Defence Forces Review 2008

The Future of Peacekeeping
and East Timor. In Bosnia, it took America’s commitment to a solution to the conflict, in
the spring of 1995, for the war to end. In Kosovo, the U.S. decision to launch a NATO
air campaign was central to international involvement there, and it paved the way for the
subsequent UN operation. As for East Timor, the political pressure exercised by the American
government on Djakarta and the logistical support given to Australian forces were key for the
deployment of international forces on the island.
There is however a less inspiring side to this story that concerns American shortcomings
and their negative effects on UN peace operations. In this story, the United States oscillated
between reluctant leadership and outright refusal to get involved. Rwanda is of course one of
the most dramatic examples of how American refusal to get involved in humanitarian crises
can have negative consequences. In spring 1994, a few months after the Somalia fiasco and at a
time when the Clinton administration was issuing restrictive guidelines on UN peacekeeping,
the Rwandan tragedy had little chance of attracting the attention of the White House. This was
particularly the case given that the United States had no geopolitical interests strong enough
to warrant intervention.
Throughout the 1990s, the Clinton administration was willing to factor in the emerging
complexities of the post-Cold war era and extend the realm of concerns beyond a traditionally
defined national interest. Nevertheless it was unwilling to do so more than marginally.
Later, under the Republican administration, the U.S. approach got worst. Radicalizing
attitudes that had already existed in American foreign policy toward the UN, its policies
and values, President Bush made a unilateral and security-driven conception of international
affairs the hallmark of his foreign policy at the outset of his presidency. September 11 and the
decision to invade Iraq only further systematized this conception. Consequently, the current
administration never viewed UN peacekeeping as a valuable tool in itself. If it dovetailed with
America’s agenda and interest, as partly happened in Afghanistan, cooperation between the
UN and the United States was a possibility. Beyond this, the U.S. government was willing to
allocate only the minimal amount of resources to UN peacekeeping.
Pa y i n g t h e Co s t s
Seven years into Bush’s presidency, its handling of international security crises has proved
to be far from a success, to say the least. Moreover, failed states and the ethnic tensions often
associated with them continue to sprout around the globe. By the mid-2000s, although the
number of total of conflicts has declined, the number of internal conflicts has increased to
represent 95% of all conflicts worldwide.
Thus the international community now stands at an ominous crossroads. Unless the
international community and its principal powers – the United States to begin with – are to
ignore failing and failed states altogether, inevitably they will have to address conflicts and
humanitarian crises stemming from them.
As such, neither the United States nor the international community will be able to escape
the need for peace operations. Financially costly they may be, but not nearly as costly as
unsuccessful unilateral interventions. For instance, the estimated total cost of peacekeeping
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