CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

As with the operation in Cambodia, the UN’s credibility was undermined in Bosnia by
its inability to act without the agreement of an obdurate party to the conflict – in this
case the Bosnian Serbs, in particular. Parallels with Akashi’s and Sanderson’s
humiliation in Cambodia (see p186, above) can be drawn from the holding-up for many
hours at a Bosnian Serb check point of UNPROFOR troops due to escort UN senior
officials Marrack Goulding and Shashi Tharoor from Pale to Sarajevo. 86
The complex operation in Bosnia also reaffirmed an inevitable difficulty of
multinational operations. Whilst a mission is strengthened politically by drawing its
forces from as many nations as possible – and practically this is essential as no
contributor is ever prepared to shoulder the entire burden – on the ground this can only
complicate matters. UNTAC’s experience hints at the difficulties, with the Indonesians’
perceived closeness to one party, but UNPROFOR repeatedly confirmed the problem * .
The principal problem is that troop contributing nations – for understandable national
political reasons – never fully hand command of their troops to the UN. General Sir
Michael Rose, UNPROFOR Commander in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1994, describes
the problem:
Every troop-contributing nation had its own national command structure within
the main UN staff, and each nation has its own political agenda as well as a chief
of contingent who held the national red card. This meant that if I gave an order
and the chief of one of the nations considered it to be wrong, he could block it
using his red card. 87
Rose continues to describe how these ‘red cards’ could be played not just over serious
operational matters but over almost trivial matters of staff organisation, rendering the
headquarters seriously inefficient.
In retrospect it is all too obvious that UN efforts in Bosnia were doomed to failure. A
traditional peacekeeping mission had been deployed where the basic conditions of
peacekeeping simply did not exist: there was no ceasefire; there was no peace
agreement; there was no will to peace; and there was no clear consent from the warring
parties. Nevertheless, the conditions for total disaster were set by the passage of
* Of course, this not a problem unique to the UN. Even a military alliance as experienced and wellorganised
as NATO suffers inefficiencies and other difficulties endemic to its multi-national make -up.
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