inching forwards as far as difficult circumstances 
     allowed, advocates of such visions seldom specified exactly 
     how collective security would work.
       Past experience is that efforts at organizing collective 
     security have floundered on the difficulty of dealing with 
     some basic questions. These questions, in every single case, 
     have a contemporary resonance:
       Are all states protected by the system, whatever their type 
     of government, political importance or natural wealth?
       Are all boundaries to be defended, regardless of their 
     historic legitimacy?
       Does the system give a guarantee against all types of 
     threat, including even civil war?
       Are all states obliged to participate in every security 
     action?
       Does the burden of underwriting collective security fall 
     disproportionately on a few major powers and alliances?
       What is a fair balance between self-defence by victims and 
     external support?
       What decision-making procedures can reliably determine that 
     an attack or threat requiring a response has occurred, and 
     can decide what action is necessary?
       The present inability to provide generally satisfactory 
     global answers to these questions is what render a universal 
     collective security system implausible. The experience of the 
     post-Cold War era, as of earlier periods, suggests that 
     efforts to develop such a system can only result in selective 
     security.
       Elements of selectivity are inherent in the U.N. Charter 
     itself: the veto system prevent action against permanent 
     members; the Security Council's mandatory powers depend on a 
     threat to the peace, breech of the peace, or act of 
     aggression; the Security Council is given considerable 
     discretion; and much space is left for regional arrangements, 
     as well as for individual and collective self-defense. In 
     short, the genius of the Charter system is that it goes with, 
     rather than against, the grain of the existing system of 
     states.
       The U.N. Security Council has been compelled by events to 
     think more electively about involvement in crises. A Security 
     Council Presidential Statement on Peace-keeping issued a few 
     days ago lists a series of factors which must be taken into 
     consideration when the establishment of a new peace-keeping 
     operation is under consideration: they are not very different 
     from the factors listed in Presidential Directive 25. The new 
     U.S. mood of caution about U.N. operations is in fact quite 
     widely shared. What we do not yet have--and what is 
     inherently hard to produce--is a clear rationale for, or 
     doctrine of, selective security.


                The United States and the United Nations

       It may be very positive that the U.S. administration is 
     retreating from a degree of rhetorical support for the U.N. 
     to a more measured and in some respects businesslike 
     approach. Most countries have in fact long pursued policies 
     of limited and cautious support for the U.N. similar to what 
     is now emerging as the new U.S. policy. In forty-nine years 
     of existence of the U.N. not one single state has concluded 
     an Article 43 agreement making troops available to the U.N. 
     on a permanent basis.
       Yet U.S. policy towards the U.N. faces fundamental 
     dilemmas, of which I will outline only three:
       1. Burden on Major Powers. To the extent that the U.N. is 
     seen as attempting to manage a universal security system, a 
     vast burden may be (or at least may be perceived as being) 
     placed on leading states with a known capacity for military 
     force projection.
       2. ``Damned if you do, damned if you don't.'' If the U.S. 
     plays a leading role, as it did in Desert Storm, it risks 
     being accused of leading the U.N. by the nose. Yet if it does 
     not play such a role, it is accused of abandonment and 
     irresponsibility.
       3. The Constraints of Peacekeeping. There are genuine 
     difficulties for the USA as a superpower if its forces are 
     expected to participate in peacekeeping operations, whether 
     under U.N. or other auspices. Such operations generally 
     require compromises, and patience even in the face of violent 
     assaults. They risk exposing U.S. forces to situations of 
     frustration and even humiliation; and they seldom offer 
     possibilities for the decisive military action associated 
     with the U.S. way of war.
       Against this background, three over-simple views, which 
     might even be called serious vices, have emerged in 
     discussions about the relation between the U.N. and member 
     states, including the USA.
       1. In many countries, including the USA, there is a 
     tendency to blame the U.N. for failures which may in fact be 
     failures of particular states. The U.S. tendency to blame the 
     U.N. for all that went wrong in Somalia in 1993, when much 
     that went wrong was initiated or agreed by the USA, is a 
     notorious case in point. Sometimes the U.S. government seems 
     to speak and act as if it had not voted for U.N. Security 
     Council decisions, and did not have a veto over them.
       2. States, especially the USA, too easily take a view of 
     the U.N. as having imposed potentially infinite demands on 
     them to take action. In fact, the demands for action come 
     from states as much as from the U.N. and can be refused by 
     them. (Meanwhile, in the U.N. Secretariat, an opposite view 
     can be found: that the member states, especially the USA, 
     have dumped an impossible series of problems on the U.N. 
     which is only too conscious that its resources are very 
     scarce and need to be husbanded.)
       3. In much public discussion of the U.N. especially by U.N. 
     supporters, there is a tendency to blame U.N. failures on 
     lack of political will among member states. This is 
     understandable, but it contributes little to the resolution 
     of U.N. problems, and it masks many other issues bearing on 
     decisions about U.N. involvements. It is inevitable that 
     states will be highly selective about which countries they 
     wish to get involved in, and that they will exhibit only 
     limited willingness to supply and pay for forces. In this as 
     in other respects, the U.N. has to work with, not against, 
     the states system.
       The strongest line of criticism of U.S. policy toward the 
     U.N. and its crises is not that it puts U.S. interests first, 
     but that it has been inconsistent on both broad issues of the 
     U.N.'s place in international security, and on particular 
     policy problems; that it has been unwilling to pay its 
     assessed dues; that the U.N. has to some extent served its 
     eternal function as a dumping ground, and a scapegoat for the 
     failure of others to act.


                           Former Yugoslavia

       It has been my misfortune to study, at different periods of 
     my life, the security problems of Yugoslavia, and the United 
     Nations. If there are two matters which should in an ideal 
     world have been kept firmly apart from each other, it is 
     these two. Yet there is an old and fateful link.
       In 1918-19 there was much heated discussion of the question 
     of whether or not League membership would require heavy 
     commitment in the Balkans. This discussion was especially 
     intense in the United States, whose geographical isolation 
     and strong anti-colonial traditions militated against 
     accepting distant and debatable responsibilities. President 
     Woodrow Wilson, in his passionate but doomed advocacy of the 
     League, naturally denied that membership would involve the 
     USA in endless policing of troubled regions. As he said in a 
     speech in September 1919: ``If you want to put out a fire in 
     Utah you do not send to Oklahoma for the fire engine. If you 
     want to put out a fire in the Balkans . . . you do not send 
     to the United States for troops.'' The fear of involvement in 
     the Balkans was among the factors that made the U.S. Senate 
     oppose joining the League of Nations.
       Thus already in this century the question of how to tackle 
     conflict and threats of conflict, including in the Balkans, 
     dealt a crippling blow to one attempt at global political 
     organization--the League of Nations. Now, three-quarters of a 
     century later, conflict in the same region as well as 
     elsewhere has exposed critical weaknesses in the 
     international community's efforts to maintain international 
     order. The problems of communal and ethnic conflict pose a 
     challenge to the United Nations, and also to regional 
     institutions, every bit as serious as that which they posed 
     to the League of Nations seventy-five years ago.
       There are more similarities. The United States, then as 
     now, had a particular tendency to reject foreign involvements 
     if they threatened to entangle the U.S. in cynical and 
     morally dubious old-fashioned power politics. U.S. policies 
     over the Italian grab for Fiume after the First World War, 
     and over Bosnia in 1993, were very similar--especially in the 
     rejection of what are seen as unjustified land grabs. A 
     comment in the Washington Post in early 1920 might have 
     appeared last week: ``Paris is puzzled about the stand of the 
     United States in world affairs, and so is the United 
     States.''
       As a puzzled foreigner, I will give you a frank series of 
     views of former Yugoslavia. First, I disagree with anyone who 
     asserts that the problem itself is essentially simple: it is 
     not a straightforward case of aggression, but nor is it 
     simply a civil war. It is a war of state formation in the 
     wake of a collapsed mini-empire, and there is no simple 
     solution. Second, I had doubts about the U.N. getting 
     involved in a conflict which demands qualities the U.N. does 
     not always display: ability to pursue a clear long-term goal, 
     to think strategically, to respond quickly to changing 
     circumstances, and to coordinate the actions of forces 
     engaged in many different types of activity. Third, the U.N. 
     involvement, for all its terrible faults, has achieved some 
     significant results, in reducing the risks of competitive 
     national interventions, and in reducing the hideous 
     consequences of siege warfare. Fourth, with the U.N. 
     having made some progress, including in recent months 
     under General Rose, the challenge now is build on that 
     progress--a process in which the U.S. has a major part to 
     play. Fifth, it remains entirely possible that, if NATO 
     enforcement operations become more widespread in former 
     Yugoslavia, UNPROFOR might have to be withdrawn from many 
     or even all its exposed positions in Bosnia.
       If some of these points seem contradictory, I could answer 
     with Walt Whitman's ``Song of Myself'': ``Do I contradict 
     myself? Very well then I contradict myself.'' But what is 
     much more important is the absolute inevitability of there 
     being different views in the international community on this 
     issue. Any policy, whether at the U.N. or elsewhere, has to 
     be framed with that fundamental limitation in mind.


                               conclusion

       Peacekeeping and related activities under U.N. auspices are 
     clearly in crisis. Against this background, there is 
     considerable danger in present perceptions that selectiveness 
     in the matter of peacekeeping consists in the drawing up of 
     lists of criteria. There is even more danger in perceptions 
     that selectiveness is being imposed on the U.N. by a semi-
     isolationist USA. A new demonology could grow from these 
     perceptions, with U.N. failures to act being blamed 
     exclusively on the USA.
       The truth is that any international security system, 
     including that over which the U.N. currently presides, is 
     bound to be partial and selective in nature. The U.N. itself 
     may be in process of recognising this.
       The term ``selective security'' can easily sound 
     pejorative, especially if the principles of selection are in 
     dispute and the procedures flawed. It is a description of a 
     sobering reality, and is not in itself a doctrine or a 
     slogan. There is unavoidable tension between the facts of 
     selectivity and the U.N.'s (and indeed, in some ways, the 
     USA's) commitment to universalism. Yet the debate about the 
     U.N., about the policies of the U.S. towards it, and about 
     the policies that might be needed on particular urgent issues 
     of the day, does not in reality revolve around a choice 
     between U.N.-based collective security on the one hand, and a 
     regression to an unmodified international anarchy on the 
     other. The challenge is to strengthen the discrimination, 
     discernment and judgment which are essential if the U.N. is 
     to make the best of its inevitably selective security 
     contribution.

                          ____________________