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332 The Ralph Bunche Centennial
Peacekeeping Then
established by the General Assembly in the wake of the Suez crisis, was
mandated to supervise the withdrawal of foreign troops and, later, to act
as a buffer between Egypt and Israel. Other peacekeeping operations—
in Cyprus,6 Kashmir,7 and Yemen8—had similarly limited mandates.9
are not necessarily ones to which the military can or wish to contribute
greatly. Sometimes, as in the Balkans and Afghanistan, the military
components retain their own lines of command and control outside the
UN structure.
These changes in the structure and objectives of UN peace opera-
tions have occurred in slow motion, with practice in one mission often
influencing the design of ensuing ones in the same country (for exam-
ple, Haiti) or elsewhere. The evolutionary nature of this change has
robbed it of media coverage. Some acute observers, such as Elizabeth
Cousens and Karin Wermester, have argued—rightly in our view,
though not uncontroversially—that the type of peacebuilding in which
the UN engages is much more political in nature than are most devel-
opmental or narrowly defined peacekeeping efforts.22
The UN has needed to identify new tools for peace. The Security
Council has looked increasingly to sanctions regimes, as an alterna-
tive—or in addition—to the use of force. After the early and disap-
pointing experiences with sanctions against Southern Rhodesia in 1966
and South Africa in 1977, the Security Council has since 1990 imposed
sanctions or embargoes on fifteen different countries or groups. The
regimes have grown increasingly sophisticated, targeting specific indi-
viduals, groups, and asset or goods types. Blanket economic sanctions
have fallen out of vogue as their humanitarian costs have become appar-
ent—first in Haiti, then in Iraq—and as the ability of the targeted gov-
ernments to manipulate sanctions for their own ends has slowly become
apparent.23
The UN has also begun to explore the role that accountability
mechanisms can play, both in removing the architects of violence from
political power and in regenerating the social fabric of war-torn soci-
eties. The Security Council’s use of its Chapter VII powers to create ad
hoc international criminal tribunals for, first, the former Yugoslavia and,
then, Rwanda was a watershed that resulted in the UN’s involvement in
the establishment of war crimes tribunals in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, East
Timor, and now Cambodia. It also led to significant pressure for a more
universal International Criminal Court, which has now come into
being.24 There has also been increased experimentation with alternative
accountability mechanisms, notably truth commissions.25
U.S.-UN Relations
suggested in 2001 might occur through the Economic and Social Coun-
cil.51 The “Peace-Building Commission” proposed by the secretary-
general’s High-Level Panel on Security Threats, Challenges and Change in
December 2004 may do much to achieve these objectives. The devil will,
inevitably, rest in the details of final implementation, even if the proposal
is broadly approved at the UN summit to be held in September 2005.
only for states, but also for the UN, forcing it to work ever harder to
forge “coalitions of the willing” for humanitarian purposes, even where
member states’ short-term political interests apparently run counter to
such action. Countries working together within “Groups of Friends,”
often spanning the North-South divide, can serve to build support at the
UN for intervention in specific instances.53
Terrorism places a further premium on cooperation; but it also
poses enormous challenges for UN peacekeeping.54 Not only can it
make UN peacekeepers targets; it also calls into question whether the
UN is equipped to deal with today’s security threats. Addressing trans-
national nonstate terrorism certainly falls outside the paradigm of UN
peace operations. Some states are increasingly pushing to use Chapter
VII powers of the Security Council not as the basis for UN peace oper-
ations, but as the basis for global legislation and regulation against ter-
rorism. This legislative penchant emerged first in the 1990s with the
establishment of the ad hoc criminal tribunals and the oil-for-food pro-
gram in Iraq, but it has moved to center stage with the establishment
and operation of the Counter-Terrorism Committee under Resolution
1373 and with current moves in the Security Council to criminalize
activities resulting in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
(WMD). Thus, in the future, UN peace operations may have to compete
for scarce resources with other forms of Security Council intervention
designed to legislate or regulate for peace.
The end of the Cold War led to heightened activism on the part of the
Security Council and a more cooperative approach to peacekeeping
among the P-5. Although the Council remains split on some issues,
notably the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq, it has demonstrated an
increased willingness to engage with a broader range of conflicts, includ-
ing a number of essentially internal ones. This has produced mixed and
complex results, including a new multidisciplinary approach to peace
operations, a reevaluation of impartiality, and experimentation with new
tools for peace, such as accountability mechanisms and new forms of
sanctions.
Regional organizations play an increasingly important role in dis-
charging peacekeeping and peace enforcement mandates. At the same
time, UN politics has shifted from outright confrontation across an East-
West chasm to more subtle tensions across a North-South divide, with
the consequence in peace operations that the North increasingly takes
on peace enforcement activities, particularly in geostrategically salient
regions, and the South plays more traditional peacekeeping roles,
James Cockayne and David M. Malone 345
Notes
James Cockayne is a graduate scholar at the Institute for International Law and
Justice at New York University. David M. Malone is assistant deputy minister
(Africa and the Middle East), Department of Foreign Affairs Canada. This arti-
cle was completed prior to Malone’s return to the Canadian Foreign Ministry. It
does not necessarily represent that ministry’s views on peacekeeping or other
topics addressed. The authors thank Brian Urquhart and George Sherry.
1. Many sources cite 1904, rather than 1903, as Bunche’s year of birth. He,
in fact, appears (incorrectly) to have inclined toward 1904. See Brian Urquhart,
Ralph Bunche: An American Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), pp. 25–26.
2. Comments by Ralph Bunche on Palestine delivered to the UN Secre-
tariat, 16 June 1949, quoted in Urquhart, Ralph Bunche, p. 187.
3. George Sherry has recently revealed that Bunche “expressed interest in
the possibility of invoking Article 40” of the UN Charter as a basis for peace
operations. Peace operations would have formed a “provisional measure” taken
by the Security Council under Chapter VII, giving those peace operations a
greater independence of their hosts, but at the cost of those operations being
more tightly controlled by the Security Council. By choosing not to go down
this route, Bunche imprinted Secretariat control over peace operations. Sherry
interview, New York, 26 March 2004.
4. UNTSO, established in 1948, Palestine.
5. UNEF, 1956–1967, was the first to supervise withdrawal of forces fol-
lowing the Suez crisis, then to act as a buffer between Egyptian and Israeli
forces.
6. UN Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), established in 1964, was mandated to
prevent a recurrence of fighting and to contribute to the maintenance of law and
order and a return to normal conditions.
7. UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), estab-
lished in 1949, monitored the cease-fire in Jammu and Kashmir; and the UN
India-Pakistan Observation Mission (UNIPOM), which operated from Septem-
ber 1965 to March 1966, and supervised the withdrawal of Indian and Pakistani
troops in Jammu and Kashmir.
James Cockayne and David M. Malone 347