It sounds wonderful. Let’s put together a peace-keeping force, under the auspices of the United Nations, and send them to trouble spots to stop armed conflicts and perhaps bring peace. Lets’ give the soldiers all the latest equipment and a distinctive blue helmet. Then they will keep warring parties apart, report on violations of peace agreements, protect the displaced and vulnerable, and facilitate the work of relief and health organisations until peace can return, or at least not war. This is one idea that has been advanced for the US to get out of the Iraq quagmire. It’s worked before. There has been a UN peace-keeping force in Cyprus since 1964 and has prevented the outbreak of a major war between Greece and Turkey. There are many other examples in the Balkans, Africa and Asia. At the beginning of 2007 there were over 100,000 people involved in United Nations peacekeeping operations around the world.
The idea is excellent. Soldiers from poorer, less controversial countries, sometimes ethnically more close to the warring factions, go into zones of conflict to impose peace. The richer, more controversial, sometimes more closely involved with one side or the other of the conflict, pay the bill. And the world is more peaceful as a result.
Some say, “yes, but it doesn’t work that way.” That’s true, sometimes matters get out of control, peacekeepers cower before formidable foes, some soldiers rape locals or commit other atrocities. Sadly, there are some bad soldiers in every army. And sometimes the warring factions just ignore the peace-keepers. But the concept has been successful in most cases, certainly more successful than making war to bring peace.
But the whole idea is under threat. The peacekeeping fund is running out of money, mostly because the US is not paying what it pledged to pay. The US will contribute about $ 1 billion to the peacekeeping fund in 2007 which is some $500.00 less than it pledged. The US is already $500.000 in arrears from previous underpayments. This means that by the end of 2007 the US will be over $ 1 billion in arrears. This causes many problems in international relations, makes the world less safe, and brings the ethical and moral behaviour of the US government further into question. Worse, it jeopardises the prospects for UN peacekeepers in the Sudan, Darfur and other current hot spots.
The US contributes substantial amounts to the United Nations, but probably not its fair share. With 28% of the world’s economy, it has unilaterally limited its contribution to 22% of the UN’s budget. And now it is not even paying that.
I can’t understand how the Bush Administration can spend over $6 billion every month on making war in Iraq but can’t find less than one week’s worth of war payments to pay for making peace, especially after it had pledged to do so.
According to former US Senator Tim Wirth, now President of the United Nations Foundation, Bangladesh, the world’s poorest country, is $80 million in debt because the US has not honoured its commitments.
So, if you want some of your tax money to go for peacekeeping as well as war making, write to your congressman and senators and tell them you want the US to pay its obligations to the UN peacekeeping fund. Or, write to your MEP and tell him/her that you want the EU to pressure the US to meet its UN peacekeeping obligations. You can also sign an online petition at http://www.priceofpeace.org/.
For more information, go to a Financial Times article on the subject - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/f4bc2954-1ea7-11dc-bc22-000b5df10621.html
Grambois, France 23 June 2007
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3 comments:
I have a better idea. First let's reform the United Nations such that it embraces the concept of democracy, not dictatorships. Specifically...
www.UnitedDemocraticNations.org
After that I'll be glad to contribute to it.
gary
Oi, achei teu blog pelo google tá bem interessante gostei desse post. Quando der dá uma passada pelo meu blog, é sobre camisetas personalizadas, mostra passo a passo como criar uma camiseta personalizada bem maneira. Até mais.
Glen, I'm sorry I didn't read this before Rodrigo (whose comment, by the way, is written in bad Portuguese and is irrelevant to the subject of your blog.)
The Financial Times made an important contribution to public discussion of the subject, and I am grateful you picked up on it.
While I agree wholeheartedly that America should assume its responsibilities, I see a couple of problems.
First, there is the matter of context: UN peace-keepers act as proxies for a non-existent collective authority. I wish it were otherwise, but so long as a single nation (Russia, China the United States, South Africa, India, Brazil...) remain "above the law", the "collective" remains an "authority" in name only. We cannot have an effective peace-keeping force if either of the parties lacks recourse to a political solution or if the instrument of such authority is unaccountable.
The second problem is one of credibility. In our lifetimes the international community has acted a dozen times and more to suppress open strife. Almost always these actions have been motived by self-interest (Korea, Dominican Republic, Chile, Panama, Grenada, Nicaragua, Kuwait...) and much less frequently, as a concerted international effort. Indeed, one of these "concerted efforts" has been the discreditable effort to maintain peace in the Middle East.
Not only might one suspect the International Community's "motives" for mobilizing a peace-keeping force, but one has to wonder about such a force's effectiveness given the passive-defensive, non-lethal rules of engagement to which they are held. I certainly would not want soldiers of a nation that is neither bound by the Geneva Rules nor accountable by rule of law to exercise force in my backyard.
The UN peace-keeper issue is more than a problem of funding, it is fundamental political problem of authority.
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