This thread is to take up coldfire’s offer here. The UN’s effectiveness is more a debate than a rant, so I’ve begun it here in GD. I assert that the UN has not been good at nation-building and maintaining peace & stability.
Exhibit A is the Srebrenica massacre.
Exhibit B is the West Bank, ruled by a thuggish tyrrany that stole UN money. A place where terrorists build bombs and plan attacks. The failure to create an infastructure, which could have allowed the Palestinian people to create businesses and become more prosperous.
Exhibit C is the supervision of Iraqi compliance between 1991 and 2002.
Cite that the PLO/A “stole UN money”. And not that article from the Jerusalem Post(man, talk about a conflict of interest) which is long on rhetoric and short on facts. The reports I have seen acknowledge embezzelment is a possibility, but hardly a proven fact. One might also acknowledge that UN decisions regarding the West Bank have been largely ignored by the reigning military force in the area. Look up the number of UN resolutions calling for a change in Israeli policy RE: the West Bank or Palestinian interests in general which Israel has steadfastly ignored or outright violated. Is it your contention that the UN should not tolerate such violations? Or is it your contention that Israel’s actions/policies have no effect on the ability of the UN to resolve the issue?
Quite frankly I think you’ll find a fair bit of evidence of problems with the UN but I’m not at all convinced this means the organization is a failure in those areas. It seems to be a universal trend of human nature to highlight failures and gloss over successes. Indeed, it is this trend, when applied to the successes/failures of the US in these exact ventures, which drew your ire so recently. I can point to virtually any human venture and show this imbalance. A factory with a “XX days accident-free” sign is evidence of the tendency to track failures instead of succeses. In reality that factory probably handles hundreds of operations an hour which could result in an accident. Instead of a tally board showing the number of rivets properly installed without an issue we have a count of the number of rivets where an issue occurred. Failures are tracked because they are easier to learn from. Successes are given polite nods and shuffled off into obscurity. The success/failure rate of this factory is quite good from most objective standards. The subjective holds sway in such issues however.
>> UN troops accused of ‘systematic’ rape in Sierra Leone
december the UN has no troops of its own and it merely authorises member countries to intervene. If the troops of country X committed war crimes they should be tried for war crimes whether the operations were under UN auspices or not. Of course, we should remember the US has boycotted the tribunal which is supposed to judge these crimes.
Or, if you want to turn the tables around and put all blame and credit on the UN, then the credit for the first Gulf war goes to the UN who authorised it and not to the US.
Just in case anyone’s confused as to why out resident zealot feels the need to paint the UN in a bad light look no farther than the 37% of the entire total of General Council Resolutions that criticise Israeli actions. Here are some (the period 1955-92, in case anyone’s interested) …. I should think we’re due another on BBC bias around the middle of next week ……
On the issue of “nation-building,” the UN has considerably less experience than the OP assumes. To date, the UN has engaged in the exercise only (IIRC) four times - Kosovo/Bosnia, East Timor, Cambodia and Afghanistan. In only one of those instances, Cambodia has the exercise been completed, though the East Timor operation is just about over. In Afghanistan and Kosovo, the exercise is ongoing.
So we have a grand total of 1 (3/4) examples from which to draw conclusions. Cambodia certainly has its problems, most particularly in that it is a grossly imperfect democracy; arguably it is not a democracy at all. OTOH, security in the country is considerably better than it was before the UN took over, and the economy and infrastructure of the country has improved. Cambodia is pretty much a draw.
East Timor is also, IMO, a draw. There are still problems with security, and to the extent that the UN was involved in negotiations with Australia over splitting offshore oil and gas fields, East Timor got a pretty raw deal. The economy in East Timor is still a shambles, although (except for oil), there wasn’t much chance of developing a prosperous society there (it is a tiny nation, with no developed natural resources- the oil is still in the ground - at the butt end of nowhere). On the democratization front, things look OK, but there are potential troubles stored up.
In sum, it is too early to debate whether the UN is good or bad at nation-building. There simply aren’t enough examples.
You don’t understand. To properly highlight them would require
A) A time machine
B) A working theory of psychohistory
C) A global Internet dating back to the founding of the UN
D) A team of analysts going over every act of every UN branch
The logistics are a killer. It is an impossible task and you know it.
Wheras to highlight the anti- side requires nothing more than citing the hoards of xenophobic individuals websites with [insert nationality here]-first agendas.
On a practical note, hawthorne brings up a good point. The face-off here seems to be US-led reconstruction versus UN-led reconstruction. A comparison between the successes and failures of the two would be extremely difficult because of the extremely small number of datapoints(as SuaSponte noted). OTOH the fact that very few nations have needed extensive reconstruction on the scale of post-war Iraq might be a datapoint in favor of the UN as a peacekeeping and/or problem-solving forum.
when (for instance) Cyprus doesn’t boil over, it may be due to highly efficient UN peacekeeping or it may be that none of the locals really care enough to go pick a fight. So is Cyprus a UN success or just a really, really easy task ?
Anyhoo, it’s worth noting that the UN role as peacemaker (as opposed to peacebroker) and nationbuilder is a relatively recent thing.
Before the Wall fell, most countries were either aligned with the Reds or the West - any nationbuilding would be undertaken in that framework. In most cases, it was a quid-pro-quo deal with local leaders: We’ll give you infrastructure and military support against foreign and domestic enemies, you’ll do as you’re told. Vote with us in the UN, give us bases on your soil, trade favourably with us etc. etc. (Cuba springs to mind. Or Iran under the Shah, if you prefer…) The locals might have liked it or not, but the dynamics of the East-West tug-of-war made precious little room for those who’d rather ally themselves with neither. (Well, except if you were a Sub-Saharan African country without natural ressources. Or if you had the Bomb.)
So the idea that a supernational entity should be able to step in and give a population complete freedom to choose its own course is really rather new. And of course not very popular with those that would rather reap the benefits of theirs being the only superpower left in the game.
The apt phrase that’s come to the fore only this week (here) is, ’America does the cooking and Europe does the washing up’ – which is another way of saying, the US makes sure whichever country is safely within it’s ‘sphere of influence’, before leaving the peacekeeping to others - not that Europe could organise a joint exercise at this point in time, or before, if we recall the Balkans.
Not terribly generous to non-European peacekeepers (Africans, most obviously) but the phrase itself is not unreasonable, IMHO.
Excuse me?!! The UN has most certainly placed restraints on the Kosovars, East Timorans, etc., choice of form of government and extent of civil liberties, etc. They gotta be democracies (at least until the UN leaves, a la Cambodia), they have to guarantee the rights of minorities, etc. I do not believe I’m exaggerating when I say that, if the Kosovars had “complete freedom to choose,” there would not be a living Serb in Kosovar territory today.
If you think that the UN is going to let the (Muslim) Kosovars, for example, set up a sharia state in Kosovo, yer nuts.
I think what you’re missing here is, “ …… the UN has chosen to engage … “.
That’s the key about the UN and the general point I want to make; people like to think of it as some independent force (actually people are encouraged to think of it in those terms by politicians the world over) when, in truth, it’s a (in several ways) convenient foreign policy option for no more than a total of, say, 8-10 western countries – without the cooperation of those countries, and the US, UK and France in most particular (as the western permanent members of the SC), nothing ever happens. Period.
Take the obvious case of Kosovo; a UN peacekeeping mission but a NATO offensive action because Russia wouldn’t allow it.
The UN is not some independent force in the world, it’s our tool to use when it serves our (the west’s) agenda , and, equally, doesn’t interfere too much with what Russia and China want.
I don’t think I’m “missing” anything, L_C. My only point was that we have too small a pool from which to draw conclusions. I wasn’t commenting on the process by which the UN chooses to become involved or not.
You’re right, bad wording on my part - I guess I was still thinking in Cold War mode. Of course the UN insists on democracy, free elections , no ethnic cleansing etc.
What I meant is that it’s now realistic for a country to get rebuilt to a certain extent without having to align itself with one of two powerblocs. Complete freedom it’s not, but an emerging country certainly has more possibilities to choose from now than it had during the cold war.
You misunderstood Coldfire’s offer. The point was, that your Pit OP provided no point whatsoever.
In a completely different GD thread (this one), you now argue that the UN has had its failures in its peacekeeping missions.
Well, bravo. Score 1 for december.
The UN has indeed faced situations in which it was unable to overcome the maze of various political interests, and diverse military obstacles. The Srebrenica example you mention is a valid one, and one dear to my heart, being a Dutchman.
Since it has nothing to do with your Pit OP, namely that a free UN luncheon gone wrong is somehow indicative of the UN’s inability to police their staff, I will refrain from debating you here. I don’t disagree, you see. The UN has its faults. And I see absolutely no point in trying to convince you of its merits, because you will never see them. No offense.
I’m still waiting on a cite about embezzlement of funds by the PLO/A. I’m also waiting on answers to my questions of how in hell one is going to lay the blame for the situation in the west bank at the feet of the UN when the UN has repeatedly tried to interevne only to have its hands tied by US vetos and Israeli disregard for UN resolutions.