WHEN PEACEKEEPING DOESN'T WORK

By Henry Grunwald

It may be time to ban the word peacekeeping, or at least to limit its use. As has been widely pointed out, peacekeeping is impossible if there is no peace to keep. It might be said with only slight exaggeration that peacekeeping works only when it is not necessary -- in other words, when enemies have more or less agreed to stop fighting. In such situations, Blue Helmets can provide the final impetus toward peace and supervise established arrangements, as happened in Cyprus, Mozambique, Cambodia, the Sinai and elsewhere. But it cannot work in a cockpit like Bosnia, as U.N. officials themselves warned three years ago. Nevertheless, the Security Council, with the support of the U.S., imposed a mission that mixed peacekeeping with humanitarian aid. It ensured the present debacle by sending in totally inadequate forces, with NATO in an absurd supporting role.

The widely advocated alternative, heavy air strikes plus the lifting of the arms embargo on Bosnia, almost certainly would not work either, except in the sense that it might enable the antagonists to fight until exhausted. Of course, some political-diplomatic settlement might still be patched together. But the only sure way to end the conflict is by overwhelming force, meaning up to 100,000 NATO troops prepared to stay for a long time, as advocated by Senator Richard Lugar and others. Is Bosnia worth it? A case can be made that it is, on moral grounds and as a deterrent to future aggressors. But there is no immediate, major U.S. national interest at stake to justify such a vast military effort. If that is the considered U.S. view, we should quit our hand wringing and stop trying quarter measures. This calculation could change if the fighting were to spread and involve NATO allies.

The issue is no longer just Bosnia, but what to do in future, similar situations. Above all avoid the U.N., say many people, especially the Republicans. They would severely restrict the President's ability to work with it. That is understandable, given the U.N.'s monumental disarray. But the U.S. is not rich enough or powerful enough to undertake major international actions without allies. The U.N. can be useful in marshaling them, as was evident during the Gulf War, which the U.N. authorized. Without it, the U.S. would have more trouble assembling coalitions from scratch in each crisis, or it might have to invent a new international organization (this may become necessary anyway). But the notion that U.S. decisions are subject to the U.N. is a somewhat paranoid fallacy, fed by the Clinton Administration's vacillations and its rhetoric about multilateralism. We can use the U.N. selectively and avoid asking it to undertake things it was never set up to do. To a large extent we can control it; we certainly cannot be made to do anything against our will.

But with or without the U.N., under what circumstances should the U.S. intervene? All right, not Somalia, not Bosnia -- but where and how? In some cases the U.S. must limit itself to humanitarian aid and avoid military involvement. In other cases, intervention by the U.S. and its allies may be necessary. For example: aggression or nuclear threats from Iraq, Iran or North Korea; eruptions of Islamic fundamentalism, which are even now destabilizing Algeria and could threaten Turkey, bringing intolerable pressures on Europe; "local" wars, like those in India and Pakistan, that might turn nuclear. Neither the White House nor its critics are educating Americans about how such events -- and others -- would affect U.S. vital interests. This kind of crisis would certainly require more than "peacekeeping." Thus some new words have entered the conversation: peacemaking, peace enforcing. But perhaps we should revive the term pacification, in the sense the Romans had in mind when they "pacified" the unruly Germanic tribes, or the British when they "pacified" the Northwest Frontier. This is not to prescribe a new imperialism but to recognize that sometimes peace requires adequate force.

A defining moment came in Somalia. The U.S. role had turned from a humanitarian action into a futile mission. But America made a statement to the world when it panicked at the sight, however tragic, of 18 of its soldiers killed. After that, it became a little harder to talk about the U.S. as a superpower. Right now very few Americans seem ready to make a stand and risk casualties anywhere.

In coping with international crises, coherent diplomacy is indispensable. So is political and economic pressure. But they are rarely sufficient, if it seems certain that they will almost never be backed by force. Nor should it be assumed that force can always be limited to air power. What if bombing does not settle a conflict -- do we then just walk away? The use of ground forces simply cannot be ruled out if America wants to be taken seriously. American politicians of all shades keep talking about the need for U.S. leadership, but leadership is expensive-in money and sometimes in lives. If we really mean to lead, and to bring about a world more or less congenial to us, we should stop pretending that we can do the job on the cheap and by remote control. In many situations, if we want a peace to keep, we will have to go beyond peacekeeping.