International Peacekeeping In Lebanon

United Nations Authority And Multinational Force

Ramesh Thakur

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429712517
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

Examining the efficacy of U.N. peace efforts, Dr. Ramesh Thakur compares limited peacekeeping through U.N. authority with more coercive means such as the Multinational Force (MNF) in Lebanon. He finds that the role of the U.S.-led MNF coalition cannot be justified in terms of great-power responsibility for ensuring a stable international order, since the coalition has attempted to substitute military power for authoritative peacekeeping. When MNF legitimacy was questioned and authority was challenged, the MNF's use of force in response to those challenges switched the coalition's role from third-party peacekeeper to factional participant. As a result, every successive attempt to strengthen the MNF mandate has further subordinated the concept of neutral international peacekeeping to calculated support of national interests. If reasoned attempts to keep the peace are not to collapse into exercises in national self-interest, then peacekeeping responsibilities must remain with the U.N., supported by the great powers: Only the U.N. can provide an authoritative exposition of values within the context of international society and bestow international legitimacy upon peacekeeping activities; only the great powers can back the U.N. with requisite force.

1
Introduction

In his annual report to the United Nations in 1984, the Secretary-General began by noting his increased conviction "of the need to preserve and strengthen the Organization as a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations."¹ An extended and tolerable future for the human race can be assured only if the goals and principles expressed in the Charter of the United Nations become the basis of the day-to-day relations of nations. The Preamble to the Charter expresses the determination of the peoples of the United Nations "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war"; and, to this end, "to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security" and "to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest."

Unfortunately, the tendency since the Second World War has been for the "common interest" in international peace and security to be asserted only when the situation has deteriorated to a dangerously critical stage. The future of humanity has no political or bureaucratic constituency to lobby national governments on its behalf; short-term national interests therefore override the common interest. The prospect of governments conducting their daily international business by the rules of the U.N. Charter appears to be no nearer in sight in 1987 than it did in 1945 at the time of the adoption of the Charter. Javier Pérez de Cuéllar observed that:

...it is paradoxical that while contemporary realities have strengthened the need for the use of multilateral means for dealing with our problems and enlarged the scope for growth and development through multilateralism, there is an increasing questioning of the rules, instruments and modalities of multilateral co-operation. There is also, on occasion, an apparent reluctance to make the effort required to use international organizations effectively.²

The achievements of the United Nations during the four decades of its existence may be modest, but they are not insignificant. Nevertheless, as the Secretary-General himself conceded:

...the fact of the matter is that the three main elements of a stable international order - an accepted system of maintaining international peace and security; disarmament and arms limitation; and the progressive development of a just and effective system of international economic relations - have yet to take hold as they should.³

International peacekeeping is one of the more interesting and, arguably, also one of the more important developments in contemporary world affairs. Somewhat paradoxically, 1982 and 1983 were good years for highlighting both the need for and the limitations of international peacekeeping forces. In June 1982 the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was brushed aside contemptuously by Israeli forces sweeping triumphantly to Beirut. When the early ecstasies of apparent military victory turned into agonies of prolonged occupation, however, Israeli troops withdrew and handed over peacekeeping duties to a Multinational Force (MNF) in August 1982. A mere 20 months later the MNF crumbled under the combined weight of civil strife and international conflict. UNIFIL in the meantime soldiers on. But so too does the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO). Established in the Sinai a few months before the MNF, the MFO is still in tranquil existence. The paradox of simultaneous success and failure in different theatres nicely illustrates the two basic points about international peacekeeping. First, such forces are an indispensable instrument in the hands of the world community for tackling trouble spots in the existing international environment. Second, they are still an imperfect instrument, with major shortcomings and gaps. In short, they are necessary but not sufficient, and need supplementary measures in order to realize full potential. They also need to be understood properly in order to avoid disappointment and facilitate proper utilization.

After the Second World War, the international community fashioned the United Nations as the chief guardian of world peace and security. The U.N. was to achieve this goal by two principal methods: pacific settlement of disputes (Chapter VI of the Charter) and collective enforcement against violent transgressors of the international order (Chapter VII). The 1982 Falklands/Islas Malvinas war was testimony to the failure of the U.N. on both counts.

The institution of peacekeeping evolved in the grey zone between the two Charter categories of pacific settlement and collective enforcement. While pacific settlement aims to facilitate the reestablishment and preservation of peaceful relations between disputants, peacekeeping is directed towards constructing firebreaks which stop an outbreak of hostilities either from consuming the belligerents totally or engulfing others. Similarly, community enforcement measures necessarily entail four elements that violate core principles of peacekeeping: defining aggression; determining that aggression has taken place; identifying the aggressor; military participation by the major powers. The need for great power unanimity is evident in all four conditions. The U.N. failed to function as a collective security system not because it was conceptually defective, but because great power consensus, which had sustained the Allied effort during the Second World War and created the U.N. in its closing months, broke down rapidly after the war.

Once collective security was recognized as being unattainable, states moved to guarantee national security through collective defence; the United Nations moved to avoid or contain conflicts within tolerable limits. The origin of peacekeeping as a characteristic U.N. approach to damage-limitation is generally associated with Dag Hammarskjöld. Conceding that the U.N. lacked significant leverage to affect superpower relations, he nevertheless emphasized the fact that several conflicts lay outside the U.S.-U.S.S.R. ambit. The U.N. could be used to keep such conflicts outside the sphere of bloc differences. In particular, peacekeeping troops mounted by the U.N. could plug potential or consequential power vacuums, which would otherwise attract bloc rivalry to local conflict situations. To the extent that the politically impartial international organization is not a tool of any major power or bloc, it can be used to provide a guarantee in relation to all parties. Peacekeeping as preventive diplomacy was of service both to local and global adversaries: the former stopped their region from becoming a great power battleground; the latter avoided an escalating confrontation in areas without vital stakes.

The viability of the Hammarskjöld approach was dependent upon the continuing validity of its central assumptions. Specifically, the major powers had to consent to a mutual exclusion from local conflicts, to refrain from exercising the veto in the Security Council, to provide financial, logistical and diplomatic support; other third-party states had to consent to providing human and material resources; the disputants had to accept a stationing in their territory of international soldiers of peace wearing the U.N. insignia.

The present Secretary-General expressed the same idea in 1984:

Peace-keeping is an expression of international political consensus and will. If that consensus or will is weak, uncertain, divided or indecisive, peace-keeping operations will be correspondingly weakened. There are occasions when the differences among members of the Security Council even make it impossible to take any peace-keeping action at all. The strongest peace-keeping operation would be one which had the unreserved support, political, diplomatic and financial, of all the Members of the United Nations and even the actual participation of the permanent members of the Security Council under the mandate of the Council.⁴

The two peacekeeping operations in the Middle East in 1982 (the MFO in the Sinai and the MNF in Beirut) were mounted outside the U.N. framework because some, most or all of the conditions of the Hammarskjöld approach were absent.⁵ In the Sinai the role planned for the U.N. was torpedoed by radical Arab and Soviet rejectionism. The Beirut force, by contrast, was set up essentially because of Israeli preference for a non-U.N. force. In the aftermath of the invasion and the PLO expulsion from Beirut, the Israelis had no wish to see a U.N. operation maintained in Lebanon. The cost to the Israelis in casualties, domestic social cohesion and international opinion was too high for them to hand over the fruits of the invasion to a body deeply hostile to Israel. In conversation with President Ronald Reagan in late June, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin dismissed UNIFIL as the U.N. "Insecurity" Force in Lebanon.⁶ Moreover, the invasion had resulted in a major Soviet strategic retreat in the entire Middle East. It was not altogether difficult for Begin to convince the Reagan Administration of the folly of permitting a Soviet reentry through the back door, with a Security Council veto.

In other words, it was not possible to mount a U.N. peacekeeping effort in Beirut in 1982 because of the absence of international political consensus and will. In seeking to act outside the U.N. framework, the multinational peacekeepers, led by the United States, tried to sidestep the constraints upon United Nations action. In an earlier article, I had listed three possible adverse consequences resulting from the establishment of multinational forces: damage to the authority of the UN. as the chief instrumentality for maintaining international peace; harm to the basic concept that responsibility for world peace vests in the international community as a whole; and increased likelihood of external conflicts exacerbating regional crises.⁷ Insofar as the consequences for the United States are concerned, it is worth quoting the London Times correspondent: "Lebanon, which was once proclaimed to be so vital to American interests throughout the region, was transformed during the US military presence there into a state of chaos and anti-Western fundamentalism more profound than anything that existed before."⁸

One of my tasks in this book is to explain why this transformation is linked fundamentally to the decision to substitute a multinational for a United Nations peacekeeping force. More specifically, I wish to argue that:

1. There is an international society of which we are all members;
2. The United Nations is the only body which can provide an authoritative exposition - but not allocation - of values in international society;
3. The authority of the United Nations is diminished because of lack of enforcement sanctions;
4. In Beirut, the U.S.-led MNF coalition tried to substitute military power for authoritative peacekeeping;
5. Great powers have particular responsibilities towards the maintenance of a stable international order, but the MNF role in Beirut could not be justified in terms of such a world-order perspective;
6. The United Nations is both the chief symbol and the main dispenser of international legitimacy;
7. The questioning of MNF legitimacy encouraged factional challenges to its authority;
8. Attempts to respond to the challenges by force - the only means available to the MNF - converted its role from third-party peacekeeper to factional participant;
9. At each stage of a fresh challenge, the U.S. faced the choice of accepting the impotence of its marines or strengthening their mandate;
10. Every successive attempt to strengthen the MNF mandate produced a corresponding subordination of a conception of international peacekeeping to calculations of national interest.

That is, the U.S.-led MNF coalition was trying to engage in an authoritative allocation of values without possessing the attributes necessary for playing such a role. The United States in particular had confused and collapsed the distinctions between collective defence, collective security and international peacekeeping. The sum of national interests of a few selected Western governments could not constitute an adequate substitute for the international interest represented by the United Nations. Instead, it damaged U.S. credibility by being unfairly perceived as a test of US. strength and resolve; it damaged UN. authority by sidestepping the U.N. system; and it exacerbated Lebanese fighting by acting as a "lightning rod" which attracted hostile attention as a focus of grievances.

In his 1984 report that has already been referred to, the Secretary-General asked:

Why has there been a retreat from internationalism and multilateralism at a time when actual developments both in relation to world peace and to the world economy would seem to demand their strenghtening?....I hope very much that political scientists and intellectuals the world over, as well as political leaders and diplomats, will ponder this essential problem on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the United Nations.⁹

The chapters which follow are an attempt by one political scientist to ponder, not upon the causes of the problem raised by the Secretary-General, but upon their consequences in one region of the world in 1983-1984.

Notes

1. Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization 1984 (New York: United Nations, 1984), p. 3.

2. Ibid., p. 4.

3. Ibid., p. 6.

4. Ibid., p. 8.

5. For the background to the establishment of these operations, see Richard W. Nelson, "Multinational Peacekeeping in the Middle East and the United Nations Model," International Affairs 61 (Winter 1984/1985); Nathan A. Pelcovits, Peacekeeping on Arab-Israeli Fronts: Lessons from the Sinai and Lebanon (Boulder, Co.: Westview, 1984), pp. 5-16; Kamesh Thakur, "Peacekeeping in the Middle East: From United Nations to Multinational Forces," Australian Outlook 38 (August 1984).

6. Quoted in Madeleine G. Kalb, "UN peacekeeper frustrated," New York Times, as reprinted in the New Zealand Times, 10 April 1983.

7. Ramesh Thakur, "The Olive Branch Brigades: Peacekeeping in the Middle East," The World Today 40 (March 1984), p. 97.

8. Robert Fisk, "US rhetoric rings hollow in Middle East," The Australian, 15 April 1986.

9. Pérez de Cuéllar, Report of the Secretary-General 1984, p. 4.