[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 7 (Monday, February 20, 1995)]
[Pages 240-241]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Letter to Congressional Leaders on Reform of United Nations Peacekeeping

February 13, 1995

Dear Mr. Chairman:  (Dear Member:)

    There have been few times in history when mankind has had such an 
opportunity to enhance peace. The founding of the United Nations fifty 
years ago was one such opportunity. The victorious Allies put in place 
an institutional mechanism that could be used to enhance peace. 
Unfortunately, it was not used properly, and Cold War replaced peace.

[[Page 241]]

    Now, with the Cold War behind us, we have another important 
opportunity. Around the world, old enemies are coming together in the 
Middle East, South Africa, Haiti, Ireland, Central America, and across 
the great rift that divided Europe for almost five decades. This is a 
unique period. It can be, as was written in Ecclesiastes, a time for 
peace.
    Peace, however, does not come easily or quickly. Numerous threats 
remain to our own and our allies' security.
    For our generation to seize this opportunity for wider global peace, 
America must stay engaged. We must also be prepared to pay our fair 
share of the price of peace, for it is far less than the cost of war.
    One of the tools we have to build this new peace is that institution 
created fifty years ago, the United Nations. As the Cold War ended, the 
previous Administration turned to the UN and its peacekeeping mechanism 
to deal with many of the conflicts left over from the superpowers' 
competition. As a result, the number of UN peacekeepers and their cost 
sky-rocketed, overburdening the capabilities of the UN system.
    I have made UN peacekeeping reform a key goal, working to reduce 
costs and improve efficiency, using UN peacekeeping when it will work 
and restraining it when the situation is not ripe. More needs to be done 
to make UN peacekeeping realize its potential and more effectively serve 
U.S. interests. It is in the U.S. interest to ensure that UN 
peacekeeping works and to improve it, because peacekeeping is one of the 
most effective forms of burdensharing available. Today, other nations 
pay more than two-thirds of the costs of peacekeeping and contribute 
almost 99 percent of the troops. Troops from seventy-seven nations are 
deployed throughout the world in the service of peace.
    The UN, once a forum for anti-American debate and propaganda, now is 
a vehicle for promoting the values we share. Throughout the world, the 
UN is promoting democracy and providing security for free elections. Its 
agencies are the chief instruments in the battle against proliferation 
of nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction. UN forces have 
assumed roles that once had been performed by American troops--in 
Kuwait, Somalia, Rwanda and soon Haiti. They stand on battlements in 
places of great importance to us: on Israel's border, and Iraq's, in the 
Mediterranean between two NATO allies, in Europe on the border of the 
Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to deter a wider Balkan conflict, 
and in the Caribbean. The UN recently completed and closed successful 
operations in numerous places, including in our own backyard in Central 
America, Cambodia, Namibia and Mozambique.
    Were the UN not engaged in promoting peace and security, we would 
have to invent it. If we did so, it might not look precisely as it has 
now evolved. The U.S. assessment share would be less. It would be able 
to respond more rapidly to disasters and do so more economically and 
effectively. These and other improvements we seek can be achieved only 
if the U.S. stays engaged in the world and we remain a member of the 
United Nations in good standing.
    I look forward to working with the Congress, as we continue the task 
of reforming UN peacekeeping and the mission of building and 
consolidating world peace.
    The enclosed report is submitted pursuant to Section 407(d) of the 
FY 1994/1995 Foreign Relations Authorization Act (PL 103-236).
    Sincerely,
                                            William J. Clinton

Note: Identical letters were sent to Jesse Helms, chairman, and 
Claiborne Pell, ranking member, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; 
Mark O. Hatfield, chairman, and Robert C. Byrd, ranking member, Senate 
Committee on Appropriations; Benjamin A. Gilman, chairman, and Lee H. 
Hamilton, ranking member, House Committee on International Relations; 
and Robert L. Livingston, chairman, and David R. Obey, ranking member, 
House Committee on Appropriations.