Iraq: A New Approach To Peacekeeping and Peace-making

By Joseph E. Schwartzberg
Professor Emeritus University of Minnesota

 
For presentation at the Global Constitutional Forums' conference,
"IRAQ: WHAT TO DO?"
National Constitution Center, Philadelphia, PA, April 12, 2008
 
 
Introduction:
 
In the brief time at our disposal I would like you to imagine the existence of two agencies within the United Nations system which, had they actually been available at a particular juncture along the career trajectory of Saddam Hussein, might have had a profound and salutary effect on the subsequent course of history in the Middle East. The first of these agencies would be a standing, robust, elite, all-volunteer, internationally recruited, multi-tasked United Nations Peace Corps. The second would be an elite internationally recruited United Nations Administrative Reserve Corps. To what extent these two agencies might yet play a useful role in bringing order to the chaos created by the US intervention in Iraq is difficult to say; but I will also offer some speculations on that question.
 
I shall begin by discussing briefly my concept of each of the two proposed institutions. A fuller exposition is available in relevant publications in the journal Global Governance and in the UN Chronicle.  I have brought copies with me for distribution to those of you who are interested.[i]
 
 
The United Nations Peace Corps:
 
The UN Peace Corps (or UNPC) that I envisage would, at full strength, constitute a highly trained, elite, multi-purpose, rapidly deployable body of roughly half a million men and women. It would be divided into three commands: a Western Command for the Americas; a Central Command, the largest of the three, for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; and an Eastern Command for the rest of Asia and the Pacific. Each command would operate out of bases established in strategically chosen locales in stable states with moderate and democratizing regimes. Memoranda of understanding between host countries and the UN would establish the rules under which such bases would be operated. The bases would contain not only the billeting and training facilities for the UN forces, but also stockpiles of equipment and supplies needed for various types of missions, including not only peacekeeping and peace-building deployments, but also humanitarian relief operations in the aftermath of natural or man-made disasters. In time, each command would obtain its own logistic capability to project personnel into places where they are needed; but, for the foreseeable future, it would have to lease ships and aircraft from one or more of the world's major powers.
 
Operational deployment of UNPC forces would normally require an enabling resolution by the UN Security Council. That implies the concurrence of the five veto-wielding powers, including the United States. The UNPC would be lightly armed and would use force only in self-defense or to protect innocent civilians in the face of attacks seriously threatening their personal safety. Its power and legitimacy would be derived not from its military strength, but the from fact of its being sanctioned by the United Nations, rather than being created to further the national interests of a single major power or a small group of like-minded nations. The Corps' actions would be of both a policing and a military nature and could include some or all of the following: monitoring the movement of potentially aggressive military forces, occupying positions to separate likely combatants, disarming combatants on a non-partisan basis, supervising troop withdrawals from and to specified locales, keeping supply lines open for the delivery of humanitarian assistance, protecting key elements of the local infrastructure, preventing looting of official and private property, providing safe-havens for groups likely to be singled out for genocide or ethnic cleansing and, in the case of failed states, preparing the way for UN civilian operations, including those of an UN Administrative Reserve Corps, which I shall discuss shortly. All of this would require a level of discipline and a unity of command that have seldom, if ever, been obtained in purely military operations.
 
When not deployed in field operations, the UN forces would function in their host countries more or less in the mode of the US Peace Corps or comparable agencies maintained by several democratic states.  They could, for example, provide assistance in building up the local infrastructure, assist with public health and educational activities, and offer diverse types of training to the local citizenry, within the limits of available budgets. Performing such services would help maintain a high level of morale, foster an esprit de corps, and contribute to the popular perception that the UNPC was a benign international entity.
 
 
The United Nations Administrative Reserve Corps:
 
In certain situations, especially those involving failed states or regimes deemed by the UN to be illegitimate, the UNPC would likely be asked to work with personnel of the proposed United Nations Administrative Reserve Corps, which I shall henceforth refer to as UNARC. The personnel comprising UNARC's would be graduates of a three-year course in a proposed UN Administrative Academy (or UNAA). UNAA students, both male and female, would be an elite group competitively recruited from all over the world, but especially from countries of the global South. In addition to being given training in basic administrative skills, each student would be required to develop some topical specialization, such as public health or community development, to be proficient in one or more appropriate languages, and to acquire in-depth knowledge of the history and culture of at least one major world region.
 
Upon graduation from the UNAA, some reservists might be assigned immediately to field service; but most would go back to their respective countries and would resume whatever jobs they had prior to their UNAA training. Their period of reserve service would last not less than ten years and would be renewable by mutual consent of UNARC and the concerned individuals and governments. This arrangement would necessitate memoranda of understanding between the UN and the countries from which academy students are recruited to ensure that the reservists would be promptly released from duty when needed for UNARC duty and that they would thereby suffer no loss in seniority or of other job benefits. This is a simple application of the pattern under which military reserves work in the US and many other countries.
 
The purpose of UNARC personnel would be to step into the administrative breach in areas where governance had ceased to function effectively, normally working under a UN chief of mission appointed by the Secretary General. They would operate in close coordination with the UNPC and, to the extent possible, with trustworthy elements of the local population. The head of the UN operation would make it clear that the purpose of the mission would be to restore security, basic governance functions and control of the economy to the local population as speedily as possible. As with the UNPC, UNARC would gain legitimacy from its international character and the fact that it was sanctioned by the UN, rather than being the tool of any single outside power or geopolitical alliance.
 
 
Applicability to Iraq:
 
Let us now consider how one or both of the UN agencies I've proposed might have been utilized had they already been in existence at various junctures in the career of Saddam Hussein and how they might be used today or in the foreseeable future.
 
Although Saddam Hussein was guilty of acts of heinous brutality throughout his career, it was not until Iraq's invasion of Iran in September 1980 that he committed a breach of international law sufficiently serious to warrant the United Nations' concern. But, even if a the UNPC had then existed, it is highly doubtful that the Security Council would have deployed it to try to avert or put an end to the ensuing eight-year conflict because of the antipathy of the administrations of both the United States and Russia to the Iranian regime led by the Ayatollah Khomeini and the pleasure they would have derived from his defeat. As happens so often in world affairs, political expediency would have trumped principle and international law. Similarly, Iraq's extensive use of poison gas in 1988, killing at least five thousands Iraqi Kurds along with numerous Iranian troops, was also conveniently overlooked because of America's shameful complicity in that action.
 
American interests would also have precluded deployment of a UNPC in 2003 when the US accused Iraq of possessing weapons of mass destruction and of having collaborated with Al Qaida terrorists. Neither of those two fabrications could gain sufficient credibility in the Security Council to lead to a vote authorizing a UNPC mission. But even if the Council had accepted the American position, it would have mattered little since President Bush and his neocon associates were determined to embark upon their arrogant imperial adventure regardless of anything the UN might have to say or do on the subject.
 
Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, however, provided an essentially different scenario. Although Saddam did have some legitimate grievances in regard to Kuwait, the militarily weak Kuwaiti emirate was regarded much more sympathetically in the international community than was revolutionary Iran in 1980. Moreover, its massive oil resources were a source of substantial profit for Western corporations. I would thus agree with the judgment of Notre Dame University Professor Robert Johansen, a noted advocate of a UN peace force, who stated:
           
            "If a standing U.N. force had existed in July 1990, it could have been moved to
the Kuwaiti border before the Iraqis invaded. Faced with U.N. peacekeepers on
his border, Saddam Hussein might have been more acutely aware that an attack
on Kuwait could provoke a severe international response. At the very least, a
preventive deployment of U.N. forces could have bought more time for
diplomacy."[ii]
 
In addition to deploying a UNPC and, possibly, a small Arabic-speaking UNARC contingent as well, several ancillary measures might have been taken to heighten the probability of the mission's success. One would have been to make it known, by radio, loudspeaker and leaflet drop, that armed opposition to a duly authorized UN mission would constitute an international crime, that (following the principle established at Nuremberg) military commanders who engaged in such opposition would be held legally accountable for their actions, and that, conversely, commanders who disobeyed illegal orders from Saddam Hussein would be guaranteed amnesty.
 
Additionally, it would have been within the power of the Security Council, under Articles 1 and 41 of the Charter, to mandate adjudication of Saddam Hussein's grievances against Kuwait before the International Court of Justice, with no preconception as to what the verdict might be. Such an action would effectively have pulled the rug from under Saddam's feet and stripped any pretense of legitimacy from Iraq's occupation of Kuwait. The United States, which looks with little favor on the ICJ, would not presently approve of any such a measure; but, in the political atmosphere of 1990, it is conceivable that it would have.
 
A final measure that could have been taken to ensure the success of a UNPC mission would have been to back it up with a powerful UN-authorized multi-national force in reserve, indicating to Saddam Hussein that failure to cooperate fully with the lightly armed UNPC would lead to the final option of unleashing the back-up military alternative. While, in general, I would be disinclined to favor blatant military threats as a means of keeping the peace, in dealing with a character as unsavory and unpredictable as Saddam Hussein, I would have made an exception. 
 
But, what of the present and the troubled years ahead? Regrettably, for the remainder of Bush's term of office, I see no prospect of support for creating a UNPC or UNARC. Nor do I suppose that Bush's likely successor will quickly recognize their potential utility. But, as the US and the rest of the world reflect further on the enormous and unsustainable costs of American imperial over-reach in Iraq, we can expect increasing support for a new foreign policy paradigm. This new paradigm will take the UN system much more seriously than we do at present and fund the UN to an extent more commensurate with its enormous responsibilities. It will substitute diplomacy and working through the UN for macho unilateralist initiatives. It will support supplanting the law of force with the force of law. It will ensure much greater -- and mandatory – use of the ICJ, as well as of the International Criminal Court. And, wherever possible, it will deal with international troublemakers and failed states through such institutions as the UNPC and UNARC. The time for authorization of those two agencies is now. If either or both were presently in existence, they could assume much of the day-to-day operations needed to restore normalcy to Iraq as US and other alliance forces are withdrawn.
 
Whether anything short of a UNPC and UNARC can do the job remains to be seen. My guess is that the US will be effectively out of Iraq well before a UNPC and UNARC are formed and that the task of restoring some semblance of normalcy will ultimately fall to some sort of jerrybuilt and much less-than-adequate UN-Arab League coalition. The prospect is not a pretty one; but if it provides an object lesson generating the incentive needed to adopt corrective measures for future emergencies, it may lead to some good.
 
 
Conclusion:
 
A UNPC and UNARC are vitally needed. While neither would be cheap, their costs in comparison to that of the US' three-trillion-dollar misadventure in Iraq, would seem a mere pittance.  The key missing ingredients, however, are not monetary, but political acumen and political will. Given the right leadership and with support from enlightened citizen activists, I believe the deficits can be overcome.
 
 

[i] Joseph E. Schwartzberg, "A New Perspective on Peacekeeping: Lessons from Bosnia and Elsewhere," Global Governance, 3, 1977, 1-15; and Joseph E. Schwartzberg, "Needed: A United Nations Administrative Academy," UN Chronicle, No. 1, 2006, 14-16.
 
[ii] Robert C. Johansen, "Reforming the United Nations to Eliminate War," in Saul H. Mendlovitz and Burns H. Weston (eds.), Preferred Futures for the United Nations, Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: Transnational Publishers, Inc., 147-192, quotation from p. 169.