Peace Support Operations: Lessons Learned? - School of Political ...

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PEACE SUPPORT OPERATIONS: LESSONS LEARNED? Shannon Tow in the longer term might preclude these lessons being translated into practice. Capabilities Admittedly, attempts to limit the mandate reflect past peacekeeping operations and the difficulties that resulted from the gap between mandate and means. In Rwanda, for instance, Force Commander Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire requested 4500 troops to meet warnings of escalating violence between Hutus and Tustsis, yet was granted only 2500. This number proved insufficient to protect civilian populations in the ensuing genocide (Lessons Learned Unit 1996). By addressing the issue of variable consent, PSOs necessarily provide the framework and justification for the more ‘robust force’ that the Brahimi Report advocates (United Nations General Assembly 2000). INTERFET 4 represents a successful case in point. Continuing attacks by pro-Indonesian militias against the East Timorese population following the August 1999 referendum, impelled the UN to authorise Australia to forge a coalition-of-the-willing to intervene. Australia’s ties in the region enabled it to form a coalition force of ASEAN states (Cotton 2001: 131). Australia also provided advanced air and sea units for force protection and heavy armour and artillery enabling rapid deployment. These capabilities proved instrumental in countering TNI militias in East Timor (Breen 2000: 135). Although boasting higher overall capability levels than past peacekeeping missions, recent PSOs have simultaneously highlighted how this operational advantage might be threatened by deteriorating political will of peacekeeping forces over time. This is not only the case in fulfilling capability requirements promised but in sustaining these commitments for the duration of the mission. As ‘public interest’ in a particular conflict wanes, so too do member states’ willingness to provide capabilities, particularly as other national interests come to the fore (Mackinlay and Kent 1997: 34). This has devastating ramifications for PSOs. The key benefit of the PSO model is the ‘spectrum of conflict’ it uses to sustain peace and the implicit ‘robust force’ necessary to realise this objective. Former KFOR Commander Klaus Reinhardt reflected the most difficult part of his mission was actually acquiring the money promised by member states for the operation (Reinhardt (2000) cited in Dorscher Dialogue 1:1 (2003) 4
PEACE SUPPORT OPERATIONS: LESSONS LEARNED? Shannon Tow 2000: 32). Constraints on the Australian defence budget were also responsible for a number of shortcomings in key INTERFET weapons systems (Bostock 2000: 26). Trends towards outsourcing peace operations also raise questions as to whether a two-tiered peacekeeping system might emerge between those PSOs supported by a relatively wellequipped coalition and those managed by the UN and largely symbolic in nature (Bellamy 2002: 27). Thus while the PSO doctrine facilitates closure of the mandate-capabilities gap by addressing consent as a managed element, whether this is actually realised remains contingent on the sustainability of member states’ political commitments to the operation. Organisational Infrastructure Such dilemmas might also emerge in relation to the organisational infrastructure that supports these capabilities. During the early 1990s, planning for peacekeeping missions was generally carried out on an ad hoc basis. In Somalia, for instance, humanitarian agencies were not adequately consulted when preparing plans to deploy UNISOM (Lessons Learned Unit 1995) 5 . PSOs, by contrast, require sound logistics and supply lines, integrated infrastructure and planning, and a unified command structure in order to manage consentboth through enforcement and capacity-building measures (Wilkinson 1998: 66). This is again best exemplified by INTERFET. To mitigate operational difficulties arising from member states’ concerns over forces’ access to national command authorities, a command structure was established that provided direct access from these national commands to Australian command (Ryan 2002: 31). Yet while INTERFET highlights the benefits of the PSO doctrine relative to coordinating organisational infrastructure, it simultaneously illustrates how some member states’ lack of dedication to a mission, over time, might jeopardise these gains. This is particularly the case with regard to command structure with many countries, most notably the United States, wary of submitting their troops to foreign command (Berdal 1993: 42). Even after nominally submitting to a supranational command structure peacekeeping forces often resort back to national chains of command when directives are unclear (Hillen 2000: 148). Dialogue 1:1 (2003) 5
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Peace Support Operations: Lessons Learned? - School of Political ...

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