TRIAGEforFAILING STATES

Edward Marks**William Lewis****NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY**

**McNair Paper 26**
January 1994

**A popular Government, without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but aPrologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever governignorance; And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves withthe power which knowledge gives.
JAMES MADISON to W. T. BARRY
August 4, 1822

***Contents

Copyright Information
Foreword
Stuart Johnson

UN Peacekeeping in a Post-Cold War World
Edward Marks                                             

Peacekeeping in the Name of Humanity
William Lewis                                               
*FOREWORDThe period since the end of the Cold War has witnessed dramatic growth in the number of localwars, anarchic situations resulting from the collapse of governing institutions, and naturaldisasters requiring humanitarian assistance.  The majority of international efforts to deal withthese crises have been linked with the United Nations operations tied generically to"peacekeeping."  The reason is not difficult to perceive.  Bipolarity has given way to multipolarity;today, intrastate conflicts threaten international order and stability much as interstate wars havedone in this century.
	While debate in the academic community and official precincts in Washington has tendedto focus on the purely military aspects of international peacekeeping in the post-Cold War era,United Nations involvement in crisis resolution has developed through the humanitarian entrypoint.  This has most obviously been the case in Bosnia and Somalia, with far-reachingimplications and consequences for military forces so engaged.
	Numerous issues have arisen in the peacekeeping-humanitarian assistance realm.  Mostnotable have been: (a) whether humanitarian assistance represents a form of intervention inviolation of Article 2(7) of the United Nations Charter relating to interference in the domesticaffairs of sovereign member states; (b) the extent to which such intervention is justified whengovernments brutalize their populations or cannot provide minimal services to their citizens; �how to reorganize and draw together the diverse and divergent United Nations agenciesconcerned with peace support and humanitarian assistance operations; and (d) which elementsshould be responsible for overall coordination and direction of the two activities, each with itsown bureaucratic culture and distinctive history.
	To address these and related issues, we have elicited two essays.  The first, byAmbassador Edward Marks, a Senior Fellow of the Institute for National Strategic Studies,examines the United Nations aspect.  Ambassador Marks recently came to the Institute afterseveral years as a senior officer in the Permanent United States Missions to the United Nations(New York). The second essay is by Professor William Lewis of The George WashingtonUniversity, who addresses the legal and political issues associated with the U.S. and UNinvolvement in Somalia and northern Iraq.
	I believe that both presenters have explored a little understood subject field, one worthy ofeven more extensive analysis.

STUART E. JOHNSON
Acting Director
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