The ethics of peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention (Part 1: Who are the heroes?)

With peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention being a particular interest of mine, and building on my recent posts about the role of professional soldiers and the issue of sovereignty and UN standing forces, I've decided to embark on a series of posts on this subject. The series as yet has no plan, but I hope that by working through some of this issues, I will reach some conclusions with regards to the current problems with international peace-support operations and uncover some possible avenues through which to improve current practice.

I came across a quote in a book this week from Andrew Thomson, a medical doctor who worked in various war-zones for the UN in the 1990s, 'If blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs.' (Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson, Emergency Sex and other desperate measures, Miramax Books, 2004). One of the key lessons learnt from the disastrous consequences of some of the UN's peacekeeping operations in the 1990s was that you should never promise people protection unless you are fully willing and able to provide it. A further lesson learnt is that there are major differences between the way governments react to the dangers faced by their soldiers on peace-support operations when compared to more traditional military operations relating to more traditional national interests. While these lessons have been learned, the dilemmas they present have never truly been resolved.

One way in which some of the more militarily powerful states have sought to address this problem is to change the way in which they engage with the UN when it comes to such operations. The effect is that European states are behaving like the US always has when it comes to UN operations. In the case of Kosovo, NATO member-states bypassed the UN's legal processes when they deemed them incapable of providing them with the authorisation and mandate that they required. In Sierra Leone, the UK government worked with the UN, but elected to work unilaterally with multilateral authorisation, rather than seek to lead a multilateral operation. In situations where no one state can be expected to provide the whole force, or the vast majority of the force, required, the major military powers have avoided involvement beyond logistical support and the provision of expertise. This dynamic is one that we are currently seem to be seeing played out with regards the proposed 'hybrid force' for Darfur. There is one exception, namely Afghanistan, but this is a NATO operation authorised by the UN, and as such bares more similarity to Kosovo than Bosnia. Similar structures are under development within the EU, but the process is slowed by conflicting loyalties and priorities.

With regards the less militarily powerful states, those that were involved in UN peacekeeping operations in the 1990s have largely continued to do so. The biggest contributors to UN peacekeeping operations are Asian states, with India and Pakistan almost competing to contribute the most. This is by no means because they have suffered less from poorly executed operations. The greatest single loss of UN peacekeepers in Somalia in 1993 was not the 18 US soldiers killed during the so-called 'Black-Hawk Down' incident, but the 24 Pakistani soldiers killed in an ambush on the 5th June. There are undoubtedly greater incentives for poorer and less powerful states to contribute to UN operations. Due to the extremely low wages paid in some militaries, being placed on an internationally funded mission can be the difference between a soldier's children going to school or not. Further, when militarily powerful states fulfil advisory roles on such missions, the soldiers of the states providing the bulk of the manpower can return better trained than when they departed, with obvious benefits for their governments in the future.

The downsides to this international division of labour are fairly clear. With powerful states failing to contribute significant resources to mainstream UN operations (such as recentlty in the Democratic Republic of the Congo), when they do become involved in peace-support operations their supposed humanitarian motives are immediately and consistently questioned. The public relations effort that accompanies these operations paints those involved as humanitarian heroes, intervening selflessly and with significant risk to their own well-being. Those operations involving the developing world workhorses of the UN receive little publicity, despite their participants facing much more danger due to the much less sophisticated support that they receive. So who are the real humanitarian heroes among peacekeepers? Those that arrive to a fanfare under the cover of modern weapons systems and a shield of intricate analysis of the risks and benefits, or those who regular answer the call of the UN, albeit with personal financial gain and otherwise unlikely access to high quality training?