[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 107 (Wednesday, June 28, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9312-S9315]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


           PEACEKEEPING AND PEACEMAKING: THE FUTURE CHALLENGE

 Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I was recently privileged to 
address the convention of the United Nations Association during its 
conference in San Francisco, coinciding with the celebration of the 
50th anniversary of the United Nations. I took the opportunity to make 
some observations about the past, present, and future of U.N. 
peacekeeping, and I offer them here for the record.


             The U.N. Mission: A Trend Toward Peacekeeping

  When we look at the 50-year history of the United Nations, certain 
facts and trends become evident. One of these is the increasing trend 
toward peacekeeping. In the first 43 years of its existence, from 1945 
to 1988, the United Nations launched 13 peacekeeping missions in places 
such as Lebanon, the Dominican Republic, the then-Congo, Cyprus, 
between India and Pakistan, and along Arab-Israeli borders. While the 
results of these missions were not uniformly successful, the United 
Nations proved it was able to play an important role in resolving, or 
at least containing, a number of dangerous conflicts.
  And yet, during this period, the United Nations faced certain 
realities, the largest of which was the superpower rivalry between the 
United States and the Soviet Union. As conflicts developed, the 
countries involved were forced, either through external or internal 
forces, to align themselves with one superpower or the other. In this 
environment, the United Nations was often left on the sidelines. When 
United States and Soviet interests collided, each could cancel out the 
other's initiatives with their Security Council vetoes. When conflicts 
involved vital United States and Soviet interests, the two powers did 
not hesitate to take it upon themselves to try to resolve the conflict 
in their favor rather than seeking a negotiated resolution through the 
United Nations.
  There is no question that the cold war was a time of serious 
international insecurity. The specter of two superpowers, with weapons 
of immense destructive capability aimed at each other, competing for 
influence across the globe, lasted for nearly 45 years, ending 
startlingly in 1990 with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
  Even today, many people share the misconception that the demise of 
the Soviet Union has created a more secure world. I do not believe that 
this is necessarily the case.
  The cold war, for all its dangers, had the unintended effect of 
discouraging many smaller countries, nationalities, and ethnic 
minorities from fighting one another. The danger that any uprising 
could, and would with certainty, be put down brutally by the Soviet 
Union, clearly contained insurrections and civil wars in areas like the 
former Yugoslavia. If Tito were in power 

[[Page S9313]]
today, under Soviet control, the civil war would most probably not have 
happened. A dying vestige of this cold war control is seen today in 
Chechnya, where a weakened Russia is brutally struggling to contain and 
vanquish Chechen rebels.
  However, the potential for nuclear war also had a deterrent and 
stabilizing effect on both major superpowers in their dealing with each 
other.
  Today, with these cold war constraints gone, an equally, if not more 
dangerous scenario has developed whereby smaller conflicts that had 
been festering just beneath the surface have now emerged, many erupting 
with unprecedented force and brutality. Though the numbers vary almost 
weekly, through most of 1994 and 1995, there have been over 30 wars 
raging simultaneously across the world.
  Trouble spots seem to crop up everywhere. Some fizzle quickly, while 
others spread into larger regional conflicts. Once again, genocide, 
starvation, ethnic cleansing, mass rape, torture, and millions of 
homeless people confront all of us. From Bosnia and Croatia to Rwanda 
and Burundi, from Afghanistan to Algeria, and from Sudan to Tajikistan, 
ethnic, religious and national grievances are taking a tremendous toll 
in human life. And whether these conflicts are internal or across 
borders, they all contribute to the deepening sense of international 
insecurity.
  In this increasingly complex and dangerous environment, there has 
never been a greater need for the United Nations to provide leadership. 
No other body, and certainly no single nation, is equipped to deal with 
the problems of ancient territorial disputes, ethnic and religious 
rivalries, inherent in the host of newly emergent independent nations, 
many with ruthless dictators.
  For this reason, peacekeeping is fast becoming the most important and 
significant function of the United Nations. As the world community 
grapples for ways to deal with these burgeoning conflicts, multilateral 
peacekeeping is increasingly seen as the best or the only viable 
recourse. As such, the United Nations alone is also seen--and 
rightfully so--as the only body with the structure, the experience and 
the international mandate to make a nonpartisan peacekeeping effort 
succeed.
  The numbers bear out this trend: After 13 peacekeeping missions in 
its first 43 years, the United Nations has performed 25 such missions 
in the last 7 years alone. Today there are 16 concurrent peacekeeping 
missions underway. In 1988 there were 9,000 soldiers from different 
countries participating in peacekeeping missions. Today there are more 
than
 61,000 from over 80 countries.

  I believe that on this anniversary, we should pause, take stock, and 
reevaluate where events mandate change in both the role and mission of 
the United Nations. Clearly, peacekeeping has become a major and 
expanding role. The question is: Can the blue-helmeted observer of the 
past and present effectively be the peacekeeper of the future?
  For a moment, let us look at some peacekeeping successes.
  In Cyprus, U.N. peacekeepers have helped since 1964 to prevent a 
resumption of hostilities that could lead to war between two of our 
NATO allies, Greece and Turkey.
  On the Golan Heights, U.N. peacekeepers have helped make the Israeli-
Syrian border one of the quietest in the Middle East for the last 21 
years.
  In El Salvador and Cambodia, U.N. peacekeepers helped to safeguard 
the reconciliation process at the end of those countries' civil wars, 
and helped provide the order necessary to conduct free and democratic 
elections.
  Clearly, these were, and are, successful missions. When peacekeeping 
works, it can stabilize, reduce tension and hostility, and provide the 
backdrop needed before which peacemaking can succeed.
  It is worth noting here that, today, even with the dramatic increase 
in peacekeeping missions, U.S. troops constitute only about 5 percent 
of total U.N. peacekeeping efforts around the world--about 3,300 out of 
over 61,000.
  Now let's look at some of the problems.
  As peacekeeping missions increase in numbers, more funding is 
required to keep it going. In 1988, the [U.N.] peacekeeping budget was 
$230 million. In 1994, the budget grew to $3.5 billion.
  Here, the United States makes its primary contribution to U.N. 
peacekeeping in financial terms, paying 31 percent of all assessed 
costs, although Congress has mandated that the U.S. share be reduced to 
25 percent this October. In 1988, the U.S. contribution for assessed 
peacekeeping cost was $36.7 million. In 1994, the U.S. share rose to 
$991 million -- a huge increase.
  Clearly not all peacekeeping operations have been successful. We can 
and should learn from the tragedies of Bosnia and Somalia--perhaps the 
two most difficult examples of U.N. peacekeeping in the last 50 years. 
Why have they been so difficult? I would submit that not all 
peacekeeping missions are the same, and they often become confused. 
Different peacekeeping missions require different types of peacekeeping 
efforts. You cannot lump them all together.
  For example, in Somalia, the United Nations started out engaged in a 
successful humanitarian mission to prevent hundreds of thousand from 
starving to death, but the mission soon changed into one of nation-
building and political involvement, finally resulting in confrontations 
with the warring factions.
  The U.N. forces in Somalia proved unable to respond to a shifting set 
of dynamics. The dynamics in one country are not going to be the same 
as the dynamics in another, and the dynamics within a country can 
change overnight. The blue-helmeted observer that cannot fire back to 
protect himself or civilians, without a convoluted approval process, 
cannot maintain peace when warring factions want to have at each other.
  Somalia was a classic lesson in that regard. We saw a renegade 
warlord who was prepared to circumvent the peacekeeping mission one way 
or another. The U.N. forces, when challenged, could not fight back 
effectively. The result was more than 100 U.N. peacekeepers and 18 U.S. 
Army Rangers killed during that 24 month mission, and the United 
Nations and the United States pulled out with mixed results.
  But the ultimate challenge in this century to peacekeeping has been 
the war in the former Yugoslavia. There the United Nations faces 
insurmountable problems and dilemmas. Literally, more than 800 year of 
animus, hatred, and territorial disputes have combined to provide 
UNPROFOR Its most difficult and challenging mission in U.N. history.
  Perhaps in 1878, Benjamin Disraeli said it best when he offered these 
words, in the British House of Lords:

       No language can describe adequately the condition of that 
     large portion of the Balkan peninsula--Serbia, Bosnia, 
     Hercegovina and other provices--[the] political intrigues, 
     constant rivalries, a total absence of all public spirit . . 
     . hatred of all races, animosities of rival religions and 
     absence of any controlling power . . . nothing short of any 
     army of 50,000 of the best troops would produce anything like 
     order in these parts.

  And that was 117 years ago.
  On one hand, there has been a dramatic decrease in civilian 
casualties in that terrible conflict--from 130,000 in 1992 down to 
3,000 in 1994. On the other hand, it is in Bosnia that we begin to see 
the major shortcomings of United Nations forces as peacekeepers.
  We saw it on May 25 in Tuzla, a ``U.N. Safe Area'' when 71 young 
people, all under age 28, were killed by a single Serb shell--one of 
many instances when Serb forces have eroded safe areas with attacks--
without any retaliation, despite a Security Council resolution 
authorizing such responses.
  We saw it when 377 U.N. troops were recently taken hostage after a 
NATO airstrike on a Serbian ammunition dump.
  We saw it when Captain O'Grady's F-16 was shot down, the second plane 
lost in Deny Flight operations, without response [as] scores of 
hostages were still held captive.
  We see it every day, as U.N. peacekeepers attempt to protect innocent 
civilians, sometimes successfully, but often not.
  And we saw it, most poignantly, on June 10, when the United Nations 
mission in Sarajevo announced it would not respond to protect Muslim 
enclaves from attack without the consent of the Bosnian Serbs.
  I believe it is fair to say that U.N. forces have neither the 
training, the 

[[Page S9314]]
equipment, nor the rules of engagement, to allow them to sufficiently 
respond to attacks against them or against civilian populations. They 
are meant to be observers--not fighters.
  These problems have taken their toll on U.S. congressional support. 
And they have taken their toll, I think unfairly, on support for the 
UNPROFOR troops. In the Congress, there has been continuing debate over 
whether a unilateral or a multilateral lifting of the arms embargo 
against Bosnia, or the withdrawal of UNPROFOR troops altogether is the 
humane or the inhumane action to take. And, because the United States 
has no troops on the ground in Bosnia, we have less leverage in 
influencing nations that do have troops on the ground.
  It is my belief that the United Nations must address peacekeeping 
efforts more realistically in view of the variety of situations they 
find themselves in, and provide a speedy and effective response 
dependent on the individual situation. The rapid reaction force 
recently created for Bosnia should help. We all hope they can be moved 
into the scene speedily, and that they will be properly empowered and 
commanded, in order to have an effective and immediate impact.
  The idea of rapid response units has been discussed repeatedly over 
the past 50 years. At the international seminar hosted by the 
Netherlands Government in the spring of 1995, the Minister of Foreign 
Affairs of the Netherlands, Mr. Hans van Mierlo, presented a proposal 
of how such a force might work. Mr. van Mierlo's plan proposes a 
permanent rapid response nucleus, which would be able to be sent to a 
critical area of the world on very short notice. Such a force, if 
headed by a well-trained commanding officer with field experience, 
could provide a robust response to any aggressive action.
  So my first point here today is that the entire United Nations 
peacekeeping structure must be reexamined, and perhaps redefined and 
restructured. Those of us who consider ourselves friends of the United 
Nations, and who believe that the world needs the United Nations, and 
vice versa, are prepared to make a case for continued U.S. 
participation, even for payment of our dues, but our success depends 
upon the willingness of the U.N. leadership to meet and discuss these 
issues with the Congress, and on their willingness to make improvements 
in the way peacekeeping is conceived and carried out.


                    peacekeeping versus peacemaking

  The second point I would like to make here involves peacekeeping 
versus peacemaking. Clearly the record on peacekeeping over 50 years 
has been, by and large, successful. The record on peacemaking is less 
clear.
  I believe that the United Nations has an important and viable role in 
peacekeeping. And at times, the U.N. leadership has proven to be able 
mediators, and have helped parties in conflict reach a negotiated 
settlement. At other times it has been unsuccessful. But I do not 
believe that the United Nations is set up for peacemaking, because 
sometimes peacemaking requires force, or at least the ability to bring 
force to bear. The United Nations generally lacks the ability to bring 
such force to bear--whereas states, and alliances of states, have a 
greater capacity to do so.
  So, I would suggest that peacemaking efforts also be reevaluated. 
This reevaluation should begin with an assessment of regional and 
political imperatives that lend themselves toward specific peacemaking 
alliances. Regional political forces, in the form of strong 
geographically based alliances, can more effectively spearhead 
diplomatic and military efforts to promote peacemaking than can the 
United Nations alone.
  For example, peace has reigned in Europe for five decades since World 
War II, primarily
 because of the strong NATO alliance. NATO has been an important 
framework for making and maintaining peace between longtime 
adversaries--like Greece and Turkey, or Germany and France, and it has 
deterred aggression and conflict between East and West.

  When peacemaking, rather than peacekeeping is called for, the United 
Nations needs to work with alliances like these to bring about the 
desired result. The United Nations can even foster the creation of such 
alliances, as indeed it did through a series of resolutions during the 
1990-91 Persian Gulf crisis. When the situation calls for peacemaking, 
the United Nations must understand whether diplomacy is sufficient, and 
where it is not, the United Nations must cooperate with individual 
states and alliances of states that can bring the necessary force to 
bear.
  I am one that believes that the solution in Bosnia must be a 
negotiated one. In other words, a diplomatic solution rather than a 
military solution. Why? I can think of no military solution that would 
solve these 800-year old animosities without enormous bloodshed and 
loss of life. Nor can I think of a diplomatic solution that will work 
without the force of military action to compel it and, perhaps, to 
maintain it.
  Warren Zimmerman, former Ambassador to Yugoslavia, in a recent 
article in the Washington Post, laid out what I believe is the only 
realistic goal: Give the Bosnian Serbs a limited time and certain 
deadline to agree to the plan advanced by the so-called contact group 
of five nations--a plan to which Mr. Milosevic has already agreed--
which divides Bosnia virtually in half between the Serbs and their 
adversaries. But, as Ambassador Zimmerman correctly concludes, this 
outcome is only realistic if the Bosnian Serbs believe the West means 
business.
  If this solution remains unacceptable to the Bosnian Serbs, there 
appears to be no other choice but a multilateral lifting of the arms 
embargo and an expedited removal of UNPROFOR forces.
  Based on briefings I have had, I can find no acceptable rationale for 
a unilateral lifting of the embargo that would not involve the massive 
loss of life, or one without America being forced to arm and train 
Muslim forces, with the probability of a major spread of conflict in 
Croatia, Kosovo, and Macedonia.
  In Bosnia, the single biggest problem for UNPROFOR has been that it 
is trying to carry out its mission with its hands tied. I truly believe 
that if a U.N. peacekeeping operation is unable to respond to hostile 
action taken against it, then it is unlikely to succeed.
  UNPROFOR troops, through no fault of their own, have had to stand by 
and watch civilians get picked off by sniper fire, have their own 
equipment stolen and used against them, and finally, have 377 of them 
become hostages themselves.
  The primary lesson of Bosnia for U.N. peacekeeping is that U.N. 
military commanders on the ground must have the authority, the weapons, 
and the trained fighting personnel to respond to hostile action with 
sufficient force to protect civilians and peacekeepers, and deter 
attack. This may require the establishment of permanent rapid response 
teams within U.N. peacekeeping missions, which will protect the mission 
and enable it to carry out its mandate.
  In addition, peacekeepers need to be able to adapt to changing 
conditions. No matter how well a mission is planned, warring parties 
can force the United Nations to change its mission, and U.N. troops 
need to be able to respond. In this case, NATO's military response in 
the form of airstrikes is based on a ``dual key'' decisionmaking 
process, whereas both the United Nations and NATO commanders decide 
upon and coordinate the response. Targeting and execution are joint 
decisions by United Nations authorities and NATO military commanders.
  The final point I'd like to make is that there is a need to develop 
alternative structures and alliances that can be employed both for 
peacekeeping and peacemaking.
  Neither the United States, nor any other member state, can 
participate in every U.N.-sponsored effort to resolve every conflict. 
But I do believe that the United Nations can proceed most effectively 
if it is able to develop solid back-up among regional groupings and 
alliances.
  Secretary General Boutros-Ghali has suggested that regional groupings 
like NATO, the Organization of the American States [OAS], and the 
Organization of African Unity [OAU] could appropriately take on 
peacekeeping responsibilities for certain types of missions in their 
regions. Other organizations that might contribute include the 
Association of Southeast Asian Nations [ASEAN] and the Newly 
Independent States of the former Soviet 

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Union. There is a healthy logic to putting together specific alliances 
in specific areas of the world, so that peacekeeping is carried out 
with some geographical relationship. Such missions would be 
strengthened by the political determination of neighbors--who could be 
affected should a war spread--to see that peace is the only result.
  There are successful models that should be considered. One such case 
involved the United States, Israel, and Egypt, who, in the 1979 Camp 
David Accords, jointly established a private, United States-led 
peacekeeping operation in the Sinai peninsula--the Multinational Force 
and Observers [MFO]. This successful mission, undertaken without U.N. 
involvement, goes on to this day. It might serve as a model for other 
missions.
  I have little doubt that the value of the United Nations to the 
international community and the United States will continue to grow. 
The United States simply does not have the support of its people, nor 
the resources, to assume the role of world-caretaker for the settlement 
of all disputes. The recognition of this fact will always bring people 
back to the conclusion that the United Nations is the best institution 
we have for dealing in a collective way with problems that affect the 
security of the United States and others.
  Therefore, the United States has an obligation to work with the 
United Nations--not against it--to improve it, strengthen it, and make 
it more successful. With U.S. leadership, U.N. peacekeeping can indeed 
become more effective, better defined, and more realistically 
employed.


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