[House Hearing, 106 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
U.S. POLICIES TOWARD U.N. PEACEKEEPING:
REINFORCING BIPARTISANSHIP AND
REGAINING EQUILIBRIUM
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 11, 2000
__________
Serial No. 106-193
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/
international--relations
______
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COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York, Chairman
WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania SAM GEJDENSON, Connecticut
JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa TOM LANTOS, California
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DAN BURTON, Indiana Samoa
ELTON GALLEGLY, California DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
DANA ROHRABACHER, California CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California PAT DANNER, Missouri
PETER T. KING, New York EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California
MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
Carolina STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey
MATT SALMON, Arizona JIM DAVIS, Florida
AMO HOUGHTON, New York EARL POMEROY, North Dakota
TOM CAMPBELL, California WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
KEVIN BRADY, Texas BARBARA LEE, California
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL, Pennsylvania
GEORGE RADANOVICH, California [VACANCY]
JOHN COOKSEY, Louisiana
THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado
Richard J. Garon, Chief of Staff
Francis C. Record, Senior Professional Staff Member
Shennel A. Nagia, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESSES
The Honorable John R. Bolton, Senior Vice President, American
Enterprise Institute........................................... 4
The Honorable Dennis C. Jett, Dean of the International Center,
University of Florida.......................................... 10
Edward C. Luck, Executive Director, Center for the Study of
International Organizations of the New York University School
of Law and the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University,
President Emeritus, United Nations Association of the United
States......................................................... 15
APPENDIX
Members' prepared statements:
The Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman, a Representative in Congress
from the State of New York, and Chairman, Committee on
International Relations........................................ 35
Witness' prepared statements:
The Honorable John R. Bolton..................................... 37
The Honorable Dennis C. Jett..................................... 66
Edward C. Luck................................................... 73
U.S. POLICIES TOWARD U.N. PEACEKEEPING: REINFORCING BIPARTISANSHIP AND
REGAINING EQUILIBRIUM
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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2000
House of Representatives,
Committee on International Relations,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:09 a.m. in Room
2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Benjamin A. Gilman
(Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
Chairman Gilman. The Committee will come to order. I am
pleased to welcome our witnesses this morning to this long-
delayed hearing on a review of the Administration's
peacekeeping policy blueprint and how the Administration has
applied its policy blueprint for four key U.N. peacekeeping
operations. We were briefed last week on the long-delayed
investigation by the General Accounting Office into the
Presidential Decision Directive number 25, PDD-25. The process
whereby the U.S. approves U.N. and other multi-lateral peace
operations and provides timely and relevant information to the
Congress concerning their implementation. This report was
requested last year by this Committee on a bipartisan basis and
follows a number of GAO reports on peacekeeping-related topics
conducted over the past several years on a timely basis with
the cooperation of the Administration.
Today U.N. peacekeeping is facing extremely difficult
challenges on the ground. The decision by the Indian government
to pull out its peacekeepers might well lead to a breakdown of
U.N. peacekeeping efforts in Sierra Leone. The government of
the Democratic Republic of the Congo has refused to cooperate
with the U.N. in the deployment of the peacekeeping force in
that nation. And there are continuing obstacles from the
Indonesian military and police forces in the ongoing U.N.
mission in East Timor.
These developments, in turn, raise key questions about the
process and how our Nation approves and supports our
peacekeeping missions. Today, we still have many questions
about the process whereby the Clinton Administration approved
these missions. Regrettably, we received a few satisfactory
responses from the GAO on how the Administration has applied
its own policy blueprint to the missions now on the ground in
Africa, in Asia and in Europe. This process was requested on a
bipartisan basis with our Ranking Member, Mr. Gejdenson.
The GAO reported to us that it lacks full and independent
access to agency records needed to be able to complete its
work. Furthermore, it has no access to key documents that would
disclose whether this peacekeeping policy blueprint was fully
taken into account when deciding to support some peacekeeping
operations. With no independent access to records, the GAO
feels that the integrity and the reliability of its work has
been compromised. The GAO investigators have produced an
extensive summary of their request to the Administration, many
of which were ignored or denied on very dubious grounds.
The summary which will be made available later today,
documents the extensive efforts made by the GAO to acquire the
documents it needs from the Administration to complete this
long-delayed investigation. And while the work of the GAO in
this area is not yet complete, it is becoming more clear that
the Administration has yet to take a cooperative attitude
toward the completion of this peacekeeping review by the GAO
investigators.
In short, we are still in need of timely and complete
cooperation from the Administration on this pending review by
the GAO, and how these operations are approved and conducted.
And most disappointing of all is the failure of the State
Department to make available to this Committee the two
witnesses we had requested for today's hearing. It is my
understanding that Under Secretary Thomas Pickering and Deputy
Legal Advisor James Thessin are unable to join us this morning
to discuss how the department is handling policy and process
questions relating to the GAO investigation. However, I will be
asking for their cooperation in arranging a Members-only
briefing tomorrow to pursue the issues and questions relating
to the ongoing GAO investigation.
Today we are fortunate to have with us an outstanding
private sector panel to review the peacekeeping policy issues
before our Committee. Today's panel includes the Honorable John
R. Bolton, Senior Vice President of the American Enterprise
Institute and former Assistant Secretary of State for
International Operations; Ambassador Dennis Jett, Dean of the
International Center for the University of Florida, and former
ambassador to Mozambique and Peru; and Edward C. Luck Executive
Director of the Center for the Study of International
Organizations.
I am pleased now to recognize our Ranking Minority Member
the gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Gejdenson.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gilman is available in the
appendix.]
Mr. Gejdenson. Mr. Chairman, I think you have to excuse the
Administration for its caution in dealing with the Congress on
foreign policy matters. We have now an almost unending 2-year
assault trying to make foreign policy a partisan political
battle. We started off with the Republican leadership saying
they were going to make foreign policy the issue for the
campaign. We have now had two completely partisan reports from
Mr. Cox, the last one appropriately titled ``The RAG,'' trying
to bring the Committee into the presidential campaign. And I
think for the future good of this Committee and whether it is
taken seriously in the public, we have to make, I think, a
stronger effort to prevent the simply partisan assaults on the
Administration.
Having said that, I do think that peacekeeping is an
important area for the United States and this Committee to
focus on. Frankly, I think all of us need to be embarrassed by
what seems to be almost a continental divide where we find in
Europe and some other places of the world, Americans are ready
to move quickly. In Africa and Asia, it has been hard to
mobilize the United States Congress or the Administration. In
Rwanda in a 4-month period, 800,000 men, women and children
were killed while the western world dithered. When we see what
is happening today in Sierra Leone, it is an embarrassment to
societies that call themselves civilized as Sierra Leonean
children have their limbs hacked from their bodies and their
faces scarred for life.
Mr. Royce held a hearing here with a number of victims of
that violence. It seems to me that we need to find a way to
help international organizations, most likely the U.N., to
fulfill its responsibility globally, and that in Africa, we
have been embarrassed by our failure to act. Peacekeeping is in
America's national interest. Today we have very few American
military personnel participating in U.N. peacekeeping
operations. Less than 40 military are presently serving in 15
current U.N. peacekeeping operations. We need to take a look at
the recent report which delineated some of the shortcomings in
the U.N. And it's peacekeeping efforts.
The price tag is significant. But the price tag of not
having peacekeeping is far higher. U.N. peacekeeping operations
have helped us bring to a close conflicts in El Salvador and
Guatemala, saving the American taxpayers millions of dollars
and countless lives in those areas.
For Congress and the Administration, there is a choice.
Either we will find a way to establish an international
peacekeeping force that has a capability to end and prevent
conflict, or we will spend our days here debating resolutions
and memorializing those who die.
It may be understandable that we spent a day here last week
debating the Armenian Genocide. Those were the failures of a
past generation, a generation that may have not been informed
of what was happening in a timely manner. Today, from CNN and
other news sources, every citizen knows almost immediately when
ethnic cleansing and murder is brought down on a civilian
population. And for those of us who think foreign policy is an
important part of a superpower's responsibilities, we have to
figure out how to make it a successful effort on every
continent and not simply allow mass murder to occur in the
continents that either do not have the political appeal or the
economic interest immediately at hand.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you Mr. Gejdenson. Let me just
address one point that you've raised, Mr. Gejdenson. We do not
feel it is a partisan attack when we simply asked the State
Department to cooperate with the GAO and its investigation and
review, a review that both you and I requested. And
furthermore, we just want to put the facts about PDD-25 before
the Congress so that we can examine closely whether or not our
peacekeeping missions are properly planned.
Mr. Gejdenson. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Gilman. Yes.
Mr. Gejdenson. Mr. Chairman you will understand the
confusion in the Administration when there seems to have been
an almost unending political assault on the Administration's
foreign policy clearly articulated by the leadership of the
Republican party here. And again, Mr. Chairman, this is no
reflection on you. Actually, I don't think you even
participated in the RAG report led by Mr. Cox or the North
Korean Advised Group, but for the Administration, viewing what
happens here on Capitol Hill, it is very easy to come to a
conclusion that the Republican majority's primary purpose in
dealing with foreign policy issues is to try to gain political
advantage and ignoring the old admonition that partisanship
should end at the water's edge here.
I think that we are going to have to work--whoever is in
control of the next Congress, to try to rebuild a sense that
there is a seriousness to the work of Congress, when it
involves itself in foreign policy. And again, the two reports
by Mr. Cox in particular, and the public statements by leaders
of the Republican party where they said they are going to make
foreign policy an issue in the campaign, would give any
Administration pause in dealing with the Congress seriously.
Chairman Gilman. Mr. Gejdenson. I don't want to belabor the
point, but if you examine the hearing agenda before the Cox
Committee, a Committee that consisted of all of the leading
Chairmen in the Congress, you will find that there were
bipartisan witnesses, including Mr. Brzezinski, who was a
national security advisor.
But I think you will find, if you review the report by the
Cox Commission, there are serious problems involving corruption
in Russia. It is not intended to be a partisan attack but an
attempt to dig into the problems confronting Russia and our
Administration and what we should or could be doing to improve
that.
Mr. Gejdenson. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Gilman. Mr. Gejdenson.
Mr. Gejdenson. Did any Democrats serve on those two Cox
Commissions?
Chairman Gilman. The Commission was appointed by the
Speaker.
Mr. Gejdenson. And excluded every Democratic Member of
Congress.
Chairman Gilman. It did not exclude. He appointed the
Chairmen of the major Committees in the House.
Now I think it is time we ought to proceed with our
testimony. We are pleased to welcome Mr. Bolton back to the
Committee where he frequently has testified on a wide range of
foreign policy and security issues. Mr. Bolton is the Senior
Vice President of the American Enterprise Institute, and he has
served as an assistant Secretary of State for International
Organizations and has assisted the attorney general at the
Department of Justice and is the President of the National
Policy Forum.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN R. BOLTON, SENIOR VICE
PRESIDENT, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
Chairman Gilman. Mr. Bolton, you may proceed. And you may
summarize if you desire, and your full statement will be made
part of a record.
Mr. Bolton. Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. It is a
pleasure to be here today to testify on this important subject,
and I do have a depressingly long, prepared statement that I
will try to summarize very briefly.
Chairman Gilman. If I might interrupt. I am being called to
another Committee for a few moments. I am going to ask Mr.
Gillmor if he will preside in my place.
Thank you.
Mr. Gillmor. [Presiding) Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You may
proceed, Mr. Bolton.
Mr. Bolton. Thank you very much. First I would like to
spend a minute on PDD-25, the central document defining the
Administration's U.N. peacekeeping policy. And I think that the
basic issue with PDD-25, although I laid out some details at
length in the prepared statement, the central problem with it
is that it does not really provide policy guidance on
peacekeeping. It is very general and, in fact, in some cases
internally contradictory. I think is a good example of the
notion that sometimes the U.N.'s best friends can be its worst
enemies. Let me just mention two central conceptual problems
with PDD-25. The first is it consciously blurs the distinction
between traditional U.N. peacekeeping operations on the one
hand with peace enforcement on the other.
Traditional peacekeeping basically requires three
prerequisites: the consent of the parties involved in the
dispute; U.N. neutrality between those parties; and the U.N.
use of force essentially only in self defense. Peace
enforcement, by contrast, necessarily contemplates the active
use of military force by the U.N., or whatever the implementing
agency is. It is simply not correct, as PDD-25 asserts, that
there is a spectrum between traditional peacekeeping and peace
enforcement. There is a very sharp division between them, as
both military and political experts would confirm. And I think
that central conceptual problem has lead the Administration
into a number of difficulties in peacekeeping, some of which I
will get into when I come to the five specific examples that I
consider.
The second major problem with PDD-25 is its stress, indeed
its emphasis on U.N. involvement in intrastate conflicts,
conflicts that do not, in my judgment, amount to real threats
to international peace and security, which is the triggering
threshold for Security Council involvement in international
affairs. In fact, this reliance, this emphasis on intrastate
conflicts, I believe, is simply the continuation of the
Administration's initial effort, sadly unsuccessful and
tragically for the United States, in nation-building in
Somalia.
The fact is, Mr. Chairman, I believe in flexibility in
executive branch decision-making, and I think that the
experience of the five cases that I consider here shows that it
really is inappropriate to have a one-size-fits-all
peacekeeping policy, that a reflexive and indeed, discriminate
resort to U.N. Involvement actually can make matters worse.
As I say, I have laid out five examples of current U.N.
operations, current or contemplated U.N. operations, and I
won't go into details, but I did run through this at some
length and with citation to publicly-available information to
make the point that these situations are really quite diverse.
And let me just consider them quickly in order.
The first, the contemplated U.N. peacekeeping force in the
Democrat Republic of the Congo. I think that the history, the
recent history of the Congo shows going back to the fall of the
Mobutu and the rise of Laurent Kabila to assume power in that
country is the complexity of the situation, not only with the
shifting loyalties in support of Kabila, first from the Tutsi
minority in the Eastern part of the Congo and now ironically
from Hutu--in fact Interahamwe forces in that part of the
country--but the substantial involvement of neighboring
countries in Africa. This is an extremely complex situation,
where the Secretary General has recently reported that military
operations in the Eastern Congo and the preparation for
military operations continues at a high pace. Now, I do think
that the Congo represents a situation where there is a clear
threat to international peace and security. That is to say, I
think this is at least theoretically a legitimate area for the
Security Council to be considering.
But I think that the efforts by the Secretary General, in
particular, to press for deployment of a peacekeeping force
could result in a premature deployment that could really be a
debacle for the United Nations. And it would make the existing
already confused political situation even worse.
Indeed, the Secretary General himself has acknowledged this
recently when he said it is clear that the United Nations
peacekeeping operations cannot serve as a substitute for the
political will to achieve a peaceful settlement. Now I think
this is a situation where U.N. involvement really has a
substantial risk of the U.N. becoming part of the conflict. And
I don't think that the Administration has fully appreciated
this.
Indeed, in February, Secretary Albright, urging the
deployment of a peacekeeping force, testified before this
Committee as follows: ``We are asking for a peacekeeping
operation there. We believe that it is essential that we
support that because Congo is not only large, but it is
surrounded by nine countries.''
Now, I am not sure I quite follow the logic of that, but it
has the situation backwards. First there has to be political
agreement between or among the parties to the conflict which,
as I previously noted, are many and diverse. Then it would be
appropriate to consider what kind of peacekeeping Force to
deploy. I think it really is premature for a U.N. force in the
Congo and may well be premature for a long time, especially as
the Lusaka Agreement, the underlying thing that we are
supposedly looking at here, appears to be in a near-death
situation.
Secondly, let me turn to Sierra Leone, where the U.N. is
already deployed, but where instability in that country for
nearly 10 years has led to a perhaps equally confused situation
on the ground. The National Democratic Institute, recently
issued really quite a good paper on Sierra Leone, where they
described the origins of the revolutionary united front, Foday
Sankoh's organization, which has been accused of uncounted
atrocities. The National Democratic Institute characterized the
origins of the RUF, and I quote, ``as a rebellion against the
years of authoritarian one-party state, that had sunk the
country into poverty and corruption.'' And it noted that
Sankoh's original platform was ``free education and medical
care, an end to corruption, nepotism and tribalism.''
The situation is not only complicated because of the
internal disputes which I think really left on their own would
not amount, would not amount to a threat to international peace
and security, but have been complicated by outside
intervention, first in the form of ECOWAS, the Economic
Organization of West African States intervention led by the
Nigerians. The Nigerians quite obviously, I think, had an
agenda on their own and ended up participating in the civil
conflict within Sierra Leone, in effect, as parties to that
conflict, making it harder to get resolution among the Sierra
Leonian factions, not easier.
Second, the Lome agreement of July 1999 which was the basis
on which the Secretary General recommended deployment of more
substantial U.N. peacekeeping forces, I think had two essential
problems with it. The first problem was a problem of the
Security Council. And I think that this is something quite
clearly that is the fault of all of the member governments.
There really was no adequate consideration by the Council
whether the Lome agreement represented a true meeting of the
minds among the parties to the Sierra Leonian conflict, thus
whether there was a consent, and thus whether there was an
appropriate basis to deploy a peacekeeping force at all. But
second, I don't think adequate attention has been given to the
Secretary General's own reservations attached to the Lome
agreement, where one of the central elements, at least from the
RUF point of view, was an amnesty for Foday Sankoh and his
followers.
Now, I just ask you to think about this for a moment from
political point of view, without regard to what we think of the
RUF or without regard to what we think of the Sierra Leonian
government. I think it is fair to say that the RUF regarded
that amnesty as a pretty important part of the agreement. And
yet the Secretary General of the United Nations specifically
disclaimed interest in upholding that part of the agreement. I
think it would be reasonable, as a purely political matter, for
Sankoh to conclude he did not have agreement on what for him
was an essential element of the Lome agreement. And this
agreement was backed by the Administration I think for good
reasons. Assistant Secretary Susan Rice said ``if we want a
solution in Sierra Leone, that entails by necessity whether or
not we like it, a peace agreement dealing with the rebels.''
So if you are willing to follow that logic to undercut it,
as the Secretary General's reservation does, it seems to me to
call into question whether you have an agreement at all.
Now most recently we have what is essentially an
unprecedented public disagreement between the force commander,
General Jetley, an Indian and the Nigerian contingent of
UNAMSIL, resulting in the Indian government's recent
announcement that, it's going to withdraw all of its
peacekeeping forces from the country.
So on the one hand, we have the Secretary General
recommending the deployment of 20,500 peacekeepers including,
18 infantry battalions, and yet we find that the peacekeepers
themselves cannot agree on command and control structures and
their appropriate responsibilities.
Let me turn now quickly to the Ethiopia/Eritra conflict. I
think this is a classic case and perhaps one of the best ones
that I am going to consider this morning, certainly among the
three African ones, for the deployment of U.N. peacekeeping
observers. This is an interstate conflict. It has a ceasefire
in place. The parties have consented to the deployment of the
U.N. and I think it is exactly the prototype of what U.N
peacekeeping should be. And yet, even there the Secretary
General has recommended not simply the deployment of U.N.
observers, but the deployment of three battalions of infantry
to be prepared for a full combat eventuality. I think this is
part of a larger agenda. Mr. Delahunt is here. We talked about
this a couple weeks ago in a Subcommittee hearing on the
Brahimi report recently submitted to the Secretary General.
I won't cover that ground again, except that I think the
recommendation, and indeed it has been accepted by the Security
Council to deploy the three infantry battalions, is a real
mistake. Quite apart from the extra cost that is involved, I
think it risks turning what could be a successful peacekeeping
observation mission into something much more complicated.
Now, Mr. Chairman, I have also considered in the prepared
statement two examples, two current examples of U.N. civil
administration in peacekeeping in Kosovo and East Timor. I
began that section by discussing why I think the whole concept
of the U.N. Trusteeship does not have--at least as implemented
in those two places--does not have support in the U.N. Charter.
I really do not think there is authority in the Charter for
this. I don't think the U.N. has experience in this kind of
activity and I don't think it has capacity.
So it is perhaps no surprise that in the two concrete
examples that I consider, Kosovo and East Timor, the U.N. is in
serious trouble. In the case of Kosovo, very briefly, Mr.
Chairman, I don't think this is a case of individuals not
performing up to their capacity. I don't think it is so much a
question of U.N. mistakes. I think the problem in Kosovo for
the U.N. is inherent, and that is, they were inserted into a
situation where the political status of the Kosovo remains
unresolved.
That is a problem that continues right to the present
despite the good news from Belgrade, with the replacement of
Milosevic by Kostunica. I think if anything, that situation,
that political situation just got more complicated.
Many people have said, ``but if you did not have the U.N.
involved in civil administration of Kosovo, what would the
alternatives be?'' I have suggested two. One would be to have
KFOR, the Kosovo force itself, responsible for civil
administration. I think one of the problems in Kosovo now is
that we have got, in effect, turf fights among international
organizations. We have KFOR doing one set of things. We have
the U.N. Mission in Kosovo, UNMIK doing another set of things.
We have the OSCE doing another set of things. Then we have
literally hundreds of nongovernmental organizations also doing
their own thing. I think it would have been cleaner to have
considered simply charging KFOR itself with this operation.
Another alternative, I think less desirable from the U.S. point
of view, but one which we should have considered, would be to
have the European Union responsible for this. That would have
been, I think, much more sensible than the situation we have
now, where I think with the U.N. civil administration we really
have the risk of the worst of both worlds, that we have large
responsibilities and insufficient resources. And I think there
that the U.N. responsibility in Kosovo is poised at the edge of
massive failure, failure cause by the ambiguous and
contradictory nature of its mandate, the inadequacy of the
U.N.'s capacity to undertake such a mission, the radical
political uncertainty and sometimes violent disagreement among
the parties that persists to this very day, and as I said, the
tension between unmixed aspirations and its resources.
Finally, the last example, Mr. Chairman, is the U.N.
Transitional Authority in East Timor which is, in large part,
shaped by the U.N.'s failure in the earlier conduct of the
referendum where the violence perpetrated by the anti
independence, pro-Indonesian militias caused such death and
destruction after the referendum, where the U.N. itself now
says ``well, we didn't anticipate there was going to be any
violence.'' And the Secretary General said ``if we had an
inkling, it was going to be this chaotic, I don't think anyone
would have gone forward with the vote. We are no fools.'' And
yet it is hard to believe that if you've read anything about
the militias, that they would have taken a vote for
independence by East Timor lightly, and said ``oh well, I guess
we lost the vote,'' and went away.
One thing you can say about the U.N. presence in East Timor
is that at least the ultimate political future of East Timor is
clear, that it is going to be an independent state. That is
obviously unclear in the case of Kosovo where some people want
independence, and some people quite obviously want it back as
part of Yugoslavia.
But I think, even with the political status clear, that the
United Nations has embarked on a kind of mission that it really
can't handle. And the Secretary General was quite
straightforward about what he thinks that mission is. He says,
in discussing the difficulty, he said ``the organization has
never before attempted to build and manage a state.''
I think the performance in East Timor has demonstrated that
the U.N. cannot build and manage a state, and that the comments
made by some of the East Timor's independence leaders indicate
that they are becoming increasingly frustrated. Without
necessarily endorsing everything, for example, that Jose
Alexander Gusmao has said, I note that he has argued that the
East Timorese government could really, logically need to be
one-fourth the size of the prior Indonesian government. That
sounds like a man after my own heart, and I wish the U.N. would
take note of that. I think if you want to build a social
democratic state, there is an argument for virtually infinite
U.N. participation. I don't think we should encourage that. I
don't think that is ultimately best for the people there, and
it is certainly not within the U.N.'s capability anyway.
Just to conclude, Mr. Chairman, the U.N., as these examples
demonstrate, is overextended and in danger of becoming more so.
It is involved or considering involvement in operations where
it has neither the competence nor the authority to be
effective. Now, to be sure, a large part of the blame here is
due to the member governments, and especially to the United
States, which have assigned the United Nations contradictory or
impossible mandates in ambiguous political situations. What we
sorely need, Mr. Chairman, is sensible American leadership to
restore U.N. peacekeeping to a more even keel.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bolton is available in the
appendix.]
Mr. Gillmor. Thank you very much, Mr. Bolton. And we are
now very pleased to have with us Ambassador David Jett who has
served as our Ambassador to both Mozambique and Peru. He has
held numerous important policy positions in the Department of
State and the National Security Council. He's now the Dean of
the International Center at the University of Florida. And the
author of Why Peacekeeping Fails which was published in March
of this year.
Ambassador Jett.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DENNIS JETT, DEAN OF THE
INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
Mr. Jett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor and
pleasure to be here today to speak on this important topic. I
will try to summarize my statement that I have submitted for
the record, and try to do so in a way that doesn't repeat too
much of what John Bolton just covered. A number of the cases I
will touch on, but I will try to do so in a little bit
different way, though I agree with much of what John Bolton has
said.
Part of the problem in discussing peacekeeping is you
immediately get into a problem of definitions. Peacekeeping is
a term that gets applied to a lot of different situations from
Cyprus to Somalia, and everywhere in between, where there are
very different kinds of tasks. The interstate conflicts that
John Bolton mentioned are the ones that traditionally the U.N.
had to deal with earlier in its history. And they were easier
because basically, there was a struggle between two countries
over territory. The job of the U.N. Was to get between them
when there was a cease-fire, control the contested territory,
or at least patrol it, build confidence and allow time for a
line to be drawn on the map dividing the territory. Sometimes
that takes quite a long time. They've been in Cyprus since
1964. The line is still not on the map. But just the absence of
renewed conflict is enough. Unfortunately, there are very few
examples of those kinds of conflicts today. Eritrea-Ethopia is
one, about the only conflict between countries.
While it has international implications, as long as the
Eritreans and the Ethiopians were killing each other, nobody
did anything other than send diplomatic missions to try and
stop them.
So even though it was a conflict between two countries, it
didn't really have the implications for spreading too much
beyond that particular area and those particular countries. The
problem the U.N. faces is today's war is typically a civil war,
a war within a state over political power, and in the third
world you cannot divide political power very easily. Basically,
you are either in power or you are out of luck. And when there
is a peace, the U.N. Is faced with tasks like assembly of
troops, demobilizing them, reintegrating them into civil
society, forming a new army and eventually holding elections to
choose a legitimate leader. All of those are daunting tasks.
These were the tasks that were attempted in Angola and
Mozambique. I was an ambassador in Mozambique when the U.N.
succeeded, so in my book, I look at that and I compare it to
Angola where those same tasks the U.N. failed.
When the United States looks at participation in the
peacekeeping it has three simple options: it can participate in
the peacekeeping operations with its own troops along with U.N.
troops; it can allow the U.N. to go in alone without a U.S.
presence; or it can use its power as a permanent member of the
Security Council to prevent the U.N. from engaging in a
peacekeeping operation. I think PDD-25 gives a good framework
for analyzing the various factors that come into play in
peacekeeping. The central conclusion of PDD-25 is that when
properly conceived, a well-executed peacekeeping can be a very
important and useful tool. That is not a particularly
remarkable conclusion. The catch is how do you properly
conceive it and how do you execute it well? The purpose of PDD-
25 was to selectively use peacekeeping and to use it more
selectively and more effectively. In looking at the history of
peacekeeping, it sort of ebbed and flowed through six different
periods. Since the creation in the United Nations, somewhere
between 5 and 11 years for each period of growth in
peacekeeping or contraction with an average of 7 years.
In 1993, we entered a phase of contraction doing less
peacekeeping, so I think, in that period, PDD-25 caused
peacekeeping to be used more selectively. And perhaps because
it was used less, it was done more effectively. But now we seem
to be entering into a new phase, a growth period, since we are
about 7 years from 1993. That is probably the half life of a
bad idea or the institutional memory of your average
bureaucrat. 1993 is a watershed date because that is the date
in October when the 18 U.S. servicemen were killed in
Mogadishu. Ever since then, it has been virtually impossible to
use Americans in peacekeeping operations with very few
exceptions.
I am sure we will listen to the presidential debate
tonight. I was struck in the first debate when candidate Bush
said on two occasions that he would allow no U.S. troops to be
used for nation-building, and he made no apparent attempt to
hide his disdain for the term. I don't know whether that is an
applications of the Powell doctrine or his defense strategy is
based on the idea that we have to be ready to fight two
regional wars. And the Powell doctrine seems to state that you
never deploy the U.S. Armed Forces in a size less than an
division and never outside of Europe, Japan, Korea or a Middle
Eastern oil producer.
The problem is there will be very few Desert Storms, I
doubt there will ever be two, there may not even be one in the
future. But there will be a lot of Sierra Leones and Somalias
in the future. So that is what the U.N. has to deal with.
Nevertheless given the unpopularity of the first option, the
U.N. can't rely on U.S. participation with troops. We are left
with the two remaining options, letting the U.N. do it alone or
doing nothing. The problem with that second option is the U.N.
does not do it very well. In this regard it is useful to think
of the U.N. in terms of two different aspects, the U.N. as a
bureaucracy and the U.N. as organization of 189 member states.
You've heard the testimony about the Brahimi report. One of the
things the Brahimi report mentioned was that U.N. bureaucrats
aren't always of the best quality and that the U.N. should
become more transparent and become a meritocracy.
Unfortunately, this flies in the face of longstanding
tradition, and I don't think it is going to happen. The Brahimi
report also says that the 189 members should support
peacekeeping politically, financially and operationally. Well,
politically, it is difficult because the 189 members are
typically pursuing their national interests through this
international organization, and they rarely seem to sacrifice
them for the common good. Financially, 97 percent of the
peacekeeping is paid for by the first world for peacekeeping
operations that all happen in the third world. I doubt, given
the fact that we are hundreds of millions of dollars in arrears
now, that there is any particular sentiment iin Washington for
spending more money on peacekeeping operations.
Operationally, I have talked about the difficulty of
engaging American troops. The problem is that is not unique to
the United States. In general, in the first world, and the
countries with the best armies but they are the ones that are
least likely, least enthusiastic about participating in
peacekeeping. The countries with the worst armies are the ones
that have them available for these kinds of tasks.
That said, I think the Brahimi report was a good effort. It
was at least honest. I think you have to congratulate Secretary
General Annan. The Rwanda report, the Srebrenica report, the
report on Angola diamonds and now the Brahimi report, now show
a remarkable bucking of the long-standing tradition of the
United Nations to avoid introspection.
The other thing that the Brahimi report said is that the
bedrock principals of peacekeeping are consent of the parties,
impartiality, and the use of force only in self-defense.
Unfortunately, that almost never exists in today's kinds of
conflicts. You can imagine if there were a repetition of Rwanda
and you tried to apply those three bedrock principles, you
would not get very far. I think the real fault though of the
Brahimi report or the U.N. in general is that it mentions in
passing three factors, that are critically important, but
doesn't suggest any way to deal with those. And part of the
problem is these are factors that the U.N. can influence but
can't control. Those three factors are the local actors, the
internal resources and the external forces.
The local actors are the people on the ground, the players
in the conflict who usually see peacekeeping as a way to
further their own political goals through different means other
than using military means. And their sincerity in signing the
peace is usually suspect and it lasts only as long as they are
not losing power or losing out in the struggle for power. The
internal resources are diamonds typically. The big difference
between Angola and Mozambique is that Mozambique has shrimp and
cashews. And while it makes a nice stew, it doesn't fuel a
civil war the way diamonds have in Angola or as diamonds have
in Sierra Leone or in the Congo. And the external forces are
the neighboring countries. In Sierra Leone the big problem is
not because the RUF decided it was a corrupt regime in power
and they were going to overthrow it. You could take Foday
Sankoh's political philosophy and it wouldn't fill the back of
a napkin. The real problem is that when the peacekeeping forces
came into Monrovia and Liberia, west African peacekeeping
forces, Charles Taylor looked at them as an obstacle to power.
And I happened to be there at the time in Monrovia and I can
tell you, the peacekeepers probably didn't even have a street
map of downtown Monrovia, let alone a clue as to what they were
going to do. But they did freeze the situation militarily.
To get back at the Nigerians, Taylor basically inspired the
unrest in Sierra Leone. He continues to do it today, simply
because he wants to control Sierra Leone's diamonds. There are
about $200 million in diamonds exported out of Liberia, a
country that only produces about $25 million in diamonds. Until
you control Charles Taylor's greed you will not have peace in
Sierra Leone. Since the Nigerian peacekeeping force which was
in Liberia and Sierra Leone for almost all the decade of the
90's was never able to impose a military solution to the
conflict, the U.N. should prepare for a long term commitment in
Sierra Leone.
In the Congo, you have a situation that is even worse. You
have the armies of six countries, as John Bolton described, and
no peace to keep. It is almost a cliche. And so until you
influence those countries and solve the problem about what to
do with the people who committed genocide in Rwanda who are now
fighting in the Congo, then you will probably never have a
chance for any peacekeeping operation to succeed. As John
pointed out, there is a proposal to go up to 20,000 U.N. troops
in Sierra Leone. The Congo is 10 times larger in terms of
population and 32 times larger than Sierra Leone in terms of
territory. So you can imagine what kind of peacekeeping force
you would have to put in there. Another problem is they would
probably have a muddled mandate, and be just standing around.
Another example of the way that the U.N. doesn't do a very
good job on peacekeeping is the one that John Bolton mentioned,
Eritrea and Ethiopia. There you have a classical peacekeeping
scenario, a struggle over territory between two countries. It
is something that the U.N. has done well in the past and could
do well and probably will do well in this instance, but it
won't do it very efficiently.
As John pointed out, there are three battalions, 3,000 of
the 4,200 troops will be these three infantry battalions. Their
task is to man checkpoints and to provide security for the
members of the military coordination commission. That is the
group that is implementing the peace treaty. I suspect that
they are providing security to the members of the coordination
commission, from irate taxpayers, since having 3,000 troops
stand around will undoubtedly be expensive.
But I think the reason this was added late, these troops
into the peacekeeping mix for this particular operation, is
that bureaucracies tend to ignore problems when they can, and
when they can't, they tend to overreact and do things that are
wasteful and inefficient but at least display action, zeal if
not effectiveness. So when the peacekeepers were attacked in
Sierra Leone, people got concerned about the security of
peacekeepers. Therefore these three battalions were added, not
that they will do anything, not that they will have any
particular result.
In that regard, if I could offer an aside, this all sounds
like the security measures being taken at the State Department.
I am sure Madeleine Albright will sleep better at night knowing
that if I return, or any other retired officer misses the food
in the State Department cafeteria and we drop by for a meal,
that we will be escorted by a security officer. But I don't
think that is where the problem is, and I don't think spending
resources on dealing with that aspect of security is going to
be particularly effective.
The third option I mentioned was doing nothing. That is a
real option but a real problem. Certainly, when you let the
U.N. do it, there is the possibility of a great deal of waste
and also the possibility of failure. But to do nothing is
basically to say, for large parts of the world, there is no
superpower. We simply don't care enough to do anything and
whoever is the meanest person or the meanest power in the
neighborhood is the one that is going to dominate.
So I think doing nothing is a difficult option and the U.N.
ought to be pressured to do better. And the U.S. needs to
carefully evaluate its contribution. I think perhaps more
military observers--I can recognize the reluctance to deploy
units of armed forces to these operations. But there is a
military observer component, those are individual officers who
play critical roles in making sure that confidence building
exercises succeed. So that would be one area where the U.S.
could have a presence with very little exposure, very little
risk.
I think there are logistics and intelligence support that
could be provided without trying to underwrite a major portion
of the Pentagon's budget by charging the U.N. for these
services. But I think basically they will all have to lean on
the U.N. to do better, to do more when it comes to dealing with
these external factors, or in some cases, to do less. In the
case of the Congo, I think that is one where basically you just
walk away from it until you can find a political solution. And
perhaps you can stop treating Mr. Kabila like the president and
more like the gangster that he is. The same with Charles
Taylor.
In any event, one critical aspect is what we are here to do
today, and that is, to have a dialog about peacekeeping. I hope
the Administration will come back to the table. I hope that
when Congress interacts with the Administration, it is designed
to evaluate some difficult situations, evaluate some unpleasant
alternatives, none of which is particularly good and come up
with what is right for the United States, and not get into a
partisan game of gotcha. And in that spirit, I am very honored
and pleased to be here today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Jett is available in the
appendix.]
Chairman Gilman [presiding]. Thank you very much for your
extensive analysis, Mr. Ambassador Jett, and now we turn to
Edward C. Luck. We are pleased to have on our panel Mr. Luck,
the Executive Director of the Center for the Study of
International Organization and a recognized authority on U.N.
issues. He has held numerous key positions with the United
Nations Association and is the author of scores of articles on
international organizational issues. You may proceed Mr. Luck.
You may summarize your statement, put the full statement on the
record or in any manner in which you deem appropriate. Please
proceed.
STATEMENT OF EDWARD C. LUCK, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR THE
STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS OF THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF LAW AND THE WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PRINCETON
UNIVERSITY, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, UNITED NATIONS ASSOCIATION OF
THE UNITED STATES
Mr. Luck. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for that offer
of flexibility. However, I will exercise uncharacteristic self
restraint and avoid commenting on the points made by my two
colleagues on the panel. And I will indeed offer an abbreviated
version orally of my testimony, and if I could submit the
written for the record, I would appreciate that.
Chairman Gilman. Without objection.
Mr. Luck. Thank you. It is certainly an honor, Mr.
Chairman, to testify before this distinguished Committee and
certainly on such a timely and important topic. Over the past
decade, our nation's support for peacekeeping has resembled
nothing so much as a roller coaster ride; rising, falling and
rising again in breathless succession. In the process, we have
accumulated peacekeeping arrears on the order of $1 billion,
undermined our credibility as a reformer and a leader in the
world body, and crippled the U.N.'s ability to do the job right
in the first place. This hearing will serve our national
interests well if it calls for two things: one, a bipartisan
approach that meets the legitimate needs of both Congress and
the executive branch; and two, an equilibrium between the
overuse and underuse of this often misapplied and misunderstood
security tool.
Mr. Luck. In fact, one of the things I agreed with in
John's testimony was his reference to needing to keep
peacekeeping on an even keel. I think that is something we can
all agree on.
In terms of the first point, on bipartisanship, Mr.
Chairman, we would do well to recall that the surest route to a
strong and affirmative foreign policy is maximizing executive-
legislative cooperation and minimizing partisanship.
None of us would embrace all of the provisions of PDD-25 or
the Helms-Biden bill with great enthusiasm, yet they do offer
the basis for a politically sustainable approach to
peacekeeping, one that may even permit our nation to speak with
a single voice in international fora. Of course, that again
makes me an optimist, but I think it is at least conceivable.
On the one hand, an overly rigid interpretation of the
tenets of PDD-25 ensured international inaction in the face of
unfolding genocide in Rwanda in the spring of 1994. On the
other hand, the prudence embodied in PDD-25 has encouraged some
positive steps as well.
One, command and control arrangements have been clarified.
Two, greater discipline and selectivity have governed
Washington's choices about whether peacekeeping is the right
option and whether the U.N. is the right vehicle.
Three, full transparency has been introduced into Security
Council decision-making and into U.N. operations on the ground.
Four, the Security Council has worked to bring greater
clarity and specificity to peacekeeping mandates to deal more
explicitly with the economic motivations to conflict, to bring
the perpetrators of war crimes to justice, and to undertake
more on-site inspection tours like the current one in Sierra
Leone this week.
Five, sharing the burden, NATO has been given
responsibility for the largest operations, in Bosnia-
Herzegovina and in Kosovo, and regional actors originally took
the lead in East Timor, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
Six, others are supplying 97 percent of the U.N. forces and
taking most of the risks.
And, finally, seven, the executive branch is consulting
earlier, more frequently, and more fully with Congress and is
encouraging more congressional visits to field missions.
I am pleased to see that over the past year legislators on
both sides of the aisle have supported a series of new or
expanded missions aimed at either stemming violence in places
like East Timor, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of
the Congo or securing internationally recognized borders, as
between Lebanon and Israel and between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
There appears to be a growing recognition even in this town
that while peacekeepers are not miracle workers, and conditions
often are not propitious for U.N. intervention, there are times
when peacekeeping offers the best available option. This is
particularly the case where we share with others an interest in
seeing a conflict dampened, but our national security interests
are not so acute as to justify unilateral action.
Turning to my second theme, regaining equilibrium, it is
worth recalling that from 1998 to 1994 U.N. peacekeeping
deployments quadrupled, reaching unprecedented levels. This
rapid expansion was propelled by the end of the Cold War, the
changing nature of conflict and the ``CNN effect,'' not, I
would emphasize, by the predilections of one party or
Administration. The initial surge, in fact, occurred under the
Bush Administration, which approved a dozen new U.N.
peacekeeping operations and several U.N. observer missions.
At its outset the Clinton Administration maintained this
momentum, but, with rising concerns on Capitol Hill and
reverses in the field, it, in fact, led a rapid retreat from
peacekeeping after 1994.
By mid-1999, just a little over a year ago, the number of
deployed peacekeepers had fallen to a post-Cold War low of just
over 12,000, about one-sixth of the levels in 1994. Today, the
total number of peacekeepers, including soldiers, observers,
and police, has grown to a bit under 40,000, of which less than
900 are Americans, and, of course, many of those Americans are
police or observers.
The expansion over the past year has been rapid by any
standard, tripling in just 12 months, but the current level is
still only one-half of that of 6 years ago.
Now, should Members of Congress be concerned that
peacekeeping is growing out of control? At this point, I would
say no for several reasons. One, the U.S. and other permanent
members of the Security Council are monitoring the situation
and are quite cautious about undertaking new commitments.
Two, it is generally acknowledged that the growth rates of
the early 1990's were not sustainable, and there is no desire
to repeat the mistakes of a decade ago.
Three, the near debacle in the early stages of the Sierra
Leone operation this past May rang alarm bells at the U.N. and
in national capitals about the capacity of the system for
further growth.
Four, the Secretary General, sharing the caution of key
member states--and I would say that the three of us agree on
this on this panel--has refused early deployment in the Congo
given uncertain conditions there and doubts about the adequacy
of the current plans.
And fifth, as Ambassador Jett has properly noted, the fact
that the U.N. has commissioned a series of candid assessments
on Srbrenica, on Rwanda, and by the Brahimi panel is itself an
encouraging sign of the growing openness to external and
internal criticism. Each of these reports contained sober
warnings about again promising more than the U.N. or its member
states individually are prepared to deliver.
In assessing U.N. capacity to oversee its peacekeeping
operations, I would stress that it would be wrong to
overemphasize the importance of quantitative measures. Capacity
depends essentially on the willingness of member states to
provide military, political and financial support for the
missions they vote for. Qualitative factors--and, again, I
think the three of us would agree on this--particularly the
attitudes and motivations of the parties on the ground, usually
matter more in determining the success of a mission than the
numbers of blue helmets. Therefore, it is easier and more
productive to undertake a number of well-conceived and well-
received missions than just a few problematic ones. The key is
getting the mandate right through stronger staffing, better
intelligence and analysis, and the employment of prudent worst-
case reasoning in Security Council deliberations.
In closing, let me offer a few words on how to encourage
further steps to strengthen U.N. peacekeeping capacity. The
prospects for achieving further reforms, such as those proposed
by the Brahimi panel, will depend in part on the maintenance of
bipartisanship in our national policies. The willingness of
other member states to go along with the U.S.-backed reform
proposals and the Helms-Biden benchmarks, including a reduction
in U.S. assessments, could well be undermined if the U.S.
approach again becomes subject to strident partisanship, sudden
fluctuations, and uncertain or inadequate funding.
Last month's Millennium Summit, including sessions of the
Security Council and the P-5, reaffirmed the continuing need
for strong and effective peacekeeping. The world's leaders all
recognized that peacekeeping is just one tool in our security
tool kit, which includes conflict prevention, peaceful
settlement, peace-building and peace enforcement, and, yes,
John, sometimes nation-building as well, and that the burdens
should be shared with regional actors wherever possible.
They acknowledged that a great deal needs to be done before
the U.N. can even begin to realize its potential as a force for
peace, and that it is in national capitals and in parliamentary
hearings such as this that this vital work must begin.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to contribute
to what hopefully will be a process of reflection and
reaffirmation. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Luck is available in the
appendix.]
Chairman Gilman. Thank you, Mr. Luck, and the entire panel
for your excellent testimony today. We are very much concerned
in the Congress that there is proper oversight and proper
review before engaging in peacekeeping. We are also concerned
about a report recently issued by the GAO at our request that
estimated the cost of U.N. peacekeeping for the current U.N.
budget will be about $2.7 billion, which is something that
gives a great deal of concern to many of the Members of
Congress.
Mr. Bolton, let me address the first question to you. What
are the chances that the U.N. can effectively implement the
recommendations of the recent report issued by the former
Algerian Foreign Minister Mr. Brahimi, and will the
organizational culture of the U.N. block such an
implementation?
Mr. Bolton. Mr. Chairman, I think that the odds of being
able to implement many of the recommendations of the Brahimi
report are quite small for a number of reasons, but I think the
problem with the Brahimi report comes not so much from the
technical aspects of what that group recommended as from the
fact that it basically misses the larger point.
The problems in U.N. peacekeeping are not primarily
technical in nature. They are primary political in nature. Let
me just go back to the example of Sierra Leone, because I think
that is a good illustration of the point.
The Brahimi report makes a lot of recommendations about
command and control interoperability, joint training and things
like that. The dispute that now exists between the Indian force
commander General Jetley and the Nigerians has nothing to do
with training, or communication; it has to do with fundamental
political differences. General Jetley believes the Nigerian
forces and indeed the Nigerian Government are pursuing their
own separate agenda in Sierra Leone. The arguments that the
Nigerians are making go to the fact that they resent being
controlled by General Jetley and the U.N. as a whole, which to
me tends to corroborate what General Jetley has been saying
from the outset. But these are not fundamentally technical
questions.
Second, I think the thrust of the Brahimi report--and I did
elaborate on this in my prepared statement before the
International Operations Subcommittee--the thrust of what they
argue would transfer substantial responsibility to the
Secretariat, on the assumption that you are going to have a
large increase in U.N. peacekeeping responsibilities of some
variety. I am not going to argue whether that is good or bad at
the moment. It just simply assumes that that happens, that it
has already happened. The Brahimi report vests most of the
operational functions necessary to carry these new mandates out
in the Secretariat, in parts of the U.N. that are responsible
directly to the Secretary General rather than being directly
responsible to the Security Council. I think that is
fundamentally wrong.
I think that even though, obviously, large parts of the
Charter have never come into operation, as contemplated by
Chapter 7, if you were to have a continuation and expansion of
U.N. peacekeeping activity, I think operational responsibility
for those U.N. operations should be responsible to the members
of the Security Council, and particularly responsible to the
five permanent members, whether that is through the Military
Staff Committee, as the Charter provides, or something else.
I think the Brahimi report is a conscious and fundamental
recommendation to shift responsibility from the member
governments to the Secretariat, and I think that is wrong.
Chairman Gilman. Mr. Bolton, what are the main deficiencies
of the Administration's overall implementation of our policy
toward U.N. peacekeeping as embodied in PDD-25?
Mr. Bolton. Mr. Chairman, I think the central problem with
PDD-25 is that it really does not put constraints on what the
Administration wants to do. And I would have to say here that
while, as a former executive branch official myself, I am a
vigorous advocate for flexibility in executive branch decision-
making, I think when the executive announces a policy that it
intends to follow, it ought to be something that can be debated
and that the Administration can be judged on. And I think the
problem with PDD-25 is that fundamentally it is so internally
contradictory that it does not really provide policy guidance
at all. I think that is reflected in the recent upsurge in
Administration support for the peacekeeping activities we have
been discussing here today.
I don't think this is a partisan issue, I really do not. I
know that from times I used to testify before this Committee
when I was in the executive branch, I know what it is like for
the Administration to be on that side of the dispute, but would
argue that the fundamental incoherence of PDD-25 is what causes
much of the problem in the ongoing disagreements between
Congress and the executive branch. I think the real impetus
within the Administration is to be extremely supportive of
peacekeeping. I think that is why in principle they have been
as vigorous as they have been, and I do not think that we have
had a real discussion of where that leads.
For example, the next big peacekeeping operation, UNGWB,
the U.N. Gaza-West Bank mission, which I think is something
that we are going to start hearing about in the near future, I
think that would be a catastrophe, but I think the Secretary
General's wheels are already spinning on that.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you, Mr. Bolton.
Mr. Jett, Ambassador Jett, I am going to ask you the same
question I have asked. What are the chances the U.N. can
effectively implement the recommendations of the recent report
of the former Algerian Foreign Minister Mr. Brahimi?
Mr. Jett. I think, Mr. Chairman, it will be able to make
some of the changes. Some of the organizational changes are
possible. I think changing the basic character of the
institution is probably not possible, but for me I don't think
it matters all that much whether the changes are made if the
U.N. continues to ignore the other factors that I mentioned,
the factors like a country's resources, whether the diamonds
are fueling the civil war, what role the neighboring states are
playing, what role the politicians within the country are
playing.
Until you attempt to influence those factors, you can have
the best peacekeepers in the world and put as many of them as
you want into a situation, but if the local actors are
determined to fight, if there are diamonds there to fuel their
arms purchases, if the neighboring countries are all involved
either for profit or for other reasons, then you have got a
hopeless situation, and peacekeeping will not succeed.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you. And my time--I am overstaying
my time here, and just, Mr. Jett, would you comment on the same
question, the Brahimi report, Mr.--Mr. Luck, would you be able
to tell us whether that report issued by Mr. Brahimi, what are
the chances it can be effectively implemented?
Mr. Luck. Yes, I would be happy to.
There are a number of aspects. I agree that some parts
would be difficult to implement. There is one very important
provision that I think is utterly implementable, in some ways
is already happening. That is the Secretary General and the
Secretariat ought to be able to tell the member states in the
Security Council when the mission is not implementable, when
the plans are not sensible. And that, in fact, is what has
happened in the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The
Secretariat has said, no, let's slow this down. We are not
ready to go forward. These plans simply do not make sense. And
I think that is very refreshing and is very much needed.
Second of all, there are a number of things that individual
member states can do if they want to in terms of stand-by
sources and interoperability and other things. And the
initiative is up to the individual member states, not up to the
Secretariat, although the Secretary General has been
encouraging such steps for many, many years.
There are some dollar signs attached to the Brahimi report,
and a lot of what they recommend is a bolstering of the
Secretariat capability, and that would cost money, and that may
not be a popular thing in this town, particularly with our
arrears in peacekeeping being so large.
Finally, I would say that much of the report reads really
as a wakeup call to the member states, telling them to get
serious about this if they want positive results. And that, I
think, is something which is utterly implementable, but
unfortunately the track record has been quite lamentable in
terms of most member states.
Chairman Gilman. I regret I am going to have to go on to
another hearing. I am going to ask Mr. Bereuter to conduct the
balance of the hearing.
And Mr. Delahunt is recognized.
Mr. Delahunt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I agree with some statements by Mr. Bolton, interestingly.
I would direct my questions to Mr. Luck.
You indicated earlier in broad terms that these issues are
very complex, and there are no simple answers, and that
flexibility is essential, and that the idea or the concept that
there is a one-size-fits-all approach is just simply
unworkable.
My own sense is that each of these cases, I would suggest
that the only true measurement in terms of potential success
and in terms of what should be done is the adequacy of that
particular plan and whether, after careful and thorough review,
there is a level of expectations of success that meet the
requirements. Any comment?
Mr. Luck. Yes, I would be happy to. And actually I did
agree with a number of things that John said, but we have done
this back and forth so many times, we have to kid each other a
little bit.
But I certainly agree with his point about one size fits
all. I would say, though, that if you look at the last 5 or 6
years, there, in fact, has been a lot of flexibility both on
the part of the Administration and on the part of the U.N. The
approach has been different, really, in one case after another.
We see cases where NATO has taken the lead in Bosnia-
Herzegovina and Kosovo. We see places where an individual
member state, in the case of Australia, takes the lead in East
Timor, and others follow where there is no strong regional
organization. And we have seen the up-and-down effort by ECOWAS
and others to try to resolve problems in Liberia and Sierra
Leone. So I think we have seen a lot of flexibility on this.
Again, what matters in the end is whether the parties to
the conflict are at all amenable to a reasonable solution. If
they are, then the international community can be very helpful.
But it is very, very difficult to impose that. Ambassador Jett
mentioned his experience in Mozambique, where the people really
ran with it, and it was a considerable success, and as he
pointed out----
Mr. Delahunt. But I think that underscores my point about
individual cases and conditions and the analysis and evaluation
of conditions and circumstances in a particular situation. And
if there is a certain clarity, whether it is the United Nations
or whether there is an alternative response available, that, in
my opinion, ought to be the measurement of particularly United
States engagement, United States involvement.
Mr. Luck. I think there is a sense by many other member
states that the U.S. and Congress in particular are
fundamentally allergic to peacekeeping and fundamentally
allergic to involvement. It is a political feeling as much as
anything else----
Mr. Delahunt. I think there is a certain validity to that
sentiment, because I think we find ourselves in a conundrum. We
have the GAO report. The Chairman indicated that there are a
lot of Members concerned about a $2.7 billion financing of
peacekeeping. Yet I think it was your term, unless our national
interests are particularly acute, i.e., oil or some other
something else that fits the description of acute, we do not
want to make a commitment of American troops.
So there is a utilization, I do not want to call it a
manipulation, of the United Nations to do the dirty work--and I
think the most clear case is Rwanda. I mean, what do we do in a
situation intrastate like Rwanda where there is a genocide that
is occurring, where 800,000 people are being slaughtered? Do we
do nothing? Do we take the third option? I think maybe that was
Ambassador Jett's--what do we do? Is that an option that is
available to a civilized superpower?
Mr. Luck. If I could just make one a little comment on
that, it seems to me that there is a tendency very often to say
that we either have national interests or we don't have
national interests. Like a light switch, it is either on or off
when most of these cases are shades of gray. We have some
interests, and I think upholding international human rights and
humanitarian standards and preventing genocide are part of our
fundamental national values. But we have to sort of calibrate
this and not say we have zero interest or total interest----
Mr. Delahunt. I do not disagree, and the reason why I
utilized the Rwanda case is I think there is a degree there,
there is a level of atrocities or crimes against humanity that
are committed that almost compels something to happen. What do
we do? What do we do, Mr. Bolton, in the case of Rwanda?
Mr. Bolton. Well, to take the specifics of Rwanda, it seems
to me that the cold, cruel fact is there is very little that we
are able to do. And I think that while there is certainly a
moral outrage that everybody feels watching what happened
there, there are moral obligations that the President of the
United States has as well for the protection of American life.
Mr. Delahunt. Can I ask you this question? What would have
been--this is hypothetical, obviously--in terms of intervention
by the United States in a lead role in Rwanda to save 800,000
lives, what would have been our exposure even just simply to
freeze the situation?
Chairman Gilman. The time of the gentleman has expired, but
I want him to have the leeway, so please proceed with your
response.
Mr. Bolton. I don't think it is possible at this removed
date to calculate what the risk to Americans or others who
might have taken part in such an intervention would be. But I
think that the decision-maker, in this case the President, has
an obligation, has a moral obligation to be able to justify
what interest it is of ours that permits him, or compels him if
you will, to put American troops in a situation where we could
be pretty sure that some substantial number were going to be
killed or wounded.
And I think if I could refer to the example of Somalia, it
was the feeling in Congress, after the deaths of the 18 Rangers
in Mogadishu, on a bipartisan basis really, that the
Administration was not able to explain why they had died. It
was not a case where Congress said ``18 dead Americans is too
many.'' It was a case where Congress said ``18 dead Americans
for no reason is too many.''
Mr. Delahunt. I guess what I am saying, Mr. Bolton--if I
could have another additional minute or so, Mr. Chairman?
Chairman Gilman. The gentleman is recognized for an
additional minute without objection.
Mr. Delahunt. In the case of Rwanda, it is my memory that
there was substantial information and available data that
indicated that hundreds of thousands of people were being
slaughtered. If that in and of itself is not sufficient
rationale for action to be taken, hopefully multilateral, for
some sort of intervention to prevent that from happening, where
are we? Where have we come?
Mr. Bolton. Well, I think in that sense it would be
extremely helpful to hear the debate within the Administration.
Secretary of State Albright has said publicly now that although
she cast the U.S. votes in the Security Council while the
Rwanda situation was unfolding, that she did so under
instructions and in protest.
Mr. Delahunt. What is your opinion, Mr. Bolton; where would
you be in that situation in that--I am not sure I have all the
facts available to me, so acknowledging that, do you agree with
me in terms of my conclusion that, if there is anything that
should be a vital interest of the United States, it is the
calculation that we do have the capacity to stop a genocide of
hundreds of thousands of people, and there is some sort of
moral obligation on the part of this country to prevent that
from happening.
Mr. Bolton. I think it was very hard to see at the time and
to predict what the extent of it was going to be. What went
through the Administration's mind, I cannot say. But I can say
that looking at decision-making in Washington and in London,
and in the other capitals of the five permanent members of the
Security Council, that it was not simply in Washington that
there was no desire to be involved. Quite the contrary. In the
case of France, I think there was active involvement on the
other side.
So while in retrospect the moral question looked clear at
the time, I think it is a lot more complicated. And I am not
defending the Administration's position. I do not know what I
would have done in those circumstances. But I think it is a
mistake simply to say that there is a moral obligation on the
part of the United States that triggers an unlimited,
immeasurable commitment of American blood.
Mr. Bereuter. [Presiding.] The time of the gentleman has
expired.
The Chair recognizes himself under the normal order.
Gentlemen, thank you very much for your testimony.
Mr. Luck, there is an allergy about the use of peacekeeping
forces of the United States abroad, and it relates, I think, to
very bad decisions by Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and those
around him in terms of what happened in Mogadishu. Let's be
blunt. The Defense Department ignored the requests of the field
commanders for additional resources that caused us to be unable
to respond. The United Nations got the blame, in large part
without cause, for what happened there. And, the U.N. got the
blame because the Congress was bypassed with respect to
peacekeeping operations in Bosnia, and because the best advice
of Congress was ignored in the case of Kosovo.
Ambassador Jett, you have two points I want to follow up on
in your testimony. First, your comments about the impact of
patronage on the leadership necessary at the United Nations to
lead 28,000 peacekeepers with only 32 officers in New York. The
developing countries or less developed countries object because
those officers in New York are primarily from developed country
military as you put it. What do we do about that situation? Do
we persist and say, okay, that is where the leadership comes
from, and we simply have to have greater capacity there even if
it comes mostly from developed countries? What do we do with
what I think is a real problem that you point out?
Mr. Jett. Well, Mr. Chairman, I do not have an easy
solution to that problem either, but I think we have to be
fairly insistent. The gratis personnel were offered--I think
some of them were there, and then this objection came from
people who saw those as plum jobs to be had for their people.
The Brahimi report it talks about changing the culture of
the organization. That is one of the ways that the culture of
the organization has to be changed.
There is this attitude that peacekeeping is something
somebody else pays for, when 97 percent of it is paid for by
the First World, and so it is a cost-free exercise for
everybody else, and, in fact, may result in a few jobs. So that
kind of attitude needs to change. I am not sure it will, but I
think we should be insistent that it does.
Mr. Bereuter. You also point out in your paper that you
believe the U.S. should push the U.N. to look beyond internal
reforms to control those external factors that prevent
successful peacekeeping. Can you give me an example of what you
mean there, please?
Mr. Jett. Yes, sir. Again, those external factors are the
local actors in the conflict, the country's resources and the
country's external forces or neighbors usually. In the case of
the Congo, you have the armies of six countries involved, some
for--like Rwanda, because they are not going to stand by and
see the people who committed genocide be given safe haven in
the Congo. You have other countries like Zimbabwe involved
because the President there supposedly is making a profit off
diamond concessions. So you have all of those countries
involved for various interests, generally playing an unhelpful
role.
You have Mr. Kabila, who is as irresponsible a leader as
one could find these days, who seems ready to pay any price as
long as it is not his hold on power. Yet he comes to New York,
and he is feted and treated like a world leader. And then you
have the diamonds in the Congo that are again being used to
fuel the conflict. You have got diamonds in Angola which the
U.N. has attempted to control, but did not do very well at. One
of the reports that Secretary General Annan has had come out
recently is showing up how porous the sanctions against Angola
were, and it named names. It named the President of Burkina
Faso as taking an envelope of diamonds to allow fuel and
weapons to go into Savimbi's territory and diamonds to go out.
Yet but what happens when they were confronted with that
evidence? The U.N. appointed a commission to study the
question. So you have got to connect with some enforcement.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you. I appreciate those examples.
I do want to fit in one more question for any and all of
you. I would like to know what you think about PDD-25 or about
American foreign policy with respect to our role as a world
leader to try to motivate other countries to take an
appropriate role.
For example, in the case of Rwanda, what was the
responsibility of the European countries, because of the
colonial heritage that they left, because of closer association
with the situation in Rwanda, to act? Was what happened in East
Timor with the Australians stepping forward to take a very
important leadership role something that we should suggest
should happen in Africa and other places as part of our world
responsibility for leadership? To what extent do we have a
responsibility to motivate other countries to take the lead for
peacekeeping activities?
Mr. Bolton. Perhaps I could take a quick shot at that. I
think that it is pretty clear that particularly in those areas
where the United States has only the slightest interest, that
it is important that others who feel that their circumstances
are more directly threatened do have a larger role. But I also
think we have to acknowledge, and I think the case of Sierra
Leone is a good example, that the regional powers can have
interests as well, and that their interests may fall on one or
another side of a conflict like that. So that in the case of
Indonesia, where the prior role of the Australians in
supporting the Indonesian takeover, the military takeover, or
where the Portuguese role has long been seen as unhelpful by
the Indonesians, that ultimately these things cannot be just
devolved to the regional organizations.
The real issue is what the United Nations--from the
American point of view--what the United Nations can do. It has
to be very carefully limited. And I think part of the problem
is member governments too readily throwing something into the
United Nations' lap without knowing what the consequences are
going to be. I think the referendum in East Timor is a good
example of that. I think everybody said, ``let's have the
referendum,'' without thinking through what the militias would
do, what the consequences of that would be, and what would
follow from it.
So I want to be clear. I do assign a major part of the
responsibility here to the member governments, including the
United States, for not being clear in what they are asking the
U.N. to do.
Chairman Gilman. I want to give these gentlemen a chance to
respond to this. Mr. Luck, I noticed you had your hand up.
Mr. Luck. It is a very interesting question. From the
outside, PDD-25 looks like a treaty between Congress and the
executive branch. It looks like it is primarily dealing with
consultations, relationships, prerogatives between the two
branches of government.
And I think what many countries see when they look at it,
and see in addition the Helms-Biden legislation, is, one, an
inability of the U.S. to speak with a single voice, and that, I
think, undermines a lot of this. They feel the Administration
will say one thing, and Congress will undercut it, and the
Administration is not able to deliver the money, is not able to
deliver Congress. And that, I think, is a very serious problem.
And I would point out that in the Helms-Biden legislation,
there is a provision saying that if any country--if any of the
189 member states--signs an article 43 agreement with the U.N.,
which is part of the U.S. Charter, for standby forces, then the
arrearage will not be paid.
So this is extraterritoriality writ large. We are not only
saying we do not want to have any standby forces for this kind
of contingency, we say no one should have these kinds of
arrangements with the U.N. In that sense I think we are
extending ourselves a little far, and that is not the kind of
leadership role that we ought to be playing.
Mr. Bereuter. That is the kind of issue of sovereignty that
some European countries do not share with us, as we do in the
United States, the loss of sovereignty to the United Nations.
The gentleman from New Jersey? Unless the Ambassador has a
comment.
Mr. Jett. Just one comment. I think you are right. I think
we do need to encourage other countries to take the lead.
Peacekeeping operations work best when there is a First World
country taking the lead, or NATO in the case of Kosovo, Bosnia.
In the case of East Timor, the Australians took the lead,
because they saw it in their vital national interest to do so
and committed somewhere between one-half and a quarter of their
army, navy, and air force to the initial operation, and it was
very successful. Whether it succeeds in the longer term depends
on the Indonesian military and whether they will stop
supporting the militias.
Chairman Gilman. Thank you, Ambassador.
The gentleman from New Jersey Mr. Payne is recognized.
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much. And I thank the gentlemen
for their very important testimony.
I tend to agree with the line of questioning that Mr.
Delahunt started with regarding the appropriateness of when we
do intervene. I guess that is going to be the question in the
future. When is it right, I guess, for us to become involved?
And that is going to be a very difficult question to answer in
light of what we have seen in the past.
I agree that the Rwanda situation--I tend to disagree--one
of the answers that was we don't know what the loss of life
would have been if we had intervened militarily, say, the
Western countries or the U.S.-led forces. It would appear to me
if a group of exiles in Uganda, the RPF, not even a real army
per se, but people who had been refugees from Rwanda could have
come down to Rwanda and defeated the entire militia--not
militias, but the entire army of Rwanda and had them eventually
go--with protection of the French go into Goma, it would appear
to me that if sort of an unorganized group could have routed an
entire military, then I think we are disingenuous and really
have a low opinion of our military if we question what the
result would have been if they were U.S. Rangers or Green
Beret. I think that it would have probably have been an
operation that would have seen virtually no casualties in that
particular situation.
The other example, we are dealing with Charles Taylor, and
it seems that it has been proven that he is involved with the
rogue state and their leaders in Sierra Leone, but once again,
when Doe, who was the military dictator, was held up in
Monrovia, that there was an expectation that the marines were
just going to come in and take him out. That would have ended
the whole situation. Once again it has been calculated that
there would have been no opposition to the U.S. military. As a
matter of fact, it was expected that the marines would have
gone in. That is why he stayed in Monrovia and did not leave,
because they just assumed that that would have happened. But,
of course, at the same time we had the Persian Gulf situation,
and the Administration at that time, the Bush Administration,
felt that we shouldn't get involved.
So I do think that we have really an instance where there,
in my opinion, should have been involvement on the part of our
Administration. There was none, and I think that it is perhaps
a trend for the future, which I do not see being in the best
interest of stability around the world.
I just have a question in regard to Sierra Leone with the
Indian officer in charge resigning or withdrawing and Nigerians
feeling that they should have the command. Could any of you
comment? What do you think should be--if the fact that Nigeria
is going to have and has had the largest number of peacemakers
attempting to make peace, that is it out of line for them to
feel that they should have control and command, or do you think
that there is other reasons why that is being requested?
Mr. Bolton. Perhaps I could give a brief answer to that. It
seems to me there is the question of the Nigerian role, going
to the implications for peace and stability in Sierra Leone, to
have a country that has--and I am not being critical here, but
that has had a prior role, in this case the restoration of the
Kabbah government, and has in effect been deemed by the RUF to
have taken sides. Again not being critical--I am just asking as
a matter of basic political perception, whether you want a
government like that substantially involved in the follow-on
U.N. peacekeeping force that at least in the first instance was
supposed to be neutral among the parties implementing the Lome
Agreement.
The example that occurs to me, thinking about that, was in
Somalia when Mohammed Farah Aideed saw the Pakistani battalion
land in Mogadishu and immediately make a deal with the Hawadle
subclan to provide them security at the Mogadishu airport.
Aideed concluded that the U.N. had sided with his enemies, and
from that relatively simple misperception, the involvement of
one small subclan, affected Aideed's view about the subsequent
U.N. deployment, which I think was not the only, but a major
contributing factor to the ongoing problems we had in Somalia.
I think there is an argument in the case of Sierra Leone,
given the ECOMOG role and the leading Nigerian role in it, that
a truly neutral U.N. peacekeeping force, which was what was
envisioned under the Lome agreement, should not have included
participation by forces in the prior ECOMOG force. Now, that
would have entailed bringing in new troops and would have
involved a higher cost. That is something that the United
States and the other members of the Security Council should
have faced at the front end. It just seemed easier to rehat the
ECOMOG force and the Nigerians, I think, without adequate
consideration of what that did to the political balance and
political perceptions within Sierra Leone, and that, I think,
in turn caused some of the problems.
I don't think you can move from peace enforcement back to
peacekeeping to peace enforcement, whatever flag is flying over
the troops. I think once a force loses its neutrality, it
cannot get it back.
So the question about the use of the Nigerians seems to me
to precede who ought to be in command. I think bringing in an
outsider was probably a good thing to show that the new U.N.
force was not simply going to be nothing but a follow-on to the
original ECOMOG force.
Mr. Bereuter. Mr. Luck wants to respond to your question,
too, and perhaps Ambassador Jett.
Mr. Luck. If I could just respond quickly. It is a judgment
call, but I would see the situation a bit differently than
John. I think Sierra Leone was not a place for peacekeeping; it
was a place for peace enforcement. People are afraid to use
that term anymore partly because of the resistance in this town
to anything that says ``enforcement'' in it. It was a place to
take sides. There were bad guys and good guys. There were an
elected government and others who were committing the most
incredible atrocities one can imagine.
And, yes, when the Nigerian forces were there as part of
ECOMOG, they did commit some violations here and there. That,
unfortunately, comes with the territory. It wasn't a place
where you send in disinterested peacekeepers from far away,
because, quite frankly, when things get nasty, countries have
to have an interest to stay. The disinterested stay home, or
they do not fight effectively.
And, in fact, the two Sierra Leone resolutions were in part
or in whole taken under Chapter 7, the enforcement part of the
Charter. And I think the problem was that it was implemented as
if it was peacekeeping. So I think I would have seen that a bit
differently.
Mr. Bereuter. Ambassador Jett?
Mr. Jett. Just a comment. I think John and Ed are both
correct, but the idea of replacing the Nigerians with somebody
else begs the question: Who? There did not seem to be anybody
willing to step up to the plate and play that role, and you are
left just as the Lome accord was the only deal possible because
nobody wanted to impose peace, as Ed suggested. The Nigerians
are basically there because nobody else wants to do it, and
they have a long history of corruption. The best news that has
happened for democracy in Africa has been the election of
President Obasanjo, but he can't change the culture of his
military or his country overnight. And ECOMOG was known as
``every car or movable object gone'' because they spent most of
their time looting.
I might note that when the British sent in troops, to Mr.
Delahunt's question, they had 400 troops in Sierra Leone in the
beginning to stabilize things and did it very quickly with very
few casualties. I think a first-rate army with a relatively few
number of troops and casualties can stabilize these situations.
That also begs the question of how do you get out? What is your
exit strategy, because you might be there for a long time.
Mr. Bereuter. I need to adjourn. I thank the panel for
their excellent testimony, oral and written, and to my
colleagues for their questions. I know we could go on. The
gentlewoman from Florida, I am going to have to turn the chair
over if the gentlewoman would take her questions from here.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to
look at their written statements. I have not had a chance to
review them yet.
Mr. Bereuter. I do not want to cut the gentlewoman off if
she has questions.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. I will check back.
Mr. Bereuter. Mr. Delahunt.
Mr. Delahunt. If the gentlewoman will take the chair for a
moment, I just have one question.
Mr. Bereuter. And as I leave, I would like to mention--
address the point Mr. Luck brought up, and that is that PDD-25
has no congressional input. It is not a treaty; this is
something the Administration has set out. And under article 7
it would be interesting to see--that is the one labeled
Congress and the American people trying to build support--
whether or not--if the staff would examine whether or not we
have had the kind of consultation with the Congress from the
Administration that they in their own PDD-25 said they would
conduct. Thank you.
Mr. Payne. Mr. Delahunt, since the gentlewoman is in the
chair, would you yield for a second?
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. [Presiding.] Mr. Delahunt is recognized.
Mr. Delahunt. I yield to my friend from New Jersey.
Mr. Payne. Did Mr. Bolton want to respond?
Mr. Bolton. I just wanted to make one point about the Lome
agreement, to disagree with what Ed said about sending in the
peace enforcement force from the U.N. The Lome agreement agreed
to by all the parties made Foday Sanko Vice President of Sierra
Leone and put him in charge of natural resources, including the
diamonds.
Now, you can say that the Lome agreement was flawed and
that that is the wrong thing to do, although our government
supported it, but I understand why there is an adage that says
you can't make peace unless you include the people who are
causing the war.
So the whole idea of the Lome agreement was an effort at
national reconciliation. Maybe they never should have agreed to
it, and that goes to the point I made earlier that the Security
Council, before agreeing to any deployment, should have said:
Do we have a real agreement here? And I think the subsequent
events proved that we did not. But what the parties thought
they were doing was classic peacekeeping.
Mr. Payne. And I couldn't agree more. That was a
peacemaking operation. The same way in Liberia, the Nigerians
were there to make peace, not to keep peace. There was no peace
there, and had the Nigerians not been there, there would never
have been an election. And the election turns out looks like
the bad guy won, but it was the Nigerians making peace in order
to have the elections.
And, secondly, in Sierra Leone there is no question about
the fact that they were peacemakers. If it wasn't for the
Nigerians there trying to make peace, the Kabbah government had
no military at all, and it was the Nigerian military that kept
the RUF from just consuming the whole country and taking it
over. And it definitely was a flawed peace plan, as I conclude,
but at the time there was no other solution. Nigerians were
talking about leaving because they had--you know, both
Presidents ran on ``bringing the boys home,'' so to speak, in
their Presidential election. They both agreed that they want to
bring the Nigerians home. Now they have agreed that they would
go back.
But that was a political position, and so there wasn't very
much--if the Nigerians left being as strong as they were at the
time, then they would have consumed the whole country. And so
in hindsight there is a lot of criticism about the Lome
accords, but at the time they had to stop the RUF some way.
They couldn't do it militarily. They tried to come up with the
accord. They broke it. Now I think peacemakers should go back
in and make the peace and then scrap the Lome accords and start
with a whole new system. Thank you very much.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Mr. Delahunt.
Mr. Delahunt. I would like to just listen or hear your
thoughts on the concept of nation-building. Obviously, at least
it is obvious to me, that there are situations such as East
Timor where there is a need for nation-building, and yet the
idea does not have much currency here. It immediately evokes a
negative response. Yet we have done that in the past. I can't
think of an example where, you know, security, military
presence has not been required in terms of nation-building.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, I am thinking of
Japan right now, and that might not be an appropriate analogy.
I think it was Mr. Bolton that talked about the lack of
capacity of the United Nations in terms of providing an
appropriate trusteeship. Well, where those situations cry for
nation-building, where is that initiative, where is that
effort, where does the mechanism exist for that responsibility
to be posited? Mr. Luck?
Mr. Luck. If I could comment briefly, I am sure that John
or Ambassador Jett may have comments on my comments.
But if one thinks of nation-building as something that we
do for other countries, I would agree that is probably not a
doable proposition. But if it is a question of the
international community providing some sense of stability, then
I think you are right; some sense of security, providing some
of the tools, providing encouragement, providing incentives,
then I think, in fact, we can assist and have assisted quite
successfully in a number of cases of peace-building. I would
point to Namibia as one case in point, Mozambique being
another, El Salvador, Cambodia, which is a mixed case, but at
least much better than the ``killing fields.''
And if you go back--though it is often said that this is
brand new, the U.N. has never done this before, never
intervened in internal conflicts before--I would remind people
that the largest U.N. peacekeeping operation was in the Congo
in the 1960's. It was a rough one and had lots of enforcement
aspects to it. Maybe in a sense the results did not last
forever, but they did give stability and installed someone at
least the West liked, our country liked, for a number of years.
It controlled the security situation, it controlled the
government and really ran the Congo in those early days.
So I think it can be done and has been done, and the main
question in terms of who does it best, I think, is who has
political legitimacy on the ground, who is accepted by the
people. And largely, if one nation state intervenes, it is not
in a position to achieve that. It involves an obviously
postcolonial kind of mentality. It may be, as John suggested,
that the EU would do a better job than the U.N. in Kosovo. I am
not sure that is true. I think it is awkward to have the
military side run by one organization and the civilian side run
by another organization. That certainly is very awkward.
But it seems to me that the U.N. has done at least a
respectable job in Kosovo under extremely difficult
circumstances, and we will see in a few years whether, in fact,
it produces a sensible result.
Mr. Jett. Well, I think it is a good question, Mr.
Delahunt. I don't know the responsibility can lie besides the
U.N. in most cases. There may be a regional organization, like
John suggests, in Europe, but I think Europe is sort of
organization-rich. There is an alphabet soup of organizations
in Europe all looking to justify their existence, including
NATO, and so they are willing to take these tasks on.
But that is not true in most of the rest of the world. And
basically nation-building is looked at with some disdain
because it is hard to do. How long does it take to construct an
institution? But I think the U.N. has to do it in these cases.
You cannot ignore them. And I would say that U.N. can do much
more, particularly when, like in the case of Mozambique,
essentially they walked away from Mozambique after the
elections. And there are a lot of imperfect institutions. I am
not sure how long the peace will last in Mozambique if they do
not stop having elections where the outcome is rigged by the
ruling party that has been ruling every since independence.
So I think it is something--I don't think the U.N. does
anything particularly effectively, but if there is nobody else,
the U.N. has to do it.
Mr. Bolton. I don't think the U.N. has ever done this
before. In other cases like Namibia, the U.N. supervised an
election, and then it left. In the case of El Salvador and
Nicaragua, it oversaw elections, had some minimal role after
that, but basically in both Nicaragua and El Salvador, the
people tried to put aside their differences and put a
government back together again.
I do not want to disguise this. I think in part this
depends on your philosophy of government. I don't believe that
the Government of the United States can do nation-building in
this country very effectively. I think we are engaged in a 220-
plus-year effort of our own in nation-building exercise, and we
are far from complete.
Mr. Delahunt. Maybe they should call it nation-nurturing or
the nurturing of democratic institutions. I think we all become
the captive of these labels that for different reasons have
different implications for different folks.
Mr. Bolton. Let's just call it the ``X factor'' for a
minute. In East Timor the people who are going to accomplish
the X factor are the East Timorese, and I think it is
patronizing to assume they can't do it.
Mr. Delahunt. As you said earlier, each of these situations
have different attendant circumstances and conditions. And, of
course, there is a point in time when there should be a phasing
down or a winding down, and these nations have to evolve on
their own, given their culture, their philosophy of government.
But you know, I think just to say it can't be done, I
think, opens us to potential instability all over the planet,
which I dare say is vital in terms of our national interests to
see that from not occurring, that from not happening.
Mr. Bolton. May I just follow up on one small point there
that I quoted earlier. Let me just read it again. These are not
my words. This is what the Secretary General said about what is
going on in East Timor. And referring to the difficulties that
the U.N. faces, and he says, and I quote, ``The organization
has never before attempted to build and manage a state.''
Now, it is my contention that it is neither the function
nor within the competence of the United Nations to build and
manage a state. It is not within the competence or the
authority of the United Nations. I think the people who are
going to build and manage the new state of East Timor are the
East Timorese----
Mr. Delahunt. Let me interrupt you. You made that quote,
and I have no reason to disagree with its accuracy. But at the
same time my interpretation is that the context there is much
larger in terms of an incremental, early-on investment of
resources, assistance, guidance, for lack of better terms, and
as some institutions, some of the infrastructure take hold, a
withdrawal. Ambassador Jett is right, we do not want to talk
about it because it is tough. Maybe it is impossible. I don't
know. But if you do not give it a try, I think the alternative
carries with it a much higher risk.
Mr. Luck?
Mr. Luck. I would just say that I suppose what the
Secretary General was referring to, in saying that this is so
new, is that this really a case of self-determination, where
there was no nation, there was no identity, there was no
governance whatsoever by the local people. And that is very
tough, and in a sense that is what one might or might not face
in Kosovo, but I think, as John pointed out rightly earlier, it
is very uncertain which way this is going to go.
But clearly most of the cases that we have talked about,
Mozambique, El Salvador, Cambodia, are places where there was,
in fact, a sovereign government, there was some kind of
internal disturbance, and things needed to be solved. I think
the Namibia case was a little bit closer. I would say it was
more than what John suggested, but there was a case of moving
from a colonial situation to a postcolonial situation. But in
that sense East Timor is special. But some of these are rather
different; in that case not just nation-building, but creating
any sense of a nation and having it accepted as a sovereign
state.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you. And following up on Mr.
Delahunt's questions related to the missions and the competence
of our U.N. peacekeeping missions, do you think that we should
try to move our U.N. peacekeeping efforts back to an earlier
period when it monitored cease-fires, it kept opposing armies
apart until a permanent peace could be established? And that is
what we have been talking about, whether that is time to get
back to the basics and let that be really the policy blueprint
for the U.N. peacekeeping missions.
Mr. Luck?
Mr. Luck. Well, I would say that, while it would be very
attractive to be able to follow that option, it is really
saying let's go back to the old-Cold War days when things were
defined in a very different way. Unfortunately, most of the
security challenges that we are facing are not of that nature.
And, yes, occasionally there is an Iran and Iraq, or there is
an Iraq and Kuwait, or an Ethiopia and Eritrea, and then, yes,
we can go back to traditional peacekeeping.
Mr. Luck. To me, what the problem is, and I think this is a
problem in the Brahimi report as well, and John suggested this
earlier as a problem with PDD-25, is fuzzing traditional
peacekeeping roles with some kind of enforcement role. I think
most of these situations what we are seeing are really not
truly intrastate conflicts. We are seeing some kind of trans-
national conflict, where the resources and the forces and the
refugees and the populations travel back and forth across
borders that are very poorly defined. And most of those require
some real use of force to create a secure environment. It would
be nice simply to say let us do the easy ones. Let us only go
back to cases where the U.N. would only be doing traditional
peacekeeping. But then the question comes, who is going to
handle all the rest of the situations? And these are the really
dangerous ones. Someone will have to do it or else I think we
will have a great deal of chaos in many parts of the world.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. In following up on the PDD-25 reference,
how can we improve the consultation process between Congress
and the executive branch, and what comments do you have about
the ongoing efforts on the GAO to investigate this presidential
decision directive 25?
Mr. Bolton. I think there is a fundamental problem between
Congress and the executive at this point because the--precisely
because PDD-25 is so unclear and so vague. And it permits so
many different kinds of U.N. operations under the broad and
elastic language that it contains. But I think there is also a
question of disagreement over what legitimate role the U.N. can
play. There I do disagree with Ed Luck in where the U.N. has
utility. I think the U.N. has a role, but I think it is a
limited role. And I think it is useful in relatively small
number of conflicts. Ethiopia, Eritrea today we have discussed
seems to me to be a classic place where the U.N. can play a
role. In Sierra Leone, I think it is almost inevitably not
going to succeed. And if the question is what other options are
there, I think you are hindering the development of thinking on
that if you reflexively use the United Nations. So part of this
is a disagreement between the executive branch and Congress
over what the role of the U.N. is. I wish we could have a more
straightforward debate about that and have the Administration
here and go at it. I think that is the way you move these
debates forward.
Mr. Jett. I would just add again that the only options I
see here is the U.S. participates, the U.S. lets the U.N do it
without United States participation, or we do nothing.
Unfortunately, the Eritrea/Ethiopia conflict where classical
peacekeeping is possible is the rare exception today. It is a
civil war that is today's typical conflict and those are much
more messy situations. Would we really stand by and let Rwanda
happen again in a place like Burundi or somewhere else. I
suspect that actually we might because we haven't gotten very
far in the discussion about what we would do in such a
situation, and I hope this hearing pushes that discussion a
little further forward.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Mr. Luck.
Mr. Luck. Just to comment briefly on the question about
PDD-25 and congressional-executive relations, I agree with John
that there is a general problem on foreign policy, and I would
guess on domestic policy as well, between the executive branch
and Congress these days. I don't recall, going back 10, 20
years, that on peacekeeping and other things having to do with
the U.N., there was this very intense partisanship and mistrust
on both sides. And I think that very often the U.N. is used as
a way of getting after the Administration or vice versa. I
think a lot of it has to do with money and the prerogatives of
Congress over finance.
And I understand why Congress does not like being presented
with bills and told oh, we have already signed off on this in
New York. I think a much better and much earlier form of
consultation needs to be worked out. And I hope after the
elections and after we get to a new Administration and a new
Congress, this can be looked at again because viewed from New
York and viewed from other member states, the U.S., for all of
its unprecedented power in the world, seems totally unable to
deliver on our power and our promise because of this kind of
blockage, which comes up again and again and again.
We will see what the dynamics and what the relationships
are come January. But I hope we can start anew, because
otherwise I think we will look like a rather pathetic giant up
in New York.
Thank you.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much. Thank you, gentlemen,
and I thank the visitors for being here with us. The Committee
is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
Prepared Statement of Hon. Benjamin A. Gilman, a Representative in
Congress from the State of New York, Chairman, Committee on
International Relations
I am very pleased to welcome our witnesses this morning to this
long-delayed hearing on a ``Review of the Administration's Peacekeeping
Policy Blueprint'' and how the Administration has applied its policy
blueprint for four key UN peacekeeping operations.
We were briefed last week on the long-delayed investigation by the
General Accounting Office into the Presidential Decision Directive
Number 25--the process whereby the U.S. approves U.N. and other
multilateral Peace Operations and provides timely and relevant
information to Congress concerning their implementation.
This report was requested late last year by this Committee on a
bipartisan basis and follows a number of similar GAO reports on
peacekeeping-related topics conducted over the past several years on a
timely basis and with the cooperation of the Administration.
Today, U.N. peacekeeping is facing very difficult challenges on the
ground--The decision by the Indian Government to pull its peacekeepers
might well lead to a breakdown of UN peacekeeping efforts in Sierra
Leone, the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has
refused to cooperate with the UN in the deployment of a peacekeeping
force in that country, as there are continuing obstacles from the
Indonesian military and police forces in the ongoing mission in East
Timor. These developments in turn raise key questions about the process
on how the U. S. approves and supports these missions.
Today we still have many questions about the process whereby the
Clinton Administration approved these missions. Unfortunately, we got
few satisfactory responses from the GAO on how the Administration has
applied its own policy blueprint to the missions now on the ground in
Africa, Asia and Europe.
This project was requested on a bipartisan basis with the Ranking
Member Mr. Gejdenson. The GAO reported to us that it lacks full and
independent access to agency records needed to complete its work.
Furthermore, it has no access to key documents that would show whether
this peacekeeping policy blueprint was fully taken into account when
deciding to support some peacekeeping operations. With no independent
access to records, the GAO feels that the integrity and reliability of
its work has been compromised.
The GAO investigators have produced an extensive summary of their
requests to the Administration, many of which were ignored or denied on
very dubious grounds. The summary, which I will make available at
today's hearing fully documents the stone-walling and delaying tactics
from State department officials that has seemed to characterize this
entire investigation into the process by which we review and approve
multilateral peace operations, including U.N. Peace Operations.
While the work of the GAO in this area is not yet complete, it is
becoming clear that the Administration has yet to take a cooperative
attitude toward the completion of this peacekeeping review by the GAO
investigators.
In short, there is a concern that Congress is being shortchanged in
the quality, quantity and timeliness of the information we require to
make our own decisions concerning these missions.
In short, we are still in need of timely and complete cooperation
from the Administration on this pending review by the GAO of how these
operations are approved and conducted. And most disappointing of all is
the failure of the State Department to make available to the Committee
the two witnesses we had requested. Undersecretary Thomas Pickering and
Deputy Legal Adviser James Thessin are evidently not going to join us
and discuss how the department is handling policy and process questions
related to this GAO investigation.
I will, however, ask for their cooperation in providing answers
within 48 hours to questions related to this ongoing GAO investigation.
Today, we are very fortunate to have with us an outstanding private
sector panel to review the peacekeeping policy issues before the
Committee today. The panel includes the Honorable John R. Bolton,
Senior Vice President of the American Enterprise Institute and former
Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations,
Ambassador David Jett, Dean of the International Center at the
University of Florida and former Ambassador to Mozambique and Peru and
Mr. Edward C. Luck, Executive Director of the Center for the Study of
International Organization.
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