Peacekeeping in the 21st Century

Great Debates
1

From out of the flames of the BBQ Pit sprang my last post in America Bashing by MHL. Since it was way OT, I figured it’d make a good Great Debate:

My mistake, I should have specified ‘death camps’ vs. ‘concentration camps’. Didn’t the death camps start around 1941-2? The Soviets killed more of their own people under Stalin before that and nobody ever intervened (except, to the Russian’s eventual horror, the Germans). We had concentration camps for Native Americans and Japanese. Also, what makes you think we knew the Holocaust would happen? Sure, Hitler spelled it out in Mein Kampf, but he was a politician, and they do have a tendency to lie every once in a while to their own ends. In retrospect the signs are all there, but we must be careful not to judge simply because we know the outcome when they did not.

And how much different is this from the Jim Crow laws? Certainly the Jews had it worse, but if black man got caught sleeping with a white woman, a lynching was not out of the question. When human rights for minorities in the US are almost as bad, what gives us the right to intervene in Germany? Sure, outright massacre gives us the right, but, as stated, war was already in progress at that point.

Exactly, and that’s the whole point. You can strike down governments, but you can’t chase down every group of yahoos with guns unless you expend enormous amounts of manpower. The best you can probably do is separate the hostile groups and police the border and hotspots, but even that can’t prevent guerilla actions, and certainly doesn’t end the hate. That’s simply a reactionary tactic.

First, you might think differently if you were the one being invaded. Historically, this is what armed force has been used for. Well, that and empire building… Using armed force to help others is a relatively new idea.

Realistically, policing problem areas is probably the easiest way, but it’s only treating the symptoms, not the disease. Once the peacekeepers leave (as they have to eventually), the hate remains to spring up again. The root cause is hatred, and military force can never extinguish that, except with the greater evil of killing all who hate.

I’m not saying it’s not worth trying, but rather, that, like a doctor, we better make sure we first do no harm. Does bombing innocent civilians for human rights always seem like the right thing to do? How many innocents are we allowed to kill before we become more evil than those who instigated it? What military means do you think are justifiable in bringing about a peaceful end?

What is your proposal to eliminate the root hatred and bring about lasting peace?

2

Crap, I can’t believe I messed that up. Probably the most frequent use of military force through history is in the act of quelling rebellion.

3

Sometimes a post is just too long…

Hopefully no one misconstrues this… I was referring to “it” as “peacemaking” and not the previous sentence “killing all who hate”.

4

mrblue92 writes:

Which is waht makes it so hard to accept for some people. Seriously, what kind of odds would you be willing to give that the US, or Canada, or the EEC, are likely to be out-and-out attacked - in a conventional war format - in today’s world? They have to be pretty small.

Yet this does not stop the military establishment from spending billions of dollars annually on ‘defense’. Maybe it’s time to start doing some good with it.

At the risk of incurring all sorts of shots about the perceived laughing-stock quality of the Canadian Armed Forces, I would point out that much of the work that it does is given to peacekeeping missions in various parts of the world. And it doesn’t involve bombing the bejezus out of whatever’s going on until it stops. It does involve ‘chasing down every group of yahoos with guns’ as you so eloquently put it. I might add that we’re pretty goddamn good at it, too.

Nope; sending in air strikes is a reactionary tactic. Deploying troops to separate hostile groups is not.

Whoo, if I had the answer for solving ethnic and religious hatred, I wouldn’t be wasting my time here. Lacking that magnitude of wisdom, I do believe that peacekeeping forces are a very honorable and - for the time being - logical method for attempting to deal with the symptoms of such hatred. And by peacekeeping I mean just that - not overt force until it is absolutely necessary. The harm is already being done.

In the human tradition, aided by some of the world’s less-formidable armed forces, we’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got.

Z

All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.

5

I noticed you dropped the Nazi argument–I hope this means you at least recognize the difference between Kuwait/Nazi Germany and Somalia/Balkans. It should be clear the situations are least a little different, and therefore tactics and diplomacy are different.

Perhaps this will surprise you, but I agree with most of your points. My beefs are more with the way that the Clinton administration has botched up peacekeeping missions. It seems they’ve played fast and loose with our military power, while at the same time reducing strength. Not that previous administrations have done all that much better… Perhaps I wouldn’t mind so much if they actually would make a decent plan.

I really need to read some more about the recent Balkan struggles, but it’s obvious that Kosovo was not planned well… I did read Blackhawk Down a few months back, and that really shows how horribly the Somalia situation was handled.

My initial statement (that policing is reactionary) may have been a bit glib. Neither air strikes nor policing are necessarily reactionary. In general, however, both are usually implemented that way. Massacre occurs, we send in the police. If you know how to anticipate massacres, please go work for the State Department…

My personal opinion is that it is possible to end hatred, but it’s a nearly impossible task. First, like little children, you have to separate the two parties. That’s where your peacekeeping troops come in. The problem is that some of the hatred will be transferred to the peacekeepers because:

A. You are interfering with their revenge.
B. By separating them, you must re-locate some people, and nobody likes to leave their land.

In order to keep the peace, the separation has to be strong enough to prevent acts of retaliation, yet must permit acts of reconcilation. This is the hard part. Perhaps the development of non-lethal weapons will facilitate this and keep the peacemakers from being hated. The final difficulty is the time of separation. You might have to outlive the hatemongers in order to build a lasting peace, but perhaps incarceration or exile of the worst offenders might be sufficient. Any more ideas?