Fighting Wars And Building Nations

The Republicans in the House of Representatives are cranked up to cut the American foreign aid budge with a particular emphasis on payments to the UN.  To say the Obama administration and the UN high command are opposed to the idea is to state the obvious.

Today, even as the greatly feared shutdown looms, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was on the Hill making his case for the US not to cut funding to the organization.  He reportedly met with a solid Republican wall of opposition.  Even Ban's statement that he had ordered his "managers" to take a whopping three percent cut in operating budgets gained no traction with the stony faced elephants.  No surprise there, given the willingness of some Republicans to take a much bigger whack out of domestic programs.

By and large it is difficult to justify the enormous amount of money paid over to the UN by the American taxpayer, present and future.  Most of the bucks are provided without any strings or even the pretense of effective oversight and accounting.  Many of the dead presidents are spent to the advantage of countries and programs antithetical to US interests.  More are simply siphoned away in the great morass of inefficiency, graft, corruption, and general misfeasance which has characterized so many UN programs for decades.

The money expended on so-called "peacekeeping" activities is wasted at the least.  Few if any of these actions have protected those most in need.  Few have actually kept peace.  Even fewer have imposed peace where such was the greatest necessity next to oxygen in keeping people alive.  With the general exception of Western forces deployed under blue helmets, many of the UN contingents are best noted for their ability to loot, plunder, rape, and contribute to the atmosphere of fear which permeates all combat zones.

Overall, American contributions to the UN should, like foreign aid programs generally, contribute to the achievement of US national interests and policy goals.  To do otherwise is simply stupid.  The Republicans are correct in historical terms by insisting a direct and material link between foreign aid, including UN payments, and our national and strategic interests.

Of course, it can be difficult to the point of impossibility to determine if any given foreign aid program is actually facilitating US interests.  For example, have the billions of bucks extorted from Uncle Sam by one Pakistani government after another really done much to advance critical American interests in the region?  Or, have the billions of tribute served by nightfall to destabilize the sub-continent, further the growth of the Pakistani nuclear program, and served to multiply the internal frictions of the Pakistani public?

The difficulties attendant upon assessing the benefits of direct, bi-lateral aid are multiplied when considering programs administered by the UN which are partially funded by the US.  The several semi-autonomous or completely independent subsidiary bodies of the UN along with the many programs run under the auspices of the Secretariat serve to further complicate the task of evaluating the diplomatic bang purchased by the taxpayer buck.

This is not to state that the Republican notion of treating the UN as a cafeteria where we would pay for what we approved of or what best served our short-term interests while ignoring the rest constitutes the best or most effective solution to the current problem.  Nor does it imply that an exercise in tying UN reforms to the amount of American funding would improve the situation significantly.

There is, however, a very important reason for the US to keep money flowing to the UN.  The reason allows for the creation of more effective and appropriate means of measuring success--and consistency with larger US national interests and policy goals.  It might even allow for saving money over in the Pentagon budget.

The evaluation of what the UN can do better than the US acting alone or in partnership with a limited number of associated states must start with a ground truth.  This is simply that there is a vast gulf between fighting wars and building nations.

When the US under both George W. Bush and the current administration failed to make the necessary distinction in the Afghan context, the result has been, if not failure, then an incomplete success at best.  As a well presented piece in RCP underscores, the American military services exist to fight wars--not build nations or states.  On the other hand the UN along with relevant regional entities is perfectly situated to engage in the long duration mission of trying to build a functioning nation and, ultimately, nation-state from the rubble of a failed state or a tribal agglutination which never quite reached nation status.

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the US Army and Marine Corps have spent entirely too much time, energy, and money on providing governance to the locals.  Rather than concentrating with total intensity on the mission of defeating the enemy, a task which requires some limited excursions into the sphere of governmental services, the ground combat forces have been tasked with addressing the full ambit of governance needs and aspirations until the indigenous regime has been able to take over.

The diversion of effort along with the inevitable frustrations when the foreigners could not provide all that the locals might wish for have crippled the war fighting effort severely.  From the moment the very first American boot hit the ground in Afghanistan (or Iraq) the tasks of governing, of providing essential services other than physical security, should have devolved on some agency other than the US military.  Whether this agency should have been part of the US State Department acting solo or the US acting in tandem with a coalition is open to debate.  What is not open to debate is the requirement for an entity outside the Pentagon to undertake the manifold tasks of nation-building.

The Republicans would be very well advised to stop and think about just how the UN could participate or even take the lead in the nation-building tasks of today and into the future.  That the endless chore of building or rebuilding states will be with us for a long time to come is as evident as the headlines from Libya or the Ivory Coast or Yemen.

There is an ironic symmetry in the idea of the UN being the lead agency in global nation-building missions.  It is rather like placing an impossible task in front of an entity which can do very little, if anything, well or quickly.  But, the record of attempts at building nations by outside actors hints at the probability of a bungling, slow moving, and contradiction riddled agency such as the UN being more successful at the task than would be a fast acting, take-charge-and-move-out model of efficiency.

Military forces are intended to move fast, strike hard, to kill people and break things with minimum losses to themselves.  The UN and other international agencies along with NGOs are infinitely better suited to the long term and often futile jobs such as trying to build a functioning nation-state from unpromising materials.  It would be in the best interests of the US--and the Republicans--to understand this and provide the necessary support to the UN and others.

In a similar calculus, the use of money in bi-lateral aid with the intent of keeping a nation-state viable is a lot cheaper in both treasure and lives than waiting for implosion and its consequences.  It is also far preferable to spend foreign aid dollars in the effort to keep a moderate Muslim state intact and developing than it is to wait for the advocates of violent political Islam to make their play for power.  To update an ancient cliche: A few millions of bucks worth of prevention is far better than billions of bucks of cure.

This orientation--prevention of instability or hostility by promoting development in a moderate political context--implies that at least some of the more chest-thumping Republicans would be very well advised to rethink the emphasis on foreign military aid as opposed to money spent on civilian projects.  It is hard to see where any military aid expended since the end of the Cold War has furthered American interests and accomplished meaningful policy goals.

The same may be said of some of the very big ticket items in the category of development assistance.  All too often the US aid dollars have gone to glitzy projects much beloved of the recipient regime's elite but of no utility to the average citizen.  At the same time major benefits may have accrued to American businesses but few have gone to the local hoi polloi.

This dreary but all too accurate picture implies that the best use of American foreign aid money is to be found either in regional development efforts or in small scale but carefully targeted projects which can be sustained by the locals and will directly and obviously benefit the same locals.  This sort of project is never big ticket and lacks glitz and glamor.  It does have the upside of actually advancing the overarching American interest in stability and evolution in the recipient society and its polity.

Stable and predictable evolution in an economy, a society, and its polity means the probability of either state failure or the takeover of the state by an extreme ideology is minimal to nonexistent.  That, in turn, means wars which will remain unfought, interventions that will be forever unnecessary, and exercises in nation-rebuilding which will never occur.  Whether undertaken bi-laterally or through a regional organization or even by the UN, this approach would mean that over the long-term, the US saves money and accomplishes interest based policy goals.

And, that, bucko, is far better than the Nancy Reagan alternative--"Just say no," currently espoused by the House Republicans.  It is also far better than the Obama administration's approach of, "Shut up and give over the money."

Why Not Cut Off The UN?

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the new chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee has thrown down the gauntlet.  Well, actually she has tossed several gloves down, but this particular challenge is aimed directly at the bete noir of conservatives, the United Nations.  The one time minister of foreign affairs in the Republic of Korea, Ban Ki-moon, has vowed to meet the challenge in person.  He will appear in the course of hearings scheduled to start later this month.

Ms Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American representing a district in South Florida, has made her distaste for the UN abundantly clear.  She considers the organization, particularly the Secretariat, to be corrupt, inefficient, lacking in transparency, deficient in honesty, and generally speaking unworthy of the lavish support it receives from the American taxpayer (and his Chinese lenders.)  She has recommended making contributions to the world body purely voluntary as a means of persuading the outfit to clean up its act.

Such a move would cut the UN off at the knees.  Currently the US provides 517 megabucks of the UN's 2.17 gigabuck operating budget.  In addition the US forks over 2.68 billion of the organization's 9.67 billion dollar peacekeeping costs.  That constitutes a whole lot of something for not too terribly much of a return.

Not surprisingly, Secretary General Ban is not in agreement.  While he is more or less willing to admit rather grudgingly that there may have been some problems in the UN during the past, he claims he has made great strides in assuring efficiency, transparency, and an absence of corruption during his tenure to date.  In any event, he seems to say, what alternative is there?

Beyond that cop out defense, Mr Ban appears to think that the only problem the UN has is one of image.  Not unlike the Democratic party following the midterm election, Mr Ban hints at the UN having failed to properly address its "messaging" difficulties.  If only the American public and its (Republican) representatives understood just how well the UN is handling its manifold tasks, there would be no argument over the notion that We the People were getting a very good return on our investment.

Unfortunately the problem is not as simple as Mr Ban believes.  Nor is it simply a matter of UN management. If that had been the case, the 1999 Helms-Biden United Nations Reform Act would have been sufficient to meet American objections and questions.  The problems of UN performance are far more extensive, totally systemic, and in largest measure are the consequence of the organization having been afflicted with a bad case of institutional overreach.

The UN has long strayed from its basic mission, the foundational reason for its creation.  That initial mission was simple to state but very difficult to put into practice.  The purpose of the UN was to preserve international peace by assuring that those countries which broke the peace would suffer severe and immediate punishment by the "international community."  In principle, a state which broke the international peace by unprovoked aggression would face the united effort of member states to restore the status quo ante bellum.

The realities of international politics as expressed in the Security Council made certain that the UN could not address its major mission more than a couple of times--the Korean War and the repulse of Iraq from Kuwait forty years later.  Between the influence of the Cold War on Security Council votes and the many ways in which a state could plausibly present aggressive war as one of a legally defensive nature, the UN failed the hopes of its creators.

In part because of its manifest failure as an instrument of collective security but also as a consequence of the great expansion of its membership during the post-colonial decades, the UN cast about for additional missions.  By feats of (mis)definition, the body concluded that it possessed the authority to intervene in the internal affairs of a member state if that state undertook measures which stimulated a flux of refugees to neighboring countries which threatened instability in those states.  Similarly, the UN determined that it could intervene to address or prevent humanitarian crises contingent upon the collapse of a state or actions by a government which put lives at undue risk.

While the General Assembly, Security Council, and Secretariat were engaged in mission leap, so also were the assorted subsidiary entities operating under the collective UN mantle.  This gave rise to such abominations as the International Panel on Climate Change as well as the aggressive outreach by such bodies as the World Health Organization and the supreme abomination of the Human Rights Council.  Each of these bodies has attempted with more or less success to intrude on affairs formerly seen as the sole bailiwick of sovereign states.

The proliferation of "peacekeeping" missions along with "humanitarian" operations further emphasized the intrusive and expansionist nature of the UN--to say nothing of its increased demands for money.  The result, a consequence not likely to have been intended, was to make the UN appear to have delusions of becoming the very thing denizens of the far, far Right warned against a half century ago--a pretender to world government status.

Leaving aside the philosophical merits of a One World Government, the brute fact remains that the UN is not equipped in any respect to fill that function.  The nature of the Security Council with its Conference of the Victors veto holders as well as the General Assembly with its every country has one vote assure that the UN lacks both the capacity and the perceived legitimacy to operate as even the vaguest sort of super-national government.

What Mr Ban must address--and what Ms Ros-Lehtinen objects to--is the pretense by the UN that it is by right a form of super-national governing body even if not a super-national government per se.  The task for Mr Ban is simply impossible.  There is too wide a perception that the UN has delusions of governmental aspirations for him to counter in a single appearance or even several.

A close reading of the UN record in peacekeeping shows a record which comes far closer to failure than to success.  In the Congo as elsewhere the UN blue helmets have demonstrated a lack of capacity and will to impose or keep the peace which serves to erode the credibility of peacekeeping fatally.  Many of the national contingents assigned to UN duty are poorly trained, poorly equipped, lacking in basic discipline, bereft of effective officers, and overly given to gangster as opposed to military virtues.  That the US should be paying for this is insupportable.

The record in humanitarian operations is not much better.  Haiti is a fine example of how poorly the UN is equipped for major rescue and rehabilitation efforts.  The response to the cyclone in Burma may have been impaired by the local government's intransigence but was still marked by ineptitude at best and flat out blundering at worst.

Mr Ban may be proud of the UN's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan but there is precious little objective support for this pride.  Domestic political pressures may have forced George W. Bush to relent on his anti-UN stance following the Iraq invasion, but this should not be mistaken as an acknowledgement that the UN was well equipped to do anything meaningful either in Iraq or Afghanistan.  The same applies to Sudan.  American and European diplomacy rather than UN efforts brought about the secession vote in Southern Sudan and have at least limited the Khartoum government's brutal actions in Darfur.

The UN has done nothing to enhance its perceived legitimacy with the ever greater profusion of special tribunals charged with investigation and prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity.  So far, the tribunals seems to have specialized in prosecuting former African dictators and the war lords of former Yugoslavia.  It is not surprising that a belief has grown in Africa to the effect that the tribunals are simply one more neo-colonial apparatus intended to keep Africans in their collective place. The indictment of the current Sudanese president has forced the notion to spread from Africa to portions of the Muslim world.  And, this aspect of UN overreach is bound to get worse no matter which course of action the pre-trial judge in the Lebanese matter goes.

With the exception of those Americans who have an agenda such as the environmental activists and their global warming fellow travelers, or those of the hard Left belonging to the "blame America first" school of thought, there is not much support within We the People for the UN.  This translates into a lack of support for feeding the UN's expensive habits.

At a time when budgetary realities are dismal at best, at a time when the US must cut its defense expenditures regardless of the war in progress, the ongoing threat of violent political Islam, the growth of Chinese ambitions and the military means to support those ambitions, there is very little stomach in the US for largess directed to the lame, anti-American bunch which constitutes the ambition heavy, accomplishment light group called the United Nations.  The correlation of forces runs against Mr Ban and runs for those like Ms Ros-Lehtinen who desire an end to American underwriting of the UN.

Tinkering on the margins of the UN will not solve the problem.  The UN as currently constituted is the problem.  The world may benefit from a credible instrument of collective security, but the UN as it exists today is not that instrument.

Pace President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and others of their ilk, get a grip on reality.  The UN as it exists now is not useful.  It is not useful as a means of preventing or punishing international aggression.  It is not useful as a means of protecting human rights.  It is not competent in the protection of the environment.  It is not even a worthy mechanism of American foreign policy.

At best the UN is a charade.  At worst it is a fraud perpetrated upon people eager for a genuine means of keeping the international peace or addressing the very real problems of the global commons.  Today, in large measure because of its nature and character, the UN is as toothless and worthless as was the League of Nations in 1939.  Like the League it has outlived its usefulness.  It has become an institution not unlike a fly in amber, a fossil of a long dead time, entombed.

As the US took the point in developing the concept of the UN during the dark days of a war which seemed without end at the time, we must now take the lead in developing a credible replacement for the UN.  This is a far more demanding process than simply seeking to force changes on the margins by playing games with our financial contribution to the discredited Circus by the Hudson.  It will demand deep and realistic thinking, prolonged and perhaps bitter debate, but the results can be worth the effort.

In any event we cannot simply stand by as the great golem of the UN shambles and lurches along on its course to self-inflicted destruction.  Our future and that of the world in which we live demands more and better of us.

As Robert Kennedy was fond of asking, "If not us, who?  If not now, when?"

Pull Out Now! The UN Says The War Is Lost

The UN has taken a look at the security situation in Afghanistan. The worthies and experts at that strategic think tank didn't like what they saw.

But, being willing to look defeat square in the face without blanching, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon who is, as everybody knows, the finest military theorist since Karl von Clausewitz as well as an operational level commander on a par with George Patton, has informed the Security Council that Afghanistan is going to hell in a high speed, low drag wheelbarrow. Using the ever reliable indicators of roadside bombs, assassinations of low to mid-level government personnel in the provinces, and "complex" attacks, the SecGen all but declared the Taliban to have won.

The SecGen is not alone in his dismal appraisal of American and allied fortunes in Afghanistan. Over the past few weeks, those two pillars of independent, disinterested, and agenda-free impartial assessment of American success or failure in both war and diplomacy, the WaPo and the NYT, have made reached the same conclusion, at least by implication. The only feature lacking in either outlet is an editorial demanding a prompt American surrender to the Mighty and Pure Defenders of the One Truth Faith.

Admittedly, there are a number of good reasons to feel both gloom and doom hovering over the valleys of Afghanistan. The Afghan National Forces are far more a myth than a substantial reality capable of effective action in the field. The Karzai regime is corrupt, inefficient, self-serving, and far more interested in continuing its hold on power than seeing hostilities termination leading to long term conflict resolution. Mr Karzai himself is an excellent Afghan politician but a very infuriating partner with whom to engage.

At the same time Taliban deserves credit. It is comprised of tough, resilient fighters led by reasonably competent commanders. It has a set of clear goals. A very definite agenda well founded on religion. Beyond that Taliban has the support and assistance of the Pakistani Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence and, thus, constitutes a branch of the armed forces of Pakistan. As if that were not sufficient, Taliban receives support from Iran. Training camps are located convenient to the Afghan border in the wastes of rural Iran while the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps provides instructors. In a gesture of religious fraternity, the Iranians also provide explosively formed penetrators and other useful gadgets.

Even with the augmentation of American combat forces, the manpower available to the US and ISAF for combat missions is minimal (to put it charitably.) The correct decision by General McChrystal to limit the use of indirect and air delivered fire places more of a burden on the ground pounders, thus making the war even more manpower intensive. In order to assure that few (preferably no) Afghan non-combatants are killed by the "infidels," it is necessary to conduct each and every operation no matter how large or small on a retail basis, up close and personal.

Longer term this self-imposed constraint on the lethality of the battlefield is not only good, it is absolutely necessary. McChrystal understands perfectly that if civilians are to be killed, it is essential that they be killed by the insurgents. Insofar as Taliban et al kill civilians, non-combatants, women, children, and old men, whether by a roadside bomb, a suicide IED, or a "complex" attack, the resulting body count strengthens the counterinsurgent while weakening the insurgent.

That consideration constitutes a critical nuance unnoticed by either Generalissimo Ban Ki-Moon or the Deep Strategic Thinkers at the WaPo and NYT. The primary victims of the increased usage of roadside bombs and similar IEDs have been Afghan civilians. The same is true of attacks carried out by "martyrdom seekers" whether using suicide vests or vehicle borne IEDs. Even many of the larger attacks, characterized in the UN report as "complex" have resulted in more civilian than foreign combatant deaths.

The roadside bombs, the assassinations of minor government, police, and military personnel, even the majority of the "complex" attacks such as the strikes on foreign occupied guesthouses have not only resulted in an increased loathing for Taliban on the part of Afghans but show a high measure of desperation driving Taliban.

In previous insurgencies, assassination of local personnel have been a prominent feature either of the beginning of the insurgency or as a strong indicator of its being defeated. The same applies to indiscriminate attacks resulting in a high level of casualties among the uncommitted majority of the civilian population.

Previously in Iraq, in Pakistan, and in Afghanistan, when the insurgents have started killing civilians in large numbers, there has been an immediate push-back on the part of the threatened civilians. This is being seen again in Afghanistan in the past few months--the same period employed by Feldherr Ban Ki-Moon as a base for his prognostication of impending defeat.

Increasingly, local villagers equipped with (to use the term employed by US military sources) "personal assault weapons" have joined Afghan, US, and ISAF units to engage and destroy Taliban cells. The same upward trend is seen in the flow of unsolicited and actionable intelligence from locals who have had it up to their beards with Taliban.

Afghans, not unlike most people everywhere, are not strong on the idea of getting killed. They don't even appreciate the fine theological distinction between being killed by an "infidel" or an "apostate" rather than a good Muslim, a jihadi. Not surprisingly, the Afghans are ready, willing, and eager to seize the moment and abate the Taliban nuisance.

Rather than being indicators of near-term defeat, the increased Taliban reliance upon IEDs, assassination, and the odd media spectacular points to a loss of confidence within the command echelons of the insurgents. Taliban has lost the initiative in the quotidian conduct of operations; as a comparison between friendly initiated, hostile initiated, and meeting engagements shows, the capacity to control the pace and direction of operations has shifted increasingly in favor of the US and ISAF.

This pleasant reality in no way lessens the underlying reality that the war is not over. The US and its allies are not yet sure of achieving the minimum strategic goal of "not-losing," but the vectors have shifted in that direction. The next six to twelve months will be a long, hard pull in Afghanistan. Marja is not yet fully secured. The Kandahar operation has been delayed. Most importantly, the Afghan national government and forces have not yet shown either the will or the ability to carry their share of the freight.

Right now the major lost opportunity is not military but falls rather in the area of governance. The US and its allies have fallen too far into the trap of believing that the central government of Afghanistan is just that--a government. The US has also allowed itself to believe that success in Afghanistan cannot occur without the existence of a strong, credible, and effective central government.

These twin notions are bogus. For much of its existence, Afghanistan has gotten along quite well without a strong, credible, and effective central government. The Afghan culture states that a person's primary loyalty is to the extended family, secondary loyalty is to the clan, and the tertiary loyalty is to the tribe. This hierarchy allows but does not compel a loyalty to the central regime in Kabul.

This situation implies that Afghans have a high propensity toward and a good capacity for self-organizing. The self-organizing process moves from the most local to the more distant and has the automatic advantage of assuring high group coherence through the necessity for voluntary collaboration in the search for mutual self-interest.

The operational consequence of this orientation within the human terrain of Afghanistan is obvious. The US and its allies should--must, perhaps--put Kabul to the side and deal with the local power structure. The winning political approach is that of empowering the self-organizing capacities of the Afghan villages, the neighborhoods of Marja or Kandahar. Working with and backing the needs of the locals in all aspects of security, governance, and economic development would allow the effective circumvention of the obstructionists of Kabul. Doing things this way would have the additional advantage of cutting off Taliban from any pretense of legitimacy, by denying it the large target of central government corruption, cronyism , and flat out inefficiency.

There is a very high probability that General McChrystal is as aware of the self-organizing and provincial orientation of the Afghan human terrain as he is of the grave inadequacies of the central regime. If his lords and masters inside the Beltway can be brought to see the light, there is a better than good chance that the next few months will see a political success parallel the probable military defeat of Taliban.

There is, of course, only the slimmest of chances that the Obama administration can wake up to the tribal and family realities of Afghanistan so as to give a green light to adding the final ingredient which would well neigh onto guarantee success of an acceptable sort in Afghanistan. And, there is absolutely no chance in hell that the WaPo-NYT Strategic Studies Academy or Geo-Political Genus Ban Ki-Moon will ever get it.

The UN Secretary General Is Out To Lunch--Again

Ban ki-Moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, has again demonstrated that the size of the UN's ambition is matched only by the breadth of its ineptitude. At a meeting of the UN Security Council called to consider the recent attacks on Mumbai, he bloviated at some length concerning the "ideal" nature of the UN in combating terrorism.

The Geek would like to know who the SecGen's dealer is because the jefe of the Hudson River Follies is clearly taking some truly righteous mind altering substance if he actually believes that the 190 + nation monster can tackle terrorism around the world with any hope of even the slightest success. If Ban ki-Moon ain't on drugs then he is utterly without a grip on reality. That includes the realities of the organisation over which he presides.

The Secretary General might want to reflect on some unpleasant ground truths about the overly ambitious UN. He might, for example, take note that the outfit has not yet been able to devise a definition of "terrorism" which is politically acceptable to a plurality of the members. This despite years of jawing and yammering on the subject by a specially appointed commission.

As a next step, Ban might want to contemplate the reason for the failure to achieve even a small measure of consensus on defining terrorism. He might meditate on a couple of simple facts. The first of these is the nature of the UN. While the High Minded Lofty Thinking proponents of the "death of the nation-state" perspective might wish it otherwise, the UN is comprised of more than 190 sovereign, independent states. Each of these is guided in its foreign policy by its own understanding of national interest and the relation between foreign and domestic politics.

After getting a firm grip on that basement truth, the Secretary General might well profit from considering a key implication. Among the member states there are some which facilitate terrorism out of a sensitive regard for internal politics. There are others which sponsor or facilitate terrorism by non-state actors for purposes of foreign policy. Yet others have state agencies which, directly or indirectly, employ terror as an instrument of national power. Then there are states which cut deals with terrorist groups--leave us alone and we will overlook your plots against other states. Finally, there are those states which are the targets of terror.

If the well-intentioned Secretary General survives this first exercise in examining the actualities governing the UN's stance on terrorism, he can move on to the second round. There is absolutely no agreement among the majority of the UN's membership as to the correct strategy and tactics with which to counter terrorism.

There are those governments--and non-governmental organisations--which argue terrorism is caused by economic and political marginalisation. The proponents of this hypothesis (which is no way born out by the realities of terrorist backgrounds nor the political goals of terrorist groups) maintain that massive development programs will assuage the poverty which drives men to don suicide vests or hijack aircraft. Others argue that enhancing democracy or rendering governments more responsive will achieve the desired effect of ending terrorism by ending the motivations driving people to take desperate, suicidal (and homicidal) acts.

There are governments--and NGOs--which argue that only a severe alteration of American foreign policy will end the terrorist threat. The argument is a version of the hoary and long discredited defense in a rape case--"the victim made me do it." There may be some truth to the contention that an American abandonment of the Mideast (and other sections of the globe) and subsequent withdrawal into some sort of Fortress America would lessen the motivation for terrorism by giving the terrorists a global victory. But, considering the dynamics of world politics to say nothing of American domestic politics, this is scarcely a viable option.

Then there are those governments--and others--which argue that any military confrontation either with non-state terrorist actors or those states which sponsor, facilitate, or harbor them must be through the UN. As for that position it is only necessary to give cursory consideration to the UN's less than stellar record in peace imposition and peace keeping. Only twice in its history has the UN given its "blessing" to multilateral peace imposition efforts. Both of those involved unprovoked cross-border invasions.

A few voices have been raised in support of the utopian notion of the UN having its own armed force. In this way the Security Council would have a force immediately available without having to rely on the contributions of the member-states, most of which are military nullities lacking even the capacity to impose peace at a soccer riot. The question of where the troops and officers might be recruited is never addressed by the Lofty Thinkers espousing this position. Neither are the far from insignificant questions of equipment (including procurement), training, and basing. And, no thought is ever given to such problems as doctrine.

The High Minded who would like to see a UN force in being also overlook the difficulties of command and control. This means not simply the tactical problems associated with this critical area but, more importantly, the vexing questions of political goals, rules of engagement, and, even, how would command be vested considering the size and composition of the Security Council.

When--or, more properly, IF, the Secretary General and those others in the UN who share his view of the UN being "ideal" as the leader in countering terrorism can answer all--or any--of these real, live problems, then the US and others might take a good look at the potential the UN constitutes. But, for now, in the real world of real governments and real terrorists and real dead bodies, Ban ki-Moon must be ruled, Out To Lunch.