bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1993) — Spring 1993 // Printemps 1993, pp. 19–20
One of the more difficult problems now facing all NATO governments, individually and collectively, is how to structure national armed forces to meet the largely unknowable requirements of the decades ahead.
I say “unknowable” — and have deliberately avoided the expression “new world order” — because the latter is an essentially reactive term meant to describe a world in which the old order, with its clearly defined cold war adversaries, has ended and has been replaced by one in which there may be some hope of stability using new international instruments, but a great deal of uncertainty about the circumstances in which such instruments might be developed or how ready the world is for innovation. It does not mean that security problems have disappeared or that a new way of addressing them is the automatic fruit of the collapse of the bi-polar era in international affairs. The “new world order” remains an elusive ideal.
The end of the global confrontation with the Soviet-led Communist bloc has released a tidal wave of change with three immediate consequences.
First, it has removed military and political restraints on a host of ethnic and border problems, particularly (but not exclusively) within the former Soviet Union and along its periphery, causing them to erupt into serious violence.
Second, it has left a huge arsenal of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons under divided, and sometimes unknown, control in several areas of the former Soviet territory.
Third, it has fired the ambitions of would-be great powers, who are busily engaged in acquiring the sophisticated weapons that are the trappings of Great Power status. Some appear bent on regional Super Power status complete with weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.
Instead of peace, we have a large and growing global instability, for which we are less well prepared than we should be. This is simply because nearly all NATO nations have been too quick to claim a “peace dividend”,
One of the lessons of two World Wars is that the lack of collective arrangements encouraged piecemeal aggression. Yet, the first thing we in the West have done is to loosen, through troop withdrawals and reductions, the ties that bind us in NATO. We have thus already somewhat undermined the one collective instrument capable of coping with any sudden reversion to militancy in and around the former Soviet Union. It is also the one instrument capable of responding to the steadily growing international demand to endow the UN with some peace-making capability. Gone, or rapidly going, are the days when an adequate UN response meant Blue Berets standing indefinitely on Green Lines between rival countries or factions, trying to maintain a shaky cease-fire but otherwise doing little to resolve the underlying causes of tension. Cyprus is a clear example of the dubious utility of the classical peacekeeping approach unless nations are prepared to embrace the concept that a permanent UN military presence in every area of tension is a reasonable proposition. That may come about some day, but is well beyond the attainable today.
Nevertheless, cost and the strain on manpower resources alone are causing the most dedicated peacekeepers to re-think current practice. There is mounting international clamour for more decisive means of containing conflict and imposing solutions, not confined simply to economic and political sanctions.
The tougher demands of peace-making are arising at a time when:
• Canada, the world’s foremost peace-keeper, no longer has sufficient trained manpower to respond to any further requests, and has only limited capability in equipment terms to tackle more militarily demanding roles;
• the UN does not have in place the command organization to mount successfully a peace-making operation;
• the CSCE is explicitly prohibited by its declaration of 10 July 1992 from engaging in “enforcement action”; and • the WEU lacks the necessary common infrastructure. Only NATO possesses the command structure, standardized operating procedures, inter-operable equipment and over 40 years of experience working together by consensus. These could meet some of the world’s more pressing security needs of today, pending development of more permanent arrangements under the aegis of the UN. This is not special pleading for NATO; it is simply a statement of facts as they are in the contemporary world.
We are at a stage in world security developments akin to the later phases of sequence of events which has led to the formation of organized police forces in domestic societies. First lawlessness, then fair-minded citizens banding together to keep the peace. Second, the creation of publicly authorized, lightly armed police forces. Third, the creation of more fully armed police, with all the attendant dilemmas of how much force they should be allowed to use.
The question is — can the national pattern be repeated in the international arena? Do UN member states have the political will to allow the use of reasonable force to compel peace? Could the agreement of all the members of the UN Security Council and General Assembly be obtained to create the necessary mechanism to do so?
It seems highly improbable that such a consensus could be developed if it involved the creation of a standing international force having its own command organization under the direct control of the UN Security Council. It has proven difficult enough to obtain unanimity amongst the five Permanent Members of that body on broad general directives to peacekeepers and peacemakers, let alone the much wider agreement which would be required to launch such a comprehensive scheme. The immediate objective must be something less ambitious and which requires less dramatic innovation.
Here again, one can have recourse to the analogy of the growth of domestic mechanisms for maintaining peace and order within the nation state. All laws, the penalties for infractions and the means for policing the former and imposing the latter involve some derogation of individual liberties. They require entrusting one group in society with powers of enforcement that are deemed to be in the collective interest. Checks and balances in the form of courts and democratic legislative institutions have been developed in the more advanced societies to prevent abuses. There is no single universal model for the attainment of a just and ordered society. The areas in which this has been achieved are increasing and will grow further under the impact of the global information explosion. The point is that there has been no need for individual nations to wait for all others before applying sensible and just security regimes internally.
Seen in this light, two lessons are evident. First, some surrender of national sovereignty and freedom of action increasingly will be involved if the goal of policing international peace and security is to be attained. Second, it is not necessary to proceed directly to a universal means of enforcing peace and security when regional first steps are more likely to be attainable and effective.
Here, then, is an opportunity to build on what we have and, by example, to set the stage for other regions. Within the North Atlantic grouping of nations, we have the longest experience of democratic, orderly and just societies and possess the only effective collective security organization in the world. If, under the authority of the UN Security Council and with the majority consent of the UN General Assembly, the world could be divided into regional security areas and each region encouraged to set up its own regional security organization, one such region could embrace all of Western Europe, the Balkans and North America.
Discussion of a regional concept might find a rationale developing for the inclusion of additional states that border on this region. NATO would then supply a ready-made peacemaking mechanism for the regional entity. It would automatically be endowed with the authority to deal with the present unrest in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.
Admittedly, the fact that the war in Yugoslavia lacks the clear-cut image of aggression of one nation against another, as in the Iraq/Kuwait invasion, and has some overtones of a civil war, will make it difficult to obtain consensus even within NATO. In addition, no one should have any illusions about the difficulties inherent in the creation of acceptable regional security entities. So pressing, however, is the need to contain the conflict in Yugoslavia before it spreads to other areas of the Balkans and to the Middle East that pragmatism and self-interest dictate a collective intervention to stop the bloodshed.
Early success in coping with the tragic situation in Yugoslavia would validate the regional or “collective responsibility” concept. This could become the embryo of a workable “new world order.”
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1993) — Spring 1993 // Printemps 1993, pp. 19–20. Read the rest of this issue →
