Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict

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Summary: A Close Examination of UN Peacekeeping Forces
Review:

A Close Examination of UN Peacekeeping Forces By David Isenberg Stars and Stripes Contributing Writer

Deliver Us From Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict, William Shawcross, Simon & Schuster, 413pp.

After reading this book nobody will ever again be able to contemplate a call to deploy United Nations peacekeepers without gagging. After I read it I was reminded of the saying that one is either part of the problem or part of the solution. For years people have assumed that when it came to peace and conflict issues in general and peacekeeping in specific that the United Nations was part of the solution. Perhaps it's time to change our minds. The Bible may say "Blessed are the peacemakers" but UN peacekeepers, unfortunately, are not.

In this book William Shawcross, longtime British journalist and veteran of many war zones, has written a dispassionate account of most of the major conflicts the UN has been involved in. The first part is a detailed, and at times dizzying history of UN involvement in the killing zones whose names we have seen so many times in the news: Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Chechnya, and Iraq. He analyzes, in great detail, the few, partial, tentative successes that UN Blue Helmets, such as UNTAC in Cambodia, and the far too many failures such as Rwanda, Somalia, and Sierra Leone.

The second part is a review, as seen by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan with whom Shawcross has obviously spent a great deal of time with, of the politics and diplomacy that occurred in the amorphous creature called the "international community," especially those nations that are members of the UN Security Council.

Sometimes it is hard to know which is worse; reading the accounts of the various atrocities perpetrated by the warlords and thugs posing as national leaders, i.e., Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevich, Foday Sankoh, Laurent Kabilah, or reading about the petty intrigues and bickering among the leaders of the Western governments and in the UN Secretariat.

Reading this book is like driving by a traffic accident; you are horrified by what you see but you can't keep from looking. The accounts of the enormous pressures encountered by Kofi Anan in trying to secure pledges of funds personnel, and approval for peacekeeping operations, and the obstacles encountered by UN peacekeepers from the forces who oppose their deployment, makes one appreciate that, unlike the Cold War era, there is no longer any peace to keep and precious little will to make peace.

At a time when UN forces are being captured by the hundreds by rebels in a heart of darkness like Sierra Leone one realizes that if UN peacekeeping operations could be symbolized by a car it would be the Edsel.

Though Shawcross is obviously sympathetic to the idea of UN peacekeeping he is too much the dispassionate observer to believe that current "humanitarian" interventions are a model to follow in the future. His last words are "In a more religious time it was only God whom we asked to deliver us from evil. Now we call upon our own man-made institutions for such deliverance. That is sometimes to ask for miracles."

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Summary: Deliver Us From the Evil of a Lack of Political Will
Review: Deliver Us from a Lack of Political Will, by Peter Gantz, Partnership for Effective Peace Operations.

A review of Deliver Us From Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict, William Shawcross, Simon & Schuster, 413pp.

So, yes, this book is about peacekeeping, that amorphous blob of activity the international community tasks the UN with accomplishing every day in conflict zones throughout the world. It is clear that expectations far exceed what the UN is capable of delivering, as Mr. Shawcross points out early on. The UN in the nineties was tasked with bringing peace to areas where conflict had erupted, following the end of the Cold War. Mr. Shawcross does an admirable job of describing how well and how often that did not work, and how deep the failures were.

This book is not a UN bashing book, though. It certainly points out the problems at the UN, but Mr. Shawcross knows that these problems, just as the UN itself, are the creation of the member states and their political leaders. In particular, the most powerful member state, the United States, has played a spectacularly unhelpful role. Congress nearly destroyed the UN financially in the late nineties, largely driven by provincial isolationists in the Republican Party. President Clinton and his top advisors were no better, perhaps most notably during the Rwandan genocide. Muddled decisions from the administration did much to worsen crises and conflicts the world over.

Mr. Shawcross puts his finger squarely on the problem. Time after time it has been a lack of political will. The inability of the international community to summon the courage to stop the deaths of millions of blacks in Rwanda, Burundi, and other parts of Africa is one of the more despicable features of the twentieth century, and one of the examples of problems with UN peacekeeping that Mr. Shawcross covers quite well. The U.S. and other countries are simply not willing to back up words with actions.

Hard and fast solutions are not offered by Mr. Shawcross. The reader would be better directed to other works for that. (The book came out prior to the UN's own surprisingly honest and straightforward assessment of peacekeeping, the Brahimi Report, commissioned by Secretary-General Kofi Annan.) But to understand the problems with UN peace operations, and to understand the fundamental root cause of these problems, the lack of political will to act, or to act well, this book is better than most. Mr. Shawcross suggests in the end that UN peace operations have too often been about asking for miracles.

But make no mistake; he does not suggest that peacekeeping should be abandoned. And certainly this book should not provoke a reader to gag at the idea of deploying peacekeepers-they should gag, however, at the antics of their elected officials. The U.S. and other countries sit at the Security Council and give the UN grand and noble tasks to save the world, but when it comes to providing the means to accomplish those tasks, failure is palpable. The abject failure of government officials to match actions to words is what we truly need deliverance from.

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Summary: enlightening
Review: For anyone interested in world affairs, or interested in learning more about the United Nations in today's fractured and dangerous world, I strongly recommend this work by Shawcross.

This work is essentially a survey of hotspots around the world that eventually boiled over spurring the intervention of foreign governments in the name of "humanity". Shawcross begins with the backgrounds of these conflicts and spells out the events leading up to and including foreign intervention and the aftereffects. Shawcross often begins to outline one conflict, leaves it to start another at a crucial point, may then introduce the reader to yet another, or return to the original. In this fashion, the reader is carried from conflict to conflict, without discovering a resolution until later. This device keeps the reader more interested and in the end perhaps mirrors the real world as well. Hotspots of the world don't wait for each other to resolve before cropping up.

Much of the work also focuses on Kofi Annan the current secretary general, and it is this topic that is most enlightening. As citizens of the world, we have painted a romantic picture of the U.N and become frustrated when it does not accomplish the things we would like it to. We often forget that the United Nations are composed of individual nations with individual interests. At the heart of the U.N. lies the Security Council. A veto by any of the members of the Security Council essentially cripples the U.N.'s ability to act. The U.N.is also reliant on its members for funding and equipment. It is in this context that Shawcross presents Annan, who himself is not without blame for some of the the U.N.'s shortcomings, but nevertheless comes across in a very sympathetic light.

The aforementioned members of the Security Council come across much more poorly, particulary the United States and France.

The highest complement I can give this work is that Shawcross is even handed. His writing does not heap blame on any party. He is merely spelling out the limitations of the world we live in and the simple fact that states are first and foremost looking out for their own interests.

Especially interesting is the material dealing with Saddam Hussein. He has been a thorn in the world's side for years. He also touches on Serbia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, East Timor among others.

One comes away with a new perspective on the limitations and failings of the United Nations, but also a profound feeling that it is as indispensible and vital as ever.

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Summary: Finally, the big picture
Review: I must begin with the disclaimer that I an not a reader of current-world-event reporting. For years, I have been frustrated by the snippets of informatioa that I get from the press: a mass grave here, a NATO strike there, a UN peace intervention somewhere else. Even if I chose to follow such events, I doubt that a coherent picture of world affairs would emerge.

I read Shawcross's DELIVER US FROM EVIL cover to cover. Finally, someone was presenting an overview of the tumultuous nineties. Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Zair, East Timor, Kossovo--they are all covered in an informed, evenhanded way. The author largely leads us through the eyes of Koffi Annan, who becomes Secretary General of the UN halfway through the book. The author's obviously extraordinary access to Annan makes this vantage point vibrant, compelling, and renders coherence to apparently unrelated conflicts. World diplomacy is an exercise in frustration and this book does a great job of keeping the attention of the reader who gets this point from the beginning and who knows its ending.

Two are the principal drawbacks of this recounting of the nightmares of the nineties. Shawcross does not spend much time on international criminal justice nor on international finance. The collapse of East Asian financial systems which threatened a world-wide crisis cannot be irrelevant to all these humanitarian crises. Perhaps the relation is superficial--that insolvent goventnments cannot afford to maintain or impose peace--but it might be quite deeper, perhaps triggeming or motivating unrest in various ways.

The nineties, the book shows, were a crucial time for international criminal justice. Regional courts for war crimes were established to punish war criminals and deter atrocities. Eventually, a permanent international court for war crimes was established. Neither the function, nor the creation, nor the arguments surrounding the jurisdiction of these institutions are covered in sufficient depth. These are the drawbacks that shade an otherwise admirable account of an extraordinarily confusing decade.

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Summary: How peacekeeping struggled and sometimes worked in the 90's
Review: Shawcross does a first rate job of reporting in detail the successes and failures of international peacekeeping during the late 20th century. Some of the other reviewers seem to feel that he makes no recommendations for remedying conflicts in our time. It seems obvious to me that he makes a strong case for the greater funding and improved implementation of peace keeping via the UN. Much of the book involves his admiration of Kofi Annan. If only half of what Shawcross says about Annan is true, then the world is very fortunate to have such an intelligent, compassionate, sensible, and decent man in the position of UN Secretary General.

The author is quite critical of certain types of humanitarian aid. He's obviously not against alleviating human suffering and death but makes the case that all too often the humanitarian agencies wind up strengthening warlords and despots while in the process of trying to succor the suffering population. He doesn't fault the intentions of the agencies, rather the results of their actions.

He seems to believe that aid is most effectively directed through international governmental agencies such as the UN. The carrot of humanitarian aid in many cases should not be offered without the stick of military force--or at least the convincing willingness of the agency to use military force against the offending parties. Much of the third world--and first and second for that matter--is a brutal neighborhood. Pacifism is a wonderful ideal. Unfortunately it is a totally unworkable ideal when dealing with the mass murderers in Africa, Milosevic of Serbia, Saddam Hussein, and the list seems to go on forever. When dealing with degenerates and moral monsters of these dimensions, unfortunately, the gun and the bomb are the only instruments that they really understand. It's unfortunate and it contradicts our most beloved liberal ideals and Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, etc. spiritual strivings, but reality has a way of imposing itself.

Shawcross is very critical of much of the West--in fact pretty much the whole world. He is not an admirer of the French governmental leadership. His contempt for their adventures in central Africa and their wretched ethnocentricism is not concealed. Clinton and Madelline Albright are scathingly portrayed at times. Right wingers will love this aspect. But he is no fan of their side. His view of Jessie Helms and Trent Lott is one of comic contempt. Deservedly so.

He calls for a recognition by the West--and especially the US--of the need to adequately fund the UN for peacekeeping and military operations. Also, to provide adequate, long term humanitarian aid. He suggests that the governments of the world--especially those with the most influence--need to help create international police, judicial, military, development, humanitarian structures to "keep the peace" and prevent human rights atrocities. The voters and taxpayers of the West need to recognize the importance of such activity. Re-directing only a very modest fraction of wasted expenditures for conspicuous consumption, excessive overeating, excessive alcohol consumption, excessive drug taking, etc. wasted in this country (the US) would have enormous humanitarian benefits. Not only the governments, but the citizens of the West need to change their perspective. Human rights are everyone's business. Observe how our indifference to human rights in Palestine has helped stoke the fires of Arab extremism in recent years.

Shawcross has no magic potion. The path he proposes is a difficult one. However, I think it's the only one that makes sense. Check writing humanitarian aid doesn't really cut it either--although very often it is better than nothing. But sometimes it is worse than nothing. US hegemony will never be satisfactory to the rest of the world--they rightfully suspect that the US is not always to be trusted. As empires go, we're certainly one of the better ones, however, empires for obvious reasons are not beloved. The only reasonable alternative is the path of international cooperation and institution building. This includes the committment of sufficient funding, men, and materials to the cause. It's not perfect--as Shawcross points out again and again--but it's the best option available to the world.

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Summary: Good, but I still don't think much could be done in Rwanda
Review: This an analysis of most of the trouble-spots that preoccupied the world in recent decades through tile eyes a British journalist William Shawcross, and, to a lesser degree the secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi An-nan, whom Mr Shawcross has accompanied on many of his travels.
The book concentrates of US policy United States which has not been willing to get involved in distant conflicts and send troops to try to establish 'peace' in distant countries and to do the job sevarl of its allies are also unwilling to do. Shawcross apperas to blame the US mostly for its terror of losing any of its soldiers' lives in combat, as Somalia shows.
The focus of the book is the US and international unwillingness to engage in Rwanda in 1994, in which, according one calculation cited by Mr Shawcross, the killing rate was five times that of the dazi death camps 50 years earlier. Members of the Clinton administration would not even dare describe the slaughter as genocide, for fear that it would oblige them, under the 1949 Genocide convention, to take action. Only France sent troops.
Shawcross is fair but I feel is overly trusting in the potential of the UN (as a former UNDP officer I have become very pessimistic about the potential of the UN) and tries to explain failures.

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Summary: A Review of Hell in the 90's
Review: This book is a good overview of the UN work as peace keepers during the 1990's and the horrible different wars that took place during the decade. Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, East Timor, and Iraq are the locations / wars the author takes us through. The descriptions of what these people did to each other are almost more then can be believed. The author also provides a good overview with each conflict as to why it was happening and the internal politics, which kept the killing going. He also gives us just enough details on the people effected that you really get a feel for the catastrophic impact the wars / slaughters have had on them. It really makes you wonder how people can do this to their neighbors.

The author also describes the deployment and efforts that the peacekeepers and aid works go through in these war zones. It is truly an aggravating reading experience to see the amount of internal and world politics that slows down the deployment of the soldiers to the point that thousands more people die waiting for the help. With that said that book also makes a very good point that the ideas and people that drive the push for peacekeepers are doing so in a misguided effort. The peacekeepers are solders and solders are not law enforcement officers, they are not trained or equipped for this function. The international and internal UN politics are so vast and ingrained that once a direction is proposed it is often too late in the execution, not well thought out, and ends without a plan for continued safety or improvements. The effect is often that the situation that brought the peacekeepers to the area quickly returns once the solders go home.

The book also covers a review of the politics and diplomacy that occurred during the 1990's in the world covering these events. We get an inside, but abbreviated view of these politics of the nations that are members of the UN Security Council. The author spent of good deal of time with the current UN Secretary General Kofi Annan so we get a lot of detail from his point of view. The author also gives us a few insights into some of the other world leaders involved in these issues. The pressures that the UN Secretary General faces trying to get pledges of funds, personnel, and approval for peacekeeping operations are very interesting and one wonders how anything gets done at all.

I thought the author was letting a little of his own politics or views into the writing by his comments that detailed the deliberate lack of intervention by the United States. The U.S. does surfer from not always having a clear path to follow in these type of issues, but I felt the author was trying to lay out that if the U.S. took the lead then many of the negative issues with peacekeeping would disappear. I would have liked the author to have included some maps of the parts of the world discussed. The fact geek in me would have liked to have seen a list of the UN peacekeeping missions they have done sense inception and a more in depth discussion on the criteria for choosing who sends men.

After reading this book you will understand that sending in United Nations peacekeepers means there is a huge mess that probably will not be resolved quickly. This is an interesting book and well worth it if you are interested in the topic.

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Summary: Good discussion of the issues
Review: This is a book about the role of the United Nations in international peacekeeping missions. Prior to the end of the cold war, the United Nations was not able to intervene in regional conflicts. The reason being that the split on the security council meant that one or other of the superpowers would veto actions which would conflict with their national interest. With the end of the cold war the world was faced with the possibility that the United Nations could for the first time try to act to limit human misery brought about by civil war and the collapse of civil authority in some countries. The early nineties also saw the election of the American President Clinton. Clinton at the start of his term was committed to trying to increase the importance of the United Nations as a means of bringing a rational approach to ending conflict. He appointed Madeline Albright as an Ambassador to the UN and there were expectations that something could be achieved.

Shawncross examines a large number of conflicts and looks at the attempts of the UN to achieve some positive result. The vast majority of the cases examined by Shawncross were failures. His book is an examination of how those failures occurred and what factors led to them.

There have however been some successes. The intervention in Cambodia, although it did not lead to the setting up of democratic institutions (Hun Sen was able to quickly set up an authoritarian state after elections were held which should have removed him from power) did lead to the end of the civil war in that country. Although it is only dealt with in a sketchy way the UN intervention in East Timor led to and end to the killing and it now seems possible that a democratic state will emerge.

The failures are however significant. The UN failed to do anything to prevent the genocide in Rwanda. What effectively happened in this case was that the Rwandan population was divided into two ethnic groups. One group the Hutus moved to kill the minority group the Tutis. Over 100,000 Tutis were murdered brutally with the UN taking no action at all. However the story did not end there. A guerilla movement consisting of Tutis was able to take control of the country. The Hutu groups responsible for the initial massacres forced huge numbers of their own people out of the country into neighbouring Zaire to form the basis of a guerilla army. This fought for some time against the victorious Tutis. Eventually the Tutis invaded Zaire massacring huge numbers of Hutu and in the process overturning the government of Mobutu. Some peace keepers were put in place to prevent this but the mission failed abysmally.

Another disappointment was Somalia. Again Somalia was a small country which had experienced a total break down in civil society. The collapse of order led to large numbers of rural people moving to the capital and a fall in food production. In place of civil authority the country became ruled by armed gangs. Both the United Nations and the United States became obsessed with one gang leader and spent most of their efforts trying to capture him. Alternative strategies might have involved the provision of food aid in country areas to move people out of the city as a means of increasing rural productivity. In addition attempts to disarm the groups one would have thought productive. Instead the UN and American troops fell into a confrontation with some gangs in the capital and suffered casualties which in the view of the US were not sustainable. This led to a pull out.

The book is interesting. It does not really propose a solution but it raises a huge number of issues. One interesting point made by the author is that it cost the Sierra Leone government $36m to hire a mercenary outfit Executive Solutions to deal with its rebellion. (The rebels involved were brutal and routinely amputated the limbs of village people for no good reason). The cost of hiring these mercenaries was cheaper than the cost of a UN force ($46m for the same period). As a number of the UN members do seem to have a stomach for the work one wonders if this may not be the future of peace keeping.

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Summary: Essential Reading for International Thinkers
Review: This is a fascinating exploration of various United Nations' interventions during the 1990s. The book does get a bit repetitive at points, as Shawcross sometimes beat his (albeit correct) thesis into the ground. But overall, it's well worth a read.

The essence of Shawcross' analysis is that the UN is not a sovereign entity, but rather a collection of individual states. People speak vaguely of "the UN" and its failures. In reality, most of the "UN's failures" have been due to decisions made by member states, particularly its most powerful and richest members.

He explores:
-how some crises gain great media and govt attention and devotion of resources (such as Kosovo) while others do not (Sierra Leone)

-how the Security Council members impose on the UN grand mandates without adequate resources (reconstruction of Bosnia)

-while other times, the restrictive mandates imposed by the Security Council prevent peacekeepers from actually acting in the face of horror (Srebenica, Rwanda)

-how even those places which gain the world's attention, find that interest quickly fades once the mundane, but essential task of rebuilding starts (Kosovo, East Timor)

Shawcross concludes that when the Security Council members want to act and commit the appropriate resources, things tend get done. But this usually only applies to war and military intervention situations (bombing of Yugoslavia) and such resolve and good intentions quickly dissipate when it comes to doing something positive (re-building). Critics, especially American ones, fixate on administrative inefficiencies a) without acknowleding the good work the UN and its affiliate groups (UNESCO, UNHCR) do and b) without recognizing the US' role in those inefficiencies.

The UN is not an independent entity with a sovereign leader. A failure of the UN is a failure of its member states.