Admiral Gene LaRocque (USN, Ret.),
Pres., Center for Defense Information
HOST:
Admiral John Shanahan (USN, Ret.)
Director, Center for Defense Information
DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH:
David T. Johnson
DIRECTOR of TELEVISION:
Mark Sugg
SENIOR PRODUCER & NARRATOR:
Ira Shorr
PRODUCERS:
Glenn Baker
Jennifer Hazen
Daniel Sagalyn
Stephen Sapienza
PRINCIPAL ANALYST & SCRIPTWRITER:
Dan Smith
SEGMENT PRODUCER:
Daniel Sagalyn
VIDEO GRAPHICS:
Adam Luther
ORIGINATION:
Washington, D.C.
PROGRAM NO.:
906
INITIAL BROADCAST:
22 October 1995
CONDITION OF USE:
Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" (Center for Defense Information).
President, National Policy Forum
Former Assistant Secretary of State
Rep. JAMES LEACH (R-IA)
Co-chair, US Commission on Improving the Effectiveness of the U.N.
WILLIAM van den HUEVEL
Former US Deputy Ambassador to the U.N.
DANIEL YANKELOVICH
The Public Agenda Foundation
and, comments from testimony before a congressional committee by:
JEANE KIRKPATRICK
Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.
US Commission on Improving the Effectiveness of the U.N.
NARRATOR: Fifty years ago, on June 26th, 1945, the United Nations was created to secure peace around the world. But this hope fell victim to the Cold War which froze relationships between the two global superpowers.
Today, the United Nations is testing its ability to keep the peace and prevent conflicts. But, ironically, just as the UN's founding vision seems achievable, Cold War warriors are attempting to severely limit US participation in UN multinational peacekeeping missions, preferring, regardless of the cost, that the US be ready to go it alone as the world's policeman.
Former Amb. JEANE KIRKPATRICK (at congressional hearing):
"The United States and other governments, I think, can continue to cooperate with the United Nations, but we cannot rely on the United Nations control to provide collective security arrangements, or to maintain peace, or to protect against aggressors."
Rep. LEACH: We're not in a world where any country, including the United States, can always go it alone. And one of the great choices America has to make is whether we want to try to be policeman for the world or whether we'd rather play a smaller role as part of an international highway patrol in some sort of UN or collective security framework.
NARRATOR: The UN at 50 is at a crossroads and as we hurtle into the 21st Century America must help choose its course.
["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.]
ADM. JOHN SHANAHAN (USN, Ret.): I'm Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, director of the Center for Defense Information. As the United Nations prepares for its second 50 years, what is it we Americans really want out of the UN? Without an informed public debate, not just by a few political experts, but by the American people, we may never know the answer.
Our program today attempts to shed some light on this debate.
NARRATOR: War has touched American families five times this century, taking the lives of more than 600,000 Americans and wounding over one million more. In terms of treasure, the US spent more than $5 trillion to fight in two world wars, Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. But these are not the only costs.
Between the Korean War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the United States spent $12 trillion to maintain its military forces worldwide to wage the Cold War.
Narrator of Film on Founding of the United Nations:
"The world's people collaborated in the drafting of a workable international constitution."
NARRATOR: Ever mindful of the failure of the League of Nations after World War I to put an end to war, the original 51 signers of the United Nations Charter pledged that wars and their aftermath would never again wreck havoc on future generations. But that vision rapidly faded as anti-colonial, civil and international wars flamed across the globe, particularly in the developing world.
The price has been heavy. Over 25 million casualties since World War II. In search of security, nations of all sizes formed military alliances that obliged members to regard an attack on one as an attack on all, potentially setting the stage for a third world war.
JOHN BOLTON: The reason for the structure of other American alliances in the world, NATO and some of the others, was precisely because the UN as a structure had failed.
NARRATOR: While the UN was frequently unable to prevent or stop the carnage, it did help to prevent any escalation from conventional to nuclear weapons, a major worry that was foremost in the minds of the 51 founding nations. Unfortunately, when it came to using conventional weapons, meaningful UN responses were often missing or were blocked in the Security Council by the veto of one of the five permanent members.
In the UN's first 45 years, the Security Council authorized only 17 peacekeeping or peace-enforcement operations. With peacekeeping under such restraints, the UN's greatest successes came in its non-military activities: Humanitarian aid, disaster relief, the feeding of children, supporting human rights, and refugee care.
Indeed, the list of the 100 subordinate and associated UN agencies, such as UNICEF, UNESCO and IAEA, are a veritable alphabet soup. While these agencies perform important work, their proliferation and the frequent lack of oversight by the Security Council and the General Assembly have contributed to some of the UN's current difficulties.
John Bolton is a former assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration and is now president of the National Policy Forum, a conservative think tank.
Mr. BOLTON: I think one of the problems the UN has had over the years is a diffusion of effort, a diffusion of the concentration of the member states. I'd have to say that not some of the economic and social activities aren't worthwhile, because they are, but because it's become so diffuse, so overlapping, so hard to focus on.
NARRATOR: The support that the United Nations had gathered from its humanitarian involvement has been largely overshadowed by the frequent and complex peace operations it has been asked to carry out by members of the Security Council since the Persian Gulf War. Of the over 15 peacekeeping missions authorized since 1990, all but one are continuing. From observers in Macedonia and on the Golan Heights, to peace enforcers in Bosnia, the pleas for UN intervention never seem to end.
President BILL CLINTON (before UN General Assembly):
"We must also strengthen the international community's ability to address...""
NARRATOR: After 50 years, with membership now at 185 nations, the central question facing the UN is how can it be reformed to become a truly united organization, able to promote peace through the principle of collective security: one for all and all for one. But consensus about what constitutes collective security is not easily achieved either among 185 nations or the American public. In this age of instantaneous news coverage, this concern is not academic, for public opinion can tip the balance for or against peace operations.
Daniel Yankelovich is a political researcher and pollster.
DANIEL YANKELOVICH: The UN reached the peak of popularity among Americans during the Gulf War, and that was seen as an unqualified success, an effort where there was American leadership, but at the same time there was the kind of UN involvement that did what in the minds of Americans the UN was supposed to do.
NARRATOR: Representative James Leach was co-chair of a 1993 privately funded commission on UN reform.
Rep. LEACH: We're not in a world where any country, including the United States, can always go it alone. And one of the great choices America has to make is whether we want to try to be policemen for the world or whether we'd rather play a smaller role as part of an international highway patrol in some sort of UN or collective security framework.
NARRATOR: While many believe that working with other nations collectively through the United Nations can save American lives and allow for smaller US military budgets, others are very cautious about relying solely on a UN that might refuse to act or even oppose the perceived interests of the United States.
Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick served as the permanent US representative to the United Nations in the Reagan era and also served with Congressman Leach on the US Commission on Improving the Effectiveness of the U.N.
Amb. KIRKPATRICK (at congressional hearing):
"The United States and other governments I think can continue to cooperate with the United Nations, but we cannot rely on United Nations control to provide collective security arrangements, or to maintain peace, or to protect against aggressors."
NARRATOR: Framed in this light, the UN becomes more a stepchild to be called when convenient for US policy rather than the first recourse in efforts to head off potential armed conflicts. This policy of always being prepared to go it alone doesn't come cheap, for it requires the US to continue to maintain very large military forces.
The US is the only major power that still spends at Cold War levels. Even our NATO allies have made substantial cuts in their military forces and military expenditures.
At the start of Fiscal Year 1996, the Clinton administration and Congress were divided over the level of Pentagon spending. Congressional Republicans want to increase the administration's $258 billion military spending request by
$7 billion and cut in half the $1.4 billion request for the UN that would pay current and overdue US annual assessments and peacekeeping costs.
UN advocates believe that a strong UN, one able to head off conflicts, would reduce the need for the US to maintain large forces and be the world's policeman. They point to the fact that US support of the United Nations, $1.4 billion, is a mere one-half of one percent of the $264 billion that Congress wants to spend on all US military-related activities.
Rep. LEACH: Collective security, the principle of it, is far cheaper than unilateral security -- that is, the notion that a country has to take care of itself all by itself. It's also more effective.
NARRATOR: How much cheaper? For each one dollar the US spent in 1995 on the United Nations, we spent $649 for our own military forces. Furthermore, UN advocates believe strong US leadership in building the UN's ability to react to crises would remove the tendency of policymakers to rely on American troops to keep the peace.
Already, the UN's expanded role in peace operations has successfully reduced the need to deploy US troops. Of the 66,000 soldiers currently committed to UN operations, only 3300 are Americans, a mere 5 percent. This doesn't include US forces participating in NATO committed to separating the warring factions in Bosnia.
Sometimes, of course, the US will have to deploy its forces as part of UN-sponsored peace operations. While many politicians appear reluctant to do this, analysts believe the public is more openminded.
Mr. YANKELOVICH: I think the politicians are somewhat out of touch with the public. It is not the case that Americans are unwilling to support US troops in the UN, it's the conditions under which they are to be deployed. In Somalia, there was a feeling that the mission of the UN had changed and that, therefore, the loss of lives was inappropriate. Those politicians that interpreted that as a reluctance on the part of Americans to support troops in the future is just a wrong interpretation.
NARRATOR: Then there is the question of who should be in charge.
Mr. YANKELOVICH: Because the issues of sovereignty, of troops, of putting troops at risk, of putting troops under the commands of other nations, this is where people live. This is issues of life and death for their sons and daughters and for the peace and security of the world.
Amb. KIRKPATRICK (at hearing):
"It is impossible to act effectively under UN command and control. To me, this is a question of effectiveness, above all, and the effectiveness of efforts to build a peaceable world, and I just don't think you can do it that way."
NARRATOR: Public indecision about placing US forces under the operational control of non-US commanders could be overcome if the public were brought into the policy and political debates.
Mr. YANKELOVICH: I don't think that we've gone very far in the United States in understanding how to conduct public debates as distinct from how to conduct debates among elites. And as far as the future of the UN is concerned, that issue is critical. Because if you don't have that kind of debate, then people's fears, lack of knowledge, concerns about the UN will rise to the fore.
NARRATOR: And what of the future, the next 50 years? What must the UN do to retain and strengthen its role in world affairs?
As with our own government, reformers call for streamlining the United Nations to make it more effective and more representative of the economic and military power in today's world. Former US deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, William van den Huevel.
Amb. VAN DEN HUEVEL: Part of the reform relates to taking the Security Council and making it more representative of the real world. Japan is the second largest contributor to the United Nations. It should be part of the Security Council.
NARRATOR: Ambassador Van den Huevel also supports a permanent seat on the Security Council for Germany and believes that an expanded Security Council could include major regional powers on a semi-permanent basis.
Amb. VAN DEN HUEVEL: Every member of the Security Council should understand that they have a special responsibility financially, in the supplying of troops, in the supplying of leadership, in the supplying of political support for the activities of the United Nations.
NARRATOR: A carefully enlarged Security Council is not the only needed reform. The increased use of the UN to avert, restrain, or intervene in conflicts suggests the need for an expanded highly professional military planning capability to develop a wide range of military and diplomatic options to be used to resolve disputes either before they turn into armed conflict or to halt conflicts already started.
Congressman Leach believes that such an organization already exists in the United Nations.
Rep. LEACH: The UN Charter envisioned a kind of a military staff command at the UN, and I think that is a command that's never been adequately developed, in partial measure as a reflection of -- on the Cold War era. But a little greater capacity at the United Nations is clearly in order.
NARRATOR: A more controversial question is whether the UN should have a standing military or a military-civilian quick reaction force and to what extent could or should nations reduce their own military forces once a multinational force is fully functioning.
Amb. VAN DEN HUEVEL: If you were organizing a world police force, wouldn't you have reasonably a standby group that was prepared on a moment's notice to go to a crisis situation, just the way you would send a police car to a crisis situation and to do something? It never could be sent without the approval of the Security Council. Therefore, it can never be sent without the approval of the United States. But that's not going to happen for the moment because of the political nature of the present debate on the UN.
NARRATOR: The creation of such a standing force was one of the recommendations made by the commission co-chaired by Congressman Leach.
Rep. LEACH: Well, I think the case for a very small rapid deployment force is in order, composed of volunteer participants on a volunteer basis. That is, the individuals should be volunteers and the countries that provide help should do it on a volunteer basis, so it's kind of a double volunteerism. This should be a very small force and should be designed to insert itself to -- particularly in circumstances to help prevent the outbreak of conflict.
NARRATOR: Others are less sure that any multinational UN force could ever be effective enough to allow the US to reduce its military.
Amb. KIRKPATRICK (at hearing):
"Mr. Chairman, operations which have a serious goal will not seek to multiply the number of countries, languages, cultures and peace operations. No group of persons from 30 to 42 or 47 countries, speaking more languages than we can imagine, can be effectively combined in an ad hoc force."
NARRATOR: In general, both the Republican Congress and the White House seem unwilling to make the connection between improved UN peacekeeping abilities and smaller US military forces and lower military budgets. Politicians continue to fund high-priced weapons systems while domestic needs, such as schools, roads, housing and health languish for lack of money.
Daniel Yankelovich believes the public sees things differently.
Mr. YANKELOVICH: If citizens saw that giving money to the UN would save money in the defense budget or in some other concrete way, they would support it at the end of some kind of discussion and debate because they would start off with a certain skepticism about its credibility. But if they accepted its credibility, they would support it enthusiastically because (a) it saves money and (b) it does things in concert with other nations, which is a primary objective of the public.
NARRATOR: For all their advantages, UN peace operations have limitations. Except in very special circumstances such as the Korean and the Gulf wars, personnel assigned to UN missions are lightly armed and, should a faction resume hostilities, are not normally able to quell fighting.
This, for Ambassador Kirkpatrick, is a point too frequently overlooked.
Amb. KIRKPATRICK (at hearing):
"A determined aggressor can readily overcome peacekeepers. This is a very important limit on the utility of peacekeeping. Peacekeepers cannot repel aggressors. The UN Charter makes the protection of victims of aggression the central focus of collective security provisions, the central bounds for the use of force. But this emphasis is wholly missing from today's conception of peacekeeping."
NARRATOR: The once relatively straight forward peacekeeping missions that monitor ceasefires or treaties have expanded to include peace enforcement and even nation-building. Moreover, a further complication is that most of the current peace operations involve civil wars: Mozambique, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Cambodia, Haiti and, of course, Bosnia. Intervention in these types of conflicts poses the delicate point of respecting national sovereignty, a key element of Chapter 2 in the United Nations Charter.
Those who raise the issue of sovereignty often overlook the fact that nations have been ceding portions of their autonomy for years in international finance, trade, communications and the environment. The success of negotiations to stem pollution, preserve international fisheries, cut acid rain and ban ozone-depleting products illustrates what can be accomplished when nations forego their sovereign rights to improve living conditions for all.
Many pro-UN observers believe that the next area where national sovereignty could be modified is military spending, which now stands at approximately $868 billion worldwide. But doubters remain.
Mr. BOLTON: I think it would be premature to see the US involved in any sovereignty pooling arrangement on the military side.
Rep. LEACH: We have to be careful not to cede what is considered fundamental sovereignty. But by the same token, we also have to understand that collective security is in the sovereign interest of the United States and, in theory, all other countries. And so, how you balance this is very important.
Amb. VAN DEN HUEVEL: When the Kurds became the victims of Saddam Hussein's hostility and ire and he attempted to massacre them, we moved in under the United Nations again. That was a major advance and it was a major change in how you dealt with sovereignty in this world. Well, you're going to see increasing instances of that. The world is not going to standby and allow the tyrants and the oppressors to use sovereignty as a shield for their actions.
NARRATOR: Regardless of how one considers the role and successes or failures of the United Nations, most observers agree that funding for UN activities is a major needed reform. In this regard, the US record is hardly commendable, as we owe the United Nations $1.4 billion and Congress has indicated it will appropriate $700 million at most.
Amb. VAN DEN HUEVEL: So, the United Nations is financially bankrupt today. That's shameful for the United States to have allowed that to happen. Not only have we done this, we have set such a bad example that now there are almost 80 nations in the world that are derelict in their dues to the United Nations.
Amb. KIRKPATRICK (at hearing):
"I am, among other things, long since very tired of hearing the United States described as the world's great deadbeat and, you know, the country that doesn't pay its dues."
NARRATOR: It's clear that the United Nations has had its ups and downs over its first 50 years. Supporters and critics agree that its bureaucracy needs streamlining, it's finances put on a firmer footing, and its peace operations more carefully considered before the Security Council approves the commitment of people and resources.
Supporters also believe that with strong US leadership, the UN can become the institution of first rather than of last resort in the quest for a more peaceful world. But, on this point, as on most that touch the United Nations, opinions differ.
Mr. BOLTON: I think that the UN should really return to the central focus that the framers had in mind in 1945, and that was the UN's involvement in protecting international peace and security.
Mr. YANKELOVICH: The way to gain support would be the gradual strengthening of the peace and security capability of the UN.
Amb. KIRKPATRICK (at hearing):
"I say let's keep peacekeeping for peace and war-making for war. The United Nations -- you know, NATO is not a peacekeeping force and the United Nations is not a war-making force."
Rep. LEACH: From a conservative perspectives, it's impressive to me that the UN stands for a less expensive approach to problem solving than virtually all the alternatives. And so, when one looks at the United Nations, with all its flaws -- and anyone that looks closely sees a lot -- the fact is that if we abandon it, we'd have a less effective, less legal, and far more costly international environment.
Amb. VAN DEN HUEVEL: If it works, it's going to work because we have given it the
leadership and have helped give it the resources to make it work. And if it fails, it will be our
failure.
ADM SHANAHAN: And there you have it. We at the Center for Defense Information believe the United States should take the lead in building a more effective and streamlined United Nations. Others believe we should be prepared to go it alone. But that is not really an issue in this debate. That option has always been on the table and will remain on the table. We should focus on giving the United Nations the wherewithal to carry out the mandates called forth in its charter or otherwise revise the charter.
For "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I am Jack Shanahan.
[End of broadcast.]
(C) Copyright 1995. Center for Defense Information. All Rights Reserved.