Better Idealism

I think Peter Beinart's column on the relatively successful UN Peacekeeping mission in the Congo is incredibly important. I would just add the observation that not only does the record show that UN sponsored "nation-building" ventures are much more successful than quasi-imperial American ones, but that one of the things that distinguishes these kind of operations from, say, Iraq is that they're at least largely consensual. You have a war-torn country. You have parties prepared to stop the fighting. You have a peace deal brokered with the assistance of international mediation. And you have, as part of the deal, an agreement to deploy third-party forces to the country to help restore order and build confidence between the parties.

The record of missions of this sort is decidedly mixed, but it's also decidedly more positive than the record of unilateral endeavors and of preponderantly coercive ones. What's more, a lot of the mixed results are determined by the fact that rich countries (especially the USA) tend to be reluctant to pony up the forces that are being asked for. People both inclined to believe that "American power should be used to advance our values" and that the sort of sentiment encapsulated by that phrase seems to have led to a giant disaster in Iraq (people like me, in other words) would be well-advised to try and focus future efforts on getting the United States (and other countries, too) to pitch in more on these kind of missions.

11/30/06 9:56AM del.icio.us this incoming links

Comments

As I recall, THE ECONOMIST advocated setting up a truly useful "U.N. Foreign Legion" a decade ago. The proposal was to have the industrialized nations provide the hardware as well as training & funding while the soldiers probably would be volunteers recruited mostly from Third World countries. It would have the weapons and resources to do a truly useful job, whereas of course current UN peacekeeping forces are severely restricted.
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On paper at least, the idea seems to have a lot of merit. If Harry Truman were POTUS#43 instead of Bush, I can imagine his response to Sept.11 would be something along these lines, i.e. new international organizations. Where would we be now in Iraq, if the peacekeeping forces mainly consisted of volunteers recruited from other Arab (or at least Islamic) nations and if they were under UN command...? The U.S. might of course be providing air and logistics support, but the Americans would be doing little of the actual fighting.

MARCU$

Posted by: MARCU$ on November 30, 2006 12:41 PM

This article brought home to me how the administration's vocabulary reveals attitudes and affects the discourse in situations like Iraq. If you sit back, throw your hands in the air and say these are all 'insurgents' and 'terrorists' and al Queda and enemies of peace and so forth - a mindless bloodthirsty mob, you end up backing yourself into a corner of limited options.

The fact is, in Iraq we have warring factions, both sides being essentially political actors with their own motivations and goals.

While nobody's hands are clean, what is appalling is that the president seems completely uninterested in the simple goal of stopping the violence - doing whatever it takes to do so. A real leader would use the American troops and policy as a lever for negotiating a settlement of some kind - any kind. Who CARES if Walmart opens a store in Baghdad in 2008, who CARES about the shape of the Iraqi government, for Godsakes just do something to stop the daily bloodshed. Why does this administration not ever utilize words like those mentioned above?'mediation', 'negotiation', 'compromise' etc. Bush seems perfectly content taking the easy way out: saying 'we don't negotiate with terrorists', then watching the blood flow.

I'm not sure what bothers me more - how incompetent the administration is, or how misguided it is. this is about protecting real live human beings from freaking slaughter you animal.

It's absolutely immoral.

Posted by: ssdagger on November 30, 2006 01:16 PM

If Beinart won't stop writing, at least keep him writing about the Congo.

Posted by: brendan on November 30, 2006 02:23 PM

It's true that the US would do better to advance both stability and democracy through nation-building efforts under UN auspices than on its own. But it's also worth remembering that one of the reasons the US doesn't contribute forces to some UN peacekeeping operations is that US forces wouldn't be welcome. That's not true in all such operations -- in Bosnia and Kosovo US forces were as popular as any others -- but in Somalia, the Pakistani forces seem to have provoked less fury; and obviously the idea of US forces in Darfur is unacceptable to the Sudanese government. Indian, Pakistani and Fijian peacekeepers, while not as aggressive or proactive as Western ones, have performed very capably in many operations, including Congo, and we may often do better to use US money and logistical capabilities to support such "south-south" peacekeeping missions, which don't raise the specter of neo-colonialism. At least for a few years, say, until global hostility over Iraq and the Bush years dies down a bit.

Posted by: brooksfoe on November 30, 2006 08:17 PM

I've said it in comments before. Legitimacy. It's the seldom talked about (in mainstream circles, at least) failure of the Iraq war.

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