CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

himself in the way of harm for the sake of those it is his duty to protect – and not the
traditional ethos of the military which seeks to preserve its own safety, obviously over
that of the enemy, but also when necessary over that of the ‘enemy non-combatant’.
(The doctrine of double-effect, coupled with the just war tenets of proportionality and
discrimination, supports the military view). Yet the UN Secretary General’s Special
Representative in Cambodia, Yasushi Akashi, noted that ‘loss of life among volunteers
from troop-contributing countries will have a chilling effect on their willingness to
participate in peacekeeping operations and risks to them must be kept to a minimum.’ 74
The scale of the UN’s planned deployment was ambitious and (for the Organisation)
unprecedented but even so it was dogged by inadequate planning and preparation
exacerbated by a failure of potential contributing nations to offer up sufficient forces for
mission needs. (The inadequacies of the UN’s DPKO and of the current arrangements
for troop contributions are considered in Section 2.2.3.1, above). Some troop
contingents arrived with inadequate organic logistic support and the police and civil
administration components arrived with none at all. 75
UNTAC eventually received all twelve battalions of peacekeeping troops that had been
pledged but even after deployment there remained a difficulty with national vetoes over
their employment. For example, the Force Commander, Australian General John
Sanderson, planned to deploy the French battalion to the North East of the country close
to the Vietnamese border. It remained a key sticking point for the Khmer Rouge’s
cooperation with UNTAC and the wider peace process that there was still (Khmer
Rouge claimed) significant numbers of Vietnamese in the country and incursion over
the border was easy. The French battalion was well-equipped, tough and the most
professional unit available to Sanderson. However, Paris insisted on their deployment
to the safer, easier, and more visible area around Kompong Som, closer to the capital.
Sanderson had instead to despatch the less-capable Uruguayan battalion to the North
East. 76*
* Exactly the same issues of national caveat on internal redeployment of forces was to beset NATO’s
operations in Afghanistan, 2006-2007. (Author’s personal experience).
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