The Geek has been a harsh critic of UN peace keeping operations most of the past thirty or so years. While there have been some exceptions, the general rule is simply that the blue helmet crowd is not worth a fraction of what it costs the UN, which is to say the American taxpayer.
One more splendid example of the common rule comes from Sudan. You might recall that after forces from South Sudan ambushed a UN aid convoy protected by units of the Khartoum army, the northerners responded by an attack on the contested border town of Abyei. The incursion and concomitant looting and burning lasted two days during which thousands of residents hit the dust for points south. During the festivities, the UN peace keeping force drawn from the army of Zambia hunkered down in its dug in compound, heads between their no doubt quavering knees.
This aspect of the story was widely, one is tempted to write "universally" ignored by the MSM of the world. An honorable and lonely exception was Reuters Africa whose correspondent investigated this neglect of duty with a fine degree of assiduousness. The article notes in several places that the UN is both "livid" and is "investigating" the incident. The Zambian mission to the UN had no comment. Wow! What a shock.
This is not the first time that the Zambian contingent has determined that discretion was the better part of valor. Nor is it likely to be the last.
The Abyei fiasco is typical of UN peace keeping operations in Africa. In the Congo the blue helmet bunch has been recurrently unable to furnish protection to local civilians besieged, raped, and murdered by one or another of the assorted "rebel" groups. This has been true even when the UN outpost has been within easy earshot of the rapine. Nor was the performance of peacekeeping force notably better elsewhere from the Ivory Coast to points east.
The usual reasons given for the under performing nature of the peacekeepers is that they are drawn in the main from the poorest of the poor undeveloped countries. Thus the personnel are underpaid, undertrained (if trained at all) under equipped (if equipped at all) and very, very poorly officered. All of this is true. It is also irrelevant.
There is no explicit requirement that the UN peacekeeping office use forces of this nature. Rather, these are the only forces generally available. More developed countries with professional armies seem to be reluctant in the extreme to deploy in the service of humanity. There are normally valid domestic political imperatives behind this stance.
(Arguably even the presence of a Western professional army is no guarantee of success. Recall that the small Dutch contingent present at Srebrenica as Ratko Mladic demanded the handover of all Muslim males could not offer resistance, and their request for air support was ineffective as it was submitted on the wrong form. The result was eight thousand Muslim dead.)
The notion of peacekeeping is flawed in several essential respects. The first is the requirement that peace already exist--at least in principle--before the blue helmet boys arrive to maintain it. There is no writ for the UN force to impose peace and then keep it. The second is the need for the government of the recipient country to request or approve the UN move. In the context of Sudan the offer of Ethiopia to provide additional peacekeeping troops is contingent upon both Khartoum and Juba signing off on the proposal. Thirdly, the peacekeeping forces are almost always too small and too lightly armed to intimidate effectively any and all locals inclined to fighting.
The final flaw is the one demonstrated by the Zambians at Abyei. There is no real stomach for the idea of getting killed in the middle of someone else's war for the abstract of "peace." This is a very commonsense approach. It is bad enough to risk one's only skin in a conflict in which one's nation has a direct stake and in which one fights under one's own national command. It is far less appealing to die for someone else's notions of peace or victory. For societies and polities barely beyond the tribal stage of abstract loyalties (if that far along the continuum of political abstraction), the desire not to die in a truly meaningless conflict is all the more potent.
For a Zambian or anyone else from any country, there is no inbuilt loyalty to the supreme abstractions expressed in the UN. Dying under the baby blue banner has no appeal, brings no glory, has no intrinsic reward potential. When the bullets are flying, the best thing to do is what the Zambians did--dig a deep hole and stay there until the noise ceases.
The lofty thinkers behind the concept of the UN as a peacekeeper in the violent internal affairs of a state and nation which are, at least in theory, sovereign and independent, need to get a grip on the realities as perceived through the eyes of men sent far from home for little material reward to risk themselves in pursuit of something which is utterly meaningless to them. If the lofty thinking, high minded people at the UN are serious about the notion of armed intervention in the bloody internal politics of a state or establishing an armed presence on the line dividing two combatant states, they need to stop outsourcing the duty to the unfortunate poverty ridden lesser states of the General Assembly--even when these states are eager for the "honor"of doing the dirty work.
Peacekeeping is a form of mercenary warfare. Period. This means the forces employed must be heavily armed enough and well disciplined enough to overawe the local combatants. Overawing means the probability of actual shooting and dying is reduced. A clear superiority in the task of killing means killing will be less likely. Beyond that, it means that should the locals not stay properly impressed, the peacekeepers will have the ability to kill without being killed.
This approach would be more expensive to the UN (or the US which is the single largest financial supporter of these missions). It also means the forces will have to be drawn from the most militarily competent members of the UN, the Great and Near Great Powers. This, in turn, will open a very large box of political problems for the leaders of these Powers (with the exception of authoritarian regimes--and we all know who these are). The political problems will in their turn make the Powers a bit more reluctant and circumspect in their handling of interventions under the blue flag.
An increase in reluctance would not be a bad idea. While the notion and optics of internal violence or border skirmishes with clouds of emotionally appealing refugees is disconcerting, the bitter reality of the utility of both the violence and its consequences must be recognized. The problems which produced the violence will not be settled by outside intervention, foreign interference. They may be tamped down, made less visible, but they will still exist to be dealt with by future violence of an increased nature. All peacekeeping efforts accomplish much of the time is kicking the can down the road.
It would be far better in the long term for the violence to produce a solution to the problem as contrary to the cliche so loved by the lofty thinking sort, violence does settle problems. History is replete with examples. It is also filled with examples of how prematurely truncated violence breeds a further outbreak of even bloodier violence.
The world was not produced by Walt Disney. Nor is the human race given to peace, love, and flower power. Political and social evolution is often propelled by suffering and dying, by instability and conflict. The sensitive sort of person might wish it were otherwise, but the dreary history of the human race at least since we left the Eden of hunting and gathering shows the opposite to be the case. Organized social and political life is characterized by redness of tooth and claw.
Nature is far more gentle and kind creature than is the human. Get a grip on it.
Showing posts with label peacekeeping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peacekeeping. Show all posts
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Susan Rice Scares The Geek
"Say what, Geek! You sure get a case of the knocking knees right easy."
Yeah, it is easy to say that. Very few people get an anxiety attack over a UN Ambassador--particularly before the person takes office.
To err on the side of candor this is a first for the Geek. He has been able to yawn his way through every previous naming ceremony--even that of John Bolton.
Not this time. This time is different. Come along with the Geek as he lays out his case.
President-elect Obama often promised (before the appropriate audiences only) that he would put a new emphasis on the United Nations and assure that the US played a constructive role in that institution. He has made good on that particular campaign promise--at least symbolically--by restoring the UN Ambassador to cabinet rank.
Without passing on the merits of Obama's decision, suffice it to say that the PR will have a greater, more direct influence upon critical foreign policy decisions than would have been the case had the office been left at its sub-cabinet position. The enhanced influence of the PR on the making and execution of foreign policy undoubtedly will cheer those who seek a greater harmonization of US and UN policy.
The High Minded advocates of greater global cooperation under the blue UN flag will be quite happy with the restoration of the PR's "lost" status. They would be even more gratified if the reality of the next months and years is the PR being not only the American ambassador to the international organization but the UN's ambassador to the Oval Office.
These considerations in and of themselves do not cause the Geek undue apprehension. However, the elevation of the PR to cabinet rank is a necessary part of the context producing the Geek's current anxiety attack. Another contextual factor is the presence of the High Minded, who would be ecstatic should the UN gain greater leverage on American foreign policy,
Another key component of context is the radical shift in the orientation of the UN at both the Security Council and General Assembly levels in recent years. The "mission creep" exhibited by the ever-more-ambitious UN has changed much in the way the outfit operate. It has also served to alter the way in which the organisation views itself and its role in world affairs.
It must be recalled that the primary reason invoked for the creation and maintenance of the UN was the preservation of international peace. The UN was presumed to be both the deterrer of aggression and the punisher of aggressive war when it occurred.
Although often prevented from executing its primary function by the dynamics of the Cold War and the use of the veto by one or more of the five permanent members of the Security Council, the UN did punish aggression at least twice, once in 1950 and again forty years later. The potential, let alone the actuality, of the UN operating to promote effective collective action against an international aggressor gave the organisation legitimate claim upon the support of the American government and people.
The UN provided other useful services to the global welfare over the years. Its attempts to maintain international peace through monitoring and "peacekeeping" forces were meritorious even if rarely effective. Similarly, its efforts at ameliorating the human misery attendant upon both war and natural disasters have been commendable, if, again, less than spectacularly successful.
Starting in the waning days of the Cold War and proceeding at an ever escalating rate, the UN has sought to carve out a new role for itself which is only tangentially related to its original functions. That role can be best described as intervening in the affairs of distressed or collapsing states.
The UN Charter was carefully crafted to prohibit the organisation from interfering in the internal affairs of member states. This principle of non-interference has two champions on the Security Council: China and Russia.
Despite both the strictures imposed by the Charter and the self-interest of at least two Great Powers, the UN has involved itself in more and more internal operations. The involvement has normally been covered by either the declaration of a "humanitarian" crisis or the invocation of a compelling consideration such as "genocide."
From Somalia fifteen years ago to Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo today, the UN has sought an interventionary role. It has gained strong support for this species of mission distorting creep from those in the European Union and the US who see national boundaries and national sovereignty as obsolete or at least obsolescent barriers to the full protection and expansion of human rights.
What this means is both simple and alarming. Should a US administration become convinced for whatsoever reason that the situation in a distressed or collapsing state had progressed to an unacceptable level of bloodshed, it would find a ready and willing collaborator in the dispatch of armed force to protect lives, restore stability, and insure the exercise of human rights
Who could object to such fine, noble, and altruistic sentiments and objectives?
Certainly not Susan Rice. And, here comes the reason for the Geek's trembling.
Ms Rice when she was a staffer on the Clinton National Security Council experienced an epiphany. She saw the aftermath of the bloodletting in Rwanda. She was on the killing fields. She smelled the stench. She saw the death.
And, apparently, she vowed, "Never again." Or, at the least, she has maintained publicly, repeatedly, that she "would go down in flames" in the effort to stop mass killing in the future.
Mass killing is not stopped by simply asking the killers to cease and desist. Wholesale murderers are not famed for their readiness to stop. It takes force to stop force.
It takes killing--and dying--to stop the killing.
Before the peace can be kept, it must exist. It must be imposed. Imposed impartially by an outside military force of high competence, high firepower, high levels of training, high levels of command and control, high levels of discipline. The record of the past several decades demonstrates that such force is possessed by few countries, most of which are located in Europe and North America.
It takes a significant number of troops and a fair risk that some of these will be killed to provide the sort of stability oriented peace imposition mission for which Ms Rice would be willing to go down in flames. Back during the Clinton Administration the US showed both an unwillingness to send enough force or to take casualties when our military was tasked with the "humanitarian" mission in Somalia.
Apparently, Ms Rice missed that. Or, the memory of what happened after a poorly planned and executed Special Forces operation ended in both American deaths and the televised desecration of American bodies. Or, the memory was wiped away by the tears shed for the dead of Rwanda.
Then there is another set of problems which may have eluded Ms Rice in her passionate commitment to assuring more Rwandas do not happen. Sufficient force, sufficient killing and dying can assure that internal violence is halted, domestic peace restored. It can even serve to arrest those suspected of crimes against humanity.
But that is all the outsiders can do. Their guns cannot do more than silence the guns of the killers within. Guns can arrest putative evil doers. Those are the limits of force.
What happens next? What will be done once the killing stops? What other than feeding and housing and caring for the wounded, the fugitives, the fearful?
Will the UN and its member states build a new nation-state in the wreckage of the old? Who decides what type of nation, what variety of state, what form of government, what sort of economy will be erected on the rubble?
How long will it take? How much will it cost? Most importantly, will it work? Is there any realistic chance that a viable entity can be created for the benefit of the residents by the well intentioned High Minded outsiders?
Ms Rice would be very well advised to take a good, cold look at the consequences of the invasion of Afghanistan. Before eagerly sending American and other troops off to Darfur or the Congo or Zimbabwe or Somalia or any of the other states which are or shortly will be distressed, Ms Rice should smell the air of Afghanistan, walk the streets of Afghanistan, smell the dead of Afghanistan.
Ms Rice would be well advised to ask herself if there was any realistic probability that the well intentioned efforts of progressive High Minded folks would result in any better state of peace for the locals than the adventures of the neocon ninnies of recent memory.
Will Ms Rice do any of these things? The Geek is willing to bet hair that she will not. And, that is why her appointment scares him. Ideology, whether of the Right or the Left, does not serve the interests of the US. It doesn't even serve the UN well.
Yeah, it is easy to say that. Very few people get an anxiety attack over a UN Ambassador--particularly before the person takes office.
To err on the side of candor this is a first for the Geek. He has been able to yawn his way through every previous naming ceremony--even that of John Bolton.
Not this time. This time is different. Come along with the Geek as he lays out his case.
President-elect Obama often promised (before the appropriate audiences only) that he would put a new emphasis on the United Nations and assure that the US played a constructive role in that institution. He has made good on that particular campaign promise--at least symbolically--by restoring the UN Ambassador to cabinet rank.
Without passing on the merits of Obama's decision, suffice it to say that the PR will have a greater, more direct influence upon critical foreign policy decisions than would have been the case had the office been left at its sub-cabinet position. The enhanced influence of the PR on the making and execution of foreign policy undoubtedly will cheer those who seek a greater harmonization of US and UN policy.
The High Minded advocates of greater global cooperation under the blue UN flag will be quite happy with the restoration of the PR's "lost" status. They would be even more gratified if the reality of the next months and years is the PR being not only the American ambassador to the international organization but the UN's ambassador to the Oval Office.
These considerations in and of themselves do not cause the Geek undue apprehension. However, the elevation of the PR to cabinet rank is a necessary part of the context producing the Geek's current anxiety attack. Another contextual factor is the presence of the High Minded, who would be ecstatic should the UN gain greater leverage on American foreign policy,
Another key component of context is the radical shift in the orientation of the UN at both the Security Council and General Assembly levels in recent years. The "mission creep" exhibited by the ever-more-ambitious UN has changed much in the way the outfit operate. It has also served to alter the way in which the organisation views itself and its role in world affairs.
It must be recalled that the primary reason invoked for the creation and maintenance of the UN was the preservation of international peace. The UN was presumed to be both the deterrer of aggression and the punisher of aggressive war when it occurred.
Although often prevented from executing its primary function by the dynamics of the Cold War and the use of the veto by one or more of the five permanent members of the Security Council, the UN did punish aggression at least twice, once in 1950 and again forty years later. The potential, let alone the actuality, of the UN operating to promote effective collective action against an international aggressor gave the organisation legitimate claim upon the support of the American government and people.
The UN provided other useful services to the global welfare over the years. Its attempts to maintain international peace through monitoring and "peacekeeping" forces were meritorious even if rarely effective. Similarly, its efforts at ameliorating the human misery attendant upon both war and natural disasters have been commendable, if, again, less than spectacularly successful.
Starting in the waning days of the Cold War and proceeding at an ever escalating rate, the UN has sought to carve out a new role for itself which is only tangentially related to its original functions. That role can be best described as intervening in the affairs of distressed or collapsing states.
The UN Charter was carefully crafted to prohibit the organisation from interfering in the internal affairs of member states. This principle of non-interference has two champions on the Security Council: China and Russia.
Despite both the strictures imposed by the Charter and the self-interest of at least two Great Powers, the UN has involved itself in more and more internal operations. The involvement has normally been covered by either the declaration of a "humanitarian" crisis or the invocation of a compelling consideration such as "genocide."
From Somalia fifteen years ago to Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo today, the UN has sought an interventionary role. It has gained strong support for this species of mission distorting creep from those in the European Union and the US who see national boundaries and national sovereignty as obsolete or at least obsolescent barriers to the full protection and expansion of human rights.
What this means is both simple and alarming. Should a US administration become convinced for whatsoever reason that the situation in a distressed or collapsing state had progressed to an unacceptable level of bloodshed, it would find a ready and willing collaborator in the dispatch of armed force to protect lives, restore stability, and insure the exercise of human rights
Who could object to such fine, noble, and altruistic sentiments and objectives?
Certainly not Susan Rice. And, here comes the reason for the Geek's trembling.
Ms Rice when she was a staffer on the Clinton National Security Council experienced an epiphany. She saw the aftermath of the bloodletting in Rwanda. She was on the killing fields. She smelled the stench. She saw the death.
And, apparently, she vowed, "Never again." Or, at the least, she has maintained publicly, repeatedly, that she "would go down in flames" in the effort to stop mass killing in the future.
Mass killing is not stopped by simply asking the killers to cease and desist. Wholesale murderers are not famed for their readiness to stop. It takes force to stop force.
It takes killing--and dying--to stop the killing.
Before the peace can be kept, it must exist. It must be imposed. Imposed impartially by an outside military force of high competence, high firepower, high levels of training, high levels of command and control, high levels of discipline. The record of the past several decades demonstrates that such force is possessed by few countries, most of which are located in Europe and North America.
It takes a significant number of troops and a fair risk that some of these will be killed to provide the sort of stability oriented peace imposition mission for which Ms Rice would be willing to go down in flames. Back during the Clinton Administration the US showed both an unwillingness to send enough force or to take casualties when our military was tasked with the "humanitarian" mission in Somalia.
Apparently, Ms Rice missed that. Or, the memory of what happened after a poorly planned and executed Special Forces operation ended in both American deaths and the televised desecration of American bodies. Or, the memory was wiped away by the tears shed for the dead of Rwanda.
Then there is another set of problems which may have eluded Ms Rice in her passionate commitment to assuring more Rwandas do not happen. Sufficient force, sufficient killing and dying can assure that internal violence is halted, domestic peace restored. It can even serve to arrest those suspected of crimes against humanity.
But that is all the outsiders can do. Their guns cannot do more than silence the guns of the killers within. Guns can arrest putative evil doers. Those are the limits of force.
What happens next? What will be done once the killing stops? What other than feeding and housing and caring for the wounded, the fugitives, the fearful?
Will the UN and its member states build a new nation-state in the wreckage of the old? Who decides what type of nation, what variety of state, what form of government, what sort of economy will be erected on the rubble?
How long will it take? How much will it cost? Most importantly, will it work? Is there any realistic chance that a viable entity can be created for the benefit of the residents by the well intentioned High Minded outsiders?
Ms Rice would be very well advised to take a good, cold look at the consequences of the invasion of Afghanistan. Before eagerly sending American and other troops off to Darfur or the Congo or Zimbabwe or Somalia or any of the other states which are or shortly will be distressed, Ms Rice should smell the air of Afghanistan, walk the streets of Afghanistan, smell the dead of Afghanistan.
Ms Rice would be well advised to ask herself if there was any realistic probability that the well intentioned efforts of progressive High Minded folks would result in any better state of peace for the locals than the adventures of the neocon ninnies of recent memory.
Will Ms Rice do any of these things? The Geek is willing to bet hair that she will not. And, that is why her appointment scares him. Ideology, whether of the Right or the Left, does not serve the interests of the US. It doesn't even serve the UN well.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Questions That Nag At The Geek
Let's see if I've got this right.
North Korea has a nuclear reactor that made plutonium. We are very, very upset about that. We along with South Korea, Japan, Russia and China just had to do something about this obnoxious development.
At the same time North Korea has been assembling a centrifuge cascade which can manufacture highly enriched uranium. We and the other members of the Grand Coalition Against North Korean Nukes seem completely unconcerned about this activity.
Iran has a centrifuge cascade spinning away enriching uranium. By some reckonings the Iranians have over six hundred kilos of low enrichment stuff. That's enough to commence making weapon grade material which is the easier portion of the task.
We are very, very disturbed by the Iranian machines. We and the other members of the P5+1 have been working overtime for years now trying to do something about this horrid, scary development.
At the same time the Iranians have been building a heavy water moderated "research" reactor which would have the capacity to crank out plutonium. We and the rest of the Permanent Opposition to Iranian Nukes seem totally unconcerned about this construction work in progress.
Just what is the Geek missing here?
There has to be something going on here that the Geek has missed as well.
Somali Islamist pirates have been seizing ships. It is a profitable enterprise. In the past twelve months the pirates have received some 150 million bucks in ransom payments.
The pirates have kept some of the money. That's obvious from the plush new houses being built in Puntland and some other sections of the Somali geographic expression.
Much money has flowed on to assorted international Islamist/jihadist groups. How much cannot be said since darn few CPA's have audited the accounts.
Some of the ships taken by the Happy Buccaneers of the Somali Coast prior to this past week have been owned and operated by Iran. Iran, that is the Islamic Republic of Iran, is an Islamic country.
So is Saudi Arabia. The Saudi owned VLCC Sirius Star with a cargo valued at 100 megabucks more or less was hijacked by the pirates last week. A 25 megabuck ransom has been demanded.
Comes now an armed convoy of al-Shabab Islamist fighters to the port nearest the captive tanker. The jihadists vow to retake the ship because it is sinful or something for ships owned by Islamic countries to be taken.
Considering that al-Shabab goons were totally unconcerned when their coreligionists and ethnic brethren hoisted the Jolly Roger over ships owned or operated by Iran or other Islamic states such as Pakistan, why the sudden rush to the service of law and order?
Is it possible that the Fearless Upholders Of Islamic Law are motivated more by the prospect of sharing (or taking all) a thwacking big ransom? Oh! Tell the Geek it ain't so. Tell the Geek he is missing something and the armed inheritors of the Islamic Courts Union really, really is motivated only by the dictates of Quran and sharia.
Or, is the Geek missing something?
The Geek must be missing something about the importance of the United Nations as well.
With the dubious exception of those few times when the UN has provided a convenient and useful baby-blue fig leaf as a cover for American policy genitalia, it is an institution that has long outlived whatever utility its High Minded sponsors saw for it sixty some years ago.
Leaving aside some of the specialized agencies operating under the UN umbrella, the organization has long been a forum for bashing the United States. That is annoying but far from the major difficulty with the body.
Far more important is the UN's sheer inefficiency, it's blundering ineptitude in discharging its major reason for existence--keeping the peace. There is a reason for this--the Geek thinks.
The UN in both the General Assembly and the Security Council have ignored the difference between keeping the international peace and trying to impose internal peace upon societies and polities experiencing internal violence. There is a vast gap between the UN operating appropriately to maintain international peace (as illustrated by the Security Council's actions authorizing member states to repel aggression in the Korean Conflict or following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait) and attempting to compel order in collapsing states (such as Sudan, Somalia, or the Democratic Republic of Congo).
Similarly, there is a vast, unbridgeable gulf between authorising the use of force in Korea or against Iraq in 1990-91 and complying with the mendacious demands of the W. Bush administration for regime change in Iraq nearly seven years ago.
The badly misnomered "peace keeping" operations whether in Darfur or the DRC show the UN is gripless regarding the realities in states that lack the organic coherence to function. Rather, these misadventures and their well deserved lack of apparent success demonstrate that the world body is intellectually corrupt, clinging to the hopeless notion that a state once called into existence by whatsoever means has a writ to last in perpetuity regardless of any realities extant within the so-called state.
This intellectual corruption far surpasses in evil effect the mundane economic and financial turpitude demonstrated so well in the "Oil For Food" program applied to Iraq during the Nineties. The fundamental intellectual gangrene of the UN's addiction to keeping states without a reason for continued existence alive on the machinery of humanitarian relief and peace keeping is far more destructive of long term stability both local and global than its well documented sins of administrative inefficiency, centripetal interests, and bureaucratic self-seeking.
More recently another form of pestilence has infected the UN. The vector of infection is the largest single bloc in the body--the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The OIC is backed by the wealth of Saudi Arabia, a notoriously reactionary regime linked hip and shoulder with the most backward looking version of Islam, Wahhibism.
The pathogen carried by the OIC and the Saudis is the most direct threat against free speech ever contemplated, surpassing even earlier efforts brought to the Hudson River Follies by authoritarian states such as international restrictions upon journalism and communications. This time the pathogen wears a coat of religious tolerance and multi-cultural harmony which, its backers hope, will defeat the political immune systems of countries in the West. The protective garment is one of preventing defamation of religions.
In principle, that would mean all religions but, in practice, it means only the prevention of any sort of criticism or questioning directed at Islam. Certainly, the recent actions of the OIC and member states including Pakistan and Saudi Arabia make that clear.
The bizarre redefinition of criticism or questioning of Islam as "racism" constitutes a new low in the denaturing and distortion of words. Considering that Islam fancies itself a global religion and has adherents of every color and ethnicity imaginable, the claim that criticism of the faith or any of its manifestations such as suicide bombing, stoning women, beheading journalists, killing daughters and wives for "honor" is racism boggles the mind of any person well oriented as to time and place.
That the proposal of an international convention placing the "moral" weight of the UN behind the stifling of free expression should be received by the UN with any reaction other than gales of derisive laughter is equally mind boggling. Yet the OIC/Saudi idea of "tolerance" and "anti-defamation" has been accepted not only with equanimity at the General Assembly but with the support of the current General Assembly's president d'Escoto-Brockman of Nicaragua.
So, let's see if the Geek has it right. The UN is intellectually, financially, and morally corrupt. It has no grip on its major function of keeping the international peace. It bashes around blindly and ineffectively trying to keep collapsing states intact. It is a forum for Yankee-bashing without equal. Its operations cost the American taxpayer a fair amount of money (22 percent of its general budget and 25 percent of its "peace keeping" one.)
Comes now a passel of "foreign policy experts" headed by a set of monuments to failed US foreign policy, Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright (guaranteed to hit any diplomatic historian's list of Worst SecStates of the 20th Century), and accompanied by an assortment of equally failed practitioners of the dismal arts of diplomacy with an ad calling for an increased US involvement in and cooperation with the UN. Admittedly none of these individuals has a distinguished record of success in formulating and implementing foreign policy, but many of them will be influential with the in-coming administration.
In short, they will have the ear of President Obama and his Secretary of State. They will be positioned to play their Love-the-UN music loud and long in ears already primed to hear the tune and dance to it.
Either the Geek is right with his dystopian view of the UN or they are correct with their New UN Day Is Dawning perspective.
Surrendering to overwhelming numbers and aggregate years of putative experience, the Geek can only wonder: What is he missing?
North Korea has a nuclear reactor that made plutonium. We are very, very upset about that. We along with South Korea, Japan, Russia and China just had to do something about this obnoxious development.
At the same time North Korea has been assembling a centrifuge cascade which can manufacture highly enriched uranium. We and the other members of the Grand Coalition Against North Korean Nukes seem completely unconcerned about this activity.
Iran has a centrifuge cascade spinning away enriching uranium. By some reckonings the Iranians have over six hundred kilos of low enrichment stuff. That's enough to commence making weapon grade material which is the easier portion of the task.
We are very, very disturbed by the Iranian machines. We and the other members of the P5+1 have been working overtime for years now trying to do something about this horrid, scary development.
At the same time the Iranians have been building a heavy water moderated "research" reactor which would have the capacity to crank out plutonium. We and the rest of the Permanent Opposition to Iranian Nukes seem totally unconcerned about this construction work in progress.
Just what is the Geek missing here?
There has to be something going on here that the Geek has missed as well.
Somali Islamist pirates have been seizing ships. It is a profitable enterprise. In the past twelve months the pirates have received some 150 million bucks in ransom payments.
The pirates have kept some of the money. That's obvious from the plush new houses being built in Puntland and some other sections of the Somali geographic expression.
Much money has flowed on to assorted international Islamist/jihadist groups. How much cannot be said since darn few CPA's have audited the accounts.
Some of the ships taken by the Happy Buccaneers of the Somali Coast prior to this past week have been owned and operated by Iran. Iran, that is the Islamic Republic of Iran, is an Islamic country.
So is Saudi Arabia. The Saudi owned VLCC Sirius Star with a cargo valued at 100 megabucks more or less was hijacked by the pirates last week. A 25 megabuck ransom has been demanded.
Comes now an armed convoy of al-Shabab Islamist fighters to the port nearest the captive tanker. The jihadists vow to retake the ship because it is sinful or something for ships owned by Islamic countries to be taken.
Considering that al-Shabab goons were totally unconcerned when their coreligionists and ethnic brethren hoisted the Jolly Roger over ships owned or operated by Iran or other Islamic states such as Pakistan, why the sudden rush to the service of law and order?
Is it possible that the Fearless Upholders Of Islamic Law are motivated more by the prospect of sharing (or taking all) a thwacking big ransom? Oh! Tell the Geek it ain't so. Tell the Geek he is missing something and the armed inheritors of the Islamic Courts Union really, really is motivated only by the dictates of Quran and sharia.
Or, is the Geek missing something?
The Geek must be missing something about the importance of the United Nations as well.
With the dubious exception of those few times when the UN has provided a convenient and useful baby-blue fig leaf as a cover for American policy genitalia, it is an institution that has long outlived whatever utility its High Minded sponsors saw for it sixty some years ago.
Leaving aside some of the specialized agencies operating under the UN umbrella, the organization has long been a forum for bashing the United States. That is annoying but far from the major difficulty with the body.
Far more important is the UN's sheer inefficiency, it's blundering ineptitude in discharging its major reason for existence--keeping the peace. There is a reason for this--the Geek thinks.
The UN in both the General Assembly and the Security Council have ignored the difference between keeping the international peace and trying to impose internal peace upon societies and polities experiencing internal violence. There is a vast gap between the UN operating appropriately to maintain international peace (as illustrated by the Security Council's actions authorizing member states to repel aggression in the Korean Conflict or following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait) and attempting to compel order in collapsing states (such as Sudan, Somalia, or the Democratic Republic of Congo).
Similarly, there is a vast, unbridgeable gulf between authorising the use of force in Korea or against Iraq in 1990-91 and complying with the mendacious demands of the W. Bush administration for regime change in Iraq nearly seven years ago.
The badly misnomered "peace keeping" operations whether in Darfur or the DRC show the UN is gripless regarding the realities in states that lack the organic coherence to function. Rather, these misadventures and their well deserved lack of apparent success demonstrate that the world body is intellectually corrupt, clinging to the hopeless notion that a state once called into existence by whatsoever means has a writ to last in perpetuity regardless of any realities extant within the so-called state.
This intellectual corruption far surpasses in evil effect the mundane economic and financial turpitude demonstrated so well in the "Oil For Food" program applied to Iraq during the Nineties. The fundamental intellectual gangrene of the UN's addiction to keeping states without a reason for continued existence alive on the machinery of humanitarian relief and peace keeping is far more destructive of long term stability both local and global than its well documented sins of administrative inefficiency, centripetal interests, and bureaucratic self-seeking.
More recently another form of pestilence has infected the UN. The vector of infection is the largest single bloc in the body--the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The OIC is backed by the wealth of Saudi Arabia, a notoriously reactionary regime linked hip and shoulder with the most backward looking version of Islam, Wahhibism.
The pathogen carried by the OIC and the Saudis is the most direct threat against free speech ever contemplated, surpassing even earlier efforts brought to the Hudson River Follies by authoritarian states such as international restrictions upon journalism and communications. This time the pathogen wears a coat of religious tolerance and multi-cultural harmony which, its backers hope, will defeat the political immune systems of countries in the West. The protective garment is one of preventing defamation of religions.
In principle, that would mean all religions but, in practice, it means only the prevention of any sort of criticism or questioning directed at Islam. Certainly, the recent actions of the OIC and member states including Pakistan and Saudi Arabia make that clear.
The bizarre redefinition of criticism or questioning of Islam as "racism" constitutes a new low in the denaturing and distortion of words. Considering that Islam fancies itself a global religion and has adherents of every color and ethnicity imaginable, the claim that criticism of the faith or any of its manifestations such as suicide bombing, stoning women, beheading journalists, killing daughters and wives for "honor" is racism boggles the mind of any person well oriented as to time and place.
That the proposal of an international convention placing the "moral" weight of the UN behind the stifling of free expression should be received by the UN with any reaction other than gales of derisive laughter is equally mind boggling. Yet the OIC/Saudi idea of "tolerance" and "anti-defamation" has been accepted not only with equanimity at the General Assembly but with the support of the current General Assembly's president d'Escoto-Brockman of Nicaragua.
So, let's see if the Geek has it right. The UN is intellectually, financially, and morally corrupt. It has no grip on its major function of keeping the international peace. It bashes around blindly and ineffectively trying to keep collapsing states intact. It is a forum for Yankee-bashing without equal. Its operations cost the American taxpayer a fair amount of money (22 percent of its general budget and 25 percent of its "peace keeping" one.)
Comes now a passel of "foreign policy experts" headed by a set of monuments to failed US foreign policy, Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright (guaranteed to hit any diplomatic historian's list of Worst SecStates of the 20th Century), and accompanied by an assortment of equally failed practitioners of the dismal arts of diplomacy with an ad calling for an increased US involvement in and cooperation with the UN. Admittedly none of these individuals has a distinguished record of success in formulating and implementing foreign policy, but many of them will be influential with the in-coming administration.
In short, they will have the ear of President Obama and his Secretary of State. They will be positioned to play their Love-the-UN music loud and long in ears already primed to hear the tune and dance to it.
Either the Geek is right with his dystopian view of the UN or they are correct with their New UN Day Is Dawning perspective.
Surrendering to overwhelming numbers and aggregate years of putative experience, the Geek can only wonder: What is he missing?
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Keeping the Peace? You Gotta Be Kidding!
The Geek has always had a sneaking fondness for Somalia. Not that he wants to go there--at least any time soon. He's not that masochistic.
Still, he's gotta love a place where (according to one legend--the Ethiopians have another one) coffee was discovered by a shepherd who noticed the goats were friskier after eating the beans of one particular type of bush. Also, a people who formerly settled political differences by battles of poetry rather than barrages of bombs has a real appeal.
As anyone who has been half-attuned to the news knows, the geographic expression known as Somalia has been going down the tubes again in recent weeks. Multiple clan militias, remnants of the ousted Islamic government, thugs for hire, and assorted other bomb throwers and gun slingers have been exchanging fast moving pieces of metal with the Interim Government and its Ethiopian military supporters.
In the middle civilians have been dying in very large, but disputed numbers.
The US and the UN support the Interim Government but neither is willing to dispatch peacekeeping forces until a political settlement lowers the amount of lethal debris in the air. For the US this position is quite understandable given what happened back during the early days of Bill Clinton.
(Remember that was the "humanitarian relief" mission that escalated until our forces were in direct combat with the number one warlord of the day. The operation came to a humiliating end when an overconfident air assault by Rangers led to a debacle highlighted by video of a naked American corpse being dragged by screaming and dancing locals through the dusty streets of Mogadishu.)
The UN Security Council essentially has passed the buck to the African Union, which is the successor to the 1960s creation known as the Organization of African Unity. The African Union, which is currently operating a relief mission in Somalia, has promised 8,000 peace keeping troops. So far approximately 1,600 have arrived from Uganda with another contingent of 1,500 from Burundi expected as soon as "technological and financial" problems can be solved.
The African Union has fallen in love with the idea of keeping the peace in the Darfur region of Sudan. The new infatuation means that the AU is trying to pressure the UN to do the peace keeping in Somalia.
In spite of all the hand-wringing in Africa and New York, Somalia has suddenly become the red headed stepchild of the peace keeping family.
Why and so what?
The why is almost straightforward. Somalia has not had a working central government since 1991. Over the past sixteen years mere anarchy has descended to unmitigated violent chaos with a brief time out for inefficient Islamist repression. Everyone is tired of Somalia. More importantly, no one sees a quick, easy, or effective solution to the mess.
In comparison Darfur looks almost like a no-brainer. While the underlying ethno-linguistic-religious split between the Arab Muslim north and the African Christian south have existed for decades with sporadic and quite bloody violence, the most recent flare-up has been around for only a few years.
According to outsiders the body count has been massive (ca 200,000) and the refugee exodus enormous. The Sudanese government takes a different view alleging that only 9,000 have died and that the refugees are the result of natural not armed forces most notably a drought.
The truth lies somewhere in the middle. Many of the refugees are the result of the violence particularly that caused by Islamist militias. Many are the result of famine (some of it produced this time as in the past by government policy) and drought.
Get a grip on this. Refugees more than body counts capture the political attention of the West, of the European Union and the US. Footage of starving women and children moves people to move politicians. National politicians, particularly once the magic word "genocide" is employed, move the UN.
Darfur is happening! Darfur is glamorous! Darfur is with it!
Somalia is passe. Yesterday's cause. The orphan with no tomorrow.
The result is that while the UN and the AU point fingers at each other and demand, "You first," the Security Council has established its largest ever peacekeeping force, a 26,000 man combined AU-UN golem.
The largest, and probably the most expensive peacekeeping effort launched by the UN, this operation will carry a Chapter VII mandate, which means it can use lethal force for purposes other than immediate self-defense. Translated this means that the operation will be a peace imposition not a mere peacekeeping affair.
So, we ought to be able to sigh in relief and smile at the prospect of peace-soon-to-come in Darfur. We can imagine scenes of happy farmers returning to their fields and homes, schools opening, hospitals providing good care, and all the other accoutrements of peace, love and flower power.
Wait one!
There are two flies in the Jello.
The first fly is the African Union, whose chief diplomat has announced that no matter what the UN might be thinking, the combined force will be under African command and control. This isn't simply a small insect in the desert. No. It's more like a bolus in the punchbowl.
It means that there is no real possibility that any Western nation will authorize the dispatch of military or police assets to the joint operation. It means that while the West will be (as the AU diplomat states) expected to pay the costs and furnish equipment and supplies, no western direct command and control will be allowed.
Back up a step or two. What might be the real goal here?
The real goal is the second fly in the Jello. Sudan is a nation-state with all the consensually accepted features of a functioning nation-state including membership in the AU. It is also an Islamic state as are many in the AU. (Think Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt among others.) In short, the fix is in.
Any authentic peace imposition and keeping mission in Darfur would have one of two results if the peace were to be long lasting. Darfur would have to become at least an autonomous region within Sudan. Or, the Sudanese regime would have to be changed.
Neither alternative is acceptable either in Khartoum or many African capitals. Sudan is not alone in facing internal, separatist movements. This is not surprising given that the vast majority of the lines on a map designating borders were drawn by European bureaucrats or military men more than a century ago to meet the their needs not the human realities on the ground.
Given the dismal record of the majority of African manned and commanded peacekeeping mission under the AU and its predecessor the OAU, it can be confidently expected that Darfur will be pacified in a way that meets the interests of Khartoum, not the folks in Darfur. A close look at the same record shows that the locals will be lucky if they are not robbed blind, raped, assaulted, or killed.
The big winner in this beauty contest may be Somalia. The tribes and clans who live in the area have shown both remarkable resilience under extreme stress and an equally remarkable persistence of cultural and historical trajectories. If the writings of the early British explorer of Somalia (and first European to penetrate Mecca during the haj and live to write about it) Richard Burton and descriptions of Somali life in recent years are compared, the only changes have been the introduction of AK-47s in lieu of flintlocks and the importation of Wahhabist Islam in place of the earlier laid back local form.
Left alone, the Somalis will rediscover their own mechanisms for peacekeeping and political change, the councils of clan elders and the battle of poets.
You gotta like people who see poetry as the ultimate weapon.
Still, he's gotta love a place where (according to one legend--the Ethiopians have another one) coffee was discovered by a shepherd who noticed the goats were friskier after eating the beans of one particular type of bush. Also, a people who formerly settled political differences by battles of poetry rather than barrages of bombs has a real appeal.
As anyone who has been half-attuned to the news knows, the geographic expression known as Somalia has been going down the tubes again in recent weeks. Multiple clan militias, remnants of the ousted Islamic government, thugs for hire, and assorted other bomb throwers and gun slingers have been exchanging fast moving pieces of metal with the Interim Government and its Ethiopian military supporters.
In the middle civilians have been dying in very large, but disputed numbers.
The US and the UN support the Interim Government but neither is willing to dispatch peacekeeping forces until a political settlement lowers the amount of lethal debris in the air. For the US this position is quite understandable given what happened back during the early days of Bill Clinton.
(Remember that was the "humanitarian relief" mission that escalated until our forces were in direct combat with the number one warlord of the day. The operation came to a humiliating end when an overconfident air assault by Rangers led to a debacle highlighted by video of a naked American corpse being dragged by screaming and dancing locals through the dusty streets of Mogadishu.)
The UN Security Council essentially has passed the buck to the African Union, which is the successor to the 1960s creation known as the Organization of African Unity. The African Union, which is currently operating a relief mission in Somalia, has promised 8,000 peace keeping troops. So far approximately 1,600 have arrived from Uganda with another contingent of 1,500 from Burundi expected as soon as "technological and financial" problems can be solved.
The African Union has fallen in love with the idea of keeping the peace in the Darfur region of Sudan. The new infatuation means that the AU is trying to pressure the UN to do the peace keeping in Somalia.
In spite of all the hand-wringing in Africa and New York, Somalia has suddenly become the red headed stepchild of the peace keeping family.
Why and so what?
The why is almost straightforward. Somalia has not had a working central government since 1991. Over the past sixteen years mere anarchy has descended to unmitigated violent chaos with a brief time out for inefficient Islamist repression. Everyone is tired of Somalia. More importantly, no one sees a quick, easy, or effective solution to the mess.
In comparison Darfur looks almost like a no-brainer. While the underlying ethno-linguistic-religious split between the Arab Muslim north and the African Christian south have existed for decades with sporadic and quite bloody violence, the most recent flare-up has been around for only a few years.
According to outsiders the body count has been massive (ca 200,000) and the refugee exodus enormous. The Sudanese government takes a different view alleging that only 9,000 have died and that the refugees are the result of natural not armed forces most notably a drought.
The truth lies somewhere in the middle. Many of the refugees are the result of the violence particularly that caused by Islamist militias. Many are the result of famine (some of it produced this time as in the past by government policy) and drought.
Get a grip on this. Refugees more than body counts capture the political attention of the West, of the European Union and the US. Footage of starving women and children moves people to move politicians. National politicians, particularly once the magic word "genocide" is employed, move the UN.
Darfur is happening! Darfur is glamorous! Darfur is with it!
Somalia is passe. Yesterday's cause. The orphan with no tomorrow.
The result is that while the UN and the AU point fingers at each other and demand, "You first," the Security Council has established its largest ever peacekeeping force, a 26,000 man combined AU-UN golem.
The largest, and probably the most expensive peacekeeping effort launched by the UN, this operation will carry a Chapter VII mandate, which means it can use lethal force for purposes other than immediate self-defense. Translated this means that the operation will be a peace imposition not a mere peacekeeping affair.
So, we ought to be able to sigh in relief and smile at the prospect of peace-soon-to-come in Darfur. We can imagine scenes of happy farmers returning to their fields and homes, schools opening, hospitals providing good care, and all the other accoutrements of peace, love and flower power.
Wait one!
There are two flies in the Jello.
The first fly is the African Union, whose chief diplomat has announced that no matter what the UN might be thinking, the combined force will be under African command and control. This isn't simply a small insect in the desert. No. It's more like a bolus in the punchbowl.
It means that there is no real possibility that any Western nation will authorize the dispatch of military or police assets to the joint operation. It means that while the West will be (as the AU diplomat states) expected to pay the costs and furnish equipment and supplies, no western direct command and control will be allowed.
Back up a step or two. What might be the real goal here?
The real goal is the second fly in the Jello. Sudan is a nation-state with all the consensually accepted features of a functioning nation-state including membership in the AU. It is also an Islamic state as are many in the AU. (Think Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt among others.) In short, the fix is in.
Any authentic peace imposition and keeping mission in Darfur would have one of two results if the peace were to be long lasting. Darfur would have to become at least an autonomous region within Sudan. Or, the Sudanese regime would have to be changed.
Neither alternative is acceptable either in Khartoum or many African capitals. Sudan is not alone in facing internal, separatist movements. This is not surprising given that the vast majority of the lines on a map designating borders were drawn by European bureaucrats or military men more than a century ago to meet the their needs not the human realities on the ground.
Given the dismal record of the majority of African manned and commanded peacekeeping mission under the AU and its predecessor the OAU, it can be confidently expected that Darfur will be pacified in a way that meets the interests of Khartoum, not the folks in Darfur. A close look at the same record shows that the locals will be lucky if they are not robbed blind, raped, assaulted, or killed.
The big winner in this beauty contest may be Somalia. The tribes and clans who live in the area have shown both remarkable resilience under extreme stress and an equally remarkable persistence of cultural and historical trajectories. If the writings of the early British explorer of Somalia (and first European to penetrate Mecca during the haj and live to write about it) Richard Burton and descriptions of Somali life in recent years are compared, the only changes have been the introduction of AK-47s in lieu of flintlocks and the importation of Wahhabist Islam in place of the earlier laid back local form.
Left alone, the Somalis will rediscover their own mechanisms for peacekeeping and political change, the councils of clan elders and the battle of poets.
You gotta like people who see poetry as the ultimate weapon.
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