Defence Forces Review 2008

‘New’ versus ‘No’ World Order
‘New’ versus ‘No’ World Order
Non UN Peacekeeping and the implications
for Conflict Resolution in the 21st Century
Commandant Mark Hearns
“There is no such thing as the UN.”
(John Bolton, Former US Ambassador to the UN)
A ‘Ne w Wo r l d Or d e r’
The ‘new world order’ presaged by George Bush Senior in his speech to Congress on the 6th of
March 1991 following the Iraqi defeat in the Gulf War created expectations of greater potential
for preventing or resolving international conflicts through multilateral cooperation. This first
Gulf War was launched by an ad hoc American - led coalition legitimised by UN Security
Council Resolution (UNSCR) 678. The stage appeared to be set for greater support to the UN
by powerful members states in the maintenance of international security and order. Traditional
peacekeeping which had heretofore been restricted to post conflict UN led Observer and Troop
missions due to the reluctance of the opposing Cold War Blocs to alter the status quo could
now embrace complex security challenges with more robust intervention mechanisms.
Tragic events in the mid 1990s, however, began a sequence of actions undermining these
expectations. The failed interventions by international actors in the Balkans, Somalia and
Rwanda and the inability of the UN to adequately mobilise in the face of genocide, dashed
the optimism of the early 1990s. The unilateral action by NATO in Kosovo in 1999 and by
the US led coalition in Iraq in 2003 despite strong opposition from within the UN, suggested
that its institutional authority had been substantially eroded. Over the last decade regional
organisations such as NATO, the European Union and the African Union have provided
intervention forces into conflict areas in situations where traditionally a UN mission would
have deployed. New forms of asymmetric warfare required agile flexible responses that the
unwieldy institutions of the UN were incapable of providing. The attack on the UN building
and the killing of the Special Representative of the Secretary General, Sergio Viera di Mello,
in Baghdad in 2003 indicated a degradation of its influence within the Middle East. Finally,
derisory comments from within the USA, the pre-eminent global power, typified by that cited
above by John Bolton (who elsewhere premised that the UN would be no worse off if it lost
the top ten floors of its headquarter building), further undermined the UN authority in global
affairs. These events implied that the UN and its traditional form of peacekeeping would push
to the peripherary of global conflict resolution and that non-traditional non-UN forms would
move centre stage.
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