U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

69–979 DTP WASHINGTON : 2001

U.S. POLICIES TOWARD U.N. PEACEKEEPING:

REINFORCING BIPARTISANSHIP AND

REGAINING EQUILIBRIUM

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

OCTOBER 11, 2000

Serial No. 106–193

Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/international—relations

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2250

Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001

(II)

COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York, Chairman

WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania

JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa

HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois

DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ELTON GALLEGLY, California

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina

DANA ROHRABACHER, California

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California

PETER T. KING, New York

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

MATT SALMON, Arizona

AMO HOUGHTON, New York

TOM CAMPBELL, California

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

KEVIN BRADY, Texas

RICHARD BURR, North Carolina

PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio

GEORGE RADANOVICH, California

JOHN COOKSEY, Louisiana

THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado

SAM GEJDENSON, Connecticut

TOM LANTOS, California

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American

Samoa

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio

CYNTHIA A. MCKINNEY, Georgia

ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida

PAT DANNER, Missouri

EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama

BRAD SHERMAN, California

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida

STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey

JIM DAVIS, Florida

EARL POMEROY, North Dakota

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York

BARBARA LEE, California

JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York

JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL, Pennsylvania

[VACANCY]

RICHARD J. GARON, Chief of Staff

FRANCIS C. RECORD, Senior Professional Staff Member

SHENNEL A. NAGIA, Staff Associate

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

WITNESSES

The Honorable John R. Bolton, Senior Vice President, American Enterprise

Institute ................................................................................................................ 4

The Honorable Dennis C. Jett, Dean of the International Center, University

of Florida ............................................................................................................... 10

Edward C. Luck, Executive Director, Center for the Study of International

Organizations of the New York University School of Law and the Woodrow

Wilson School of Princeton University, President Emeritus, United Nations

Association of the United States ......................................................................... 15

APPENDIX

Members’ prepared statements:

The Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman, a Representative in Congress from the

State of New York, and Chairman, Committee on International Relations ... 35

Witness’ prepared statements:

The Honorable John R. Bolton ............................................................................... 37

The Honorable Dennis C. Jett ................................................................................ 66

Edward C. Luck ....................................................................................................... 73

(1)

U.S. POLICIES TOWARD U.N. PEACEKEEPING:

REINFORCING BIPARTISANSHIP AND REGAINING EQUILIBRIUM

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

Washington, DC.

The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:09 a.m. in Room

2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Benjamin A. Gilman

(Chairman of the Committee) presiding.

Chairman GILMAN. The Committee will come to order. I am

pleased to welcome our witnesses this morning to this long-delayed

hearing on a review of the Administration’s peacekeeping policy

blueprint and how the Administration has applied its policy blueprint for four key U.N. peacekeeping operations. We were briefed

last week on the long-delayed investigation by the General Accounting Office into the Presidential Decision Directive number 25,

PDD–25. The process whereby the U.S. approves U.N. and other

multi-lateral peace operations and provides timely and relevant information to the Congress concerning their implementation. This

report was requested last year by this Committee on a bipartisan

basis and follows a number of GAO reports on peacekeeping-related

topics conducted over the past several years on a timely basis with

the cooperation of the Administration.

Today U.N. peacekeeping is facing extremely difficult challenges

on the ground. The decision by the Indian government to pull out

its peacekeepers might well lead to a breakdown of U.N. peacekeeping efforts in Sierra Leone. The government of the Democratic

Republic of the Congo has refused to cooperate with the U.N. in the

deployment of the peacekeeping force in that nation. And there are

continuing obstacles from the Indonesian military and police forces

in the ongoing U.N. mission in East Timor.

These developments, in turn, raise key questions about the process and how our Nation approves and supports our peacekeeping

missions. Today, we still have many questions about the process

whereby the Clinton Administration approved these missions. Regrettably, we received a few satisfactory responses from the GAO

on how the Administration has applied its own policy blueprint to

the missions now on the ground in Africa, in Asia and in Europe.

This process was requested on a bipartisan basis with our Ranking

Member, Mr. Gejdenson.

The GAO reported to us that it lacks full and independent access

to agency records needed to be able to complete its work. FurtherVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:59 Mar 08, 2001 Jkt 069979 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\FULL\H101100\69979 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
2

more, it has no access to key documents that would disclose whether this peacekeeping policy blueprint was fully taken into account

when deciding to support some peacekeeping operations. With no

independent access to records, the GAO feels that the integrity and

the reliability of its work has been compromised. The GAO investigators have produced an extensive summary of their request to

the Administration, many of which were ignored or denied on very

dubious grounds.

The summary which will be made available later today, documents the extensive efforts made by the GAO to acquire the documents it needs from the Administration to complete this long-delayed investigation. And while the work of the GAO in this area

is not yet complete, it is becoming more clear that the Administration has yet to take a cooperative attitude toward the completion

of this peacekeeping review by the GAO investigators.

In short, we are still in need of timely and complete cooperation

from the Administration on this pending review by the GAO, and

how these operations are approved and conducted. And most disappointing of all is the failure of the State Department to make

available to this Committee the two witnesses we had requested for

today’s hearing. It is my understanding that Under Secretary

Thomas Pickering and Deputy Legal Advisor James Thessin are

unable to join us this morning to discuss how the department is

handling policy and process questions relating to the GAO investigation. However, I will be asking for their cooperation in arranging a Members-only briefing tomorrow to pursue the issues and

questions relating to the ongoing GAO investigation.

Today we are fortunate to have with us an outstanding private

sector panel to review the peacekeeping policy issues before our

Committee. Today’s panel includes the Honorable John R. Bolton,

Senior Vice President of the American Enterprise Institute and

former Assistant Secretary of State for International Operations;

Ambassador Dennis Jett, Dean of the International Center for the

University of Florida, and former ambassador to Mozambique and

Peru; and Edward C. Luck Executive Director of the Center for the

Study of International Organizations.

I am pleased now to recognize our Ranking Minority Member the

gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Gejdenson.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gilman is available in the appendix.]

Mr. GEJDENSON. Mr. Chairman, I think you have to excuse the

Administration for its caution in dealing with the Congress on foreign policy matters. We have now an almost unending 2-year assault trying to make foreign policy a partisan political battle. We

started off with the Republican leadership saying they were going

to make foreign policy the issue for the campaign. We have now

had two completely partisan reports from Mr. Cox, the last one appropriately titled ‘‘The RAG,’’ trying to bring the Committee into

the presidential campaign. And I think for the future good of this

Committee and whether it is taken seriously in the public, we have

to make, I think, a stronger effort to prevent the simply partisan

assaults on the Administration.

Having said that, I do think that peacekeeping is an important

area for the United States and this Committee to focus on. FrankVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:59 Mar 08, 2001 Jkt 069979 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\FULL\H101100\69979 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
3

ly, I think all of us need to be embarrassed by what seems to be

almost a continental divide where we find in Europe and some

other places of the world, Americans are ready to move quickly. In

Africa and Asia, it has been hard to mobilize the United States

Congress or the Administration. In Rwanda in a 4-month period,

800,000 men, women and children were killed while the western

world dithered. When we see what is happening today in Sierra

Leone, it is an embarrassment to societies that call themselves civilized as Sierra Leonean children have their limbs hacked from

their bodies and their faces scarred for life.

Mr. Royce held a hearing here with a number of victims of that

violence. It seems to me that we need to find a way to help international organizations, most likely the U.N., to fulfill its responsibility globally, and that in Africa, we have been embarrassed by

our failure to act. Peacekeeping is in America’s national interest.

Today we have very few American military personnel participating

in U.N. peacekeeping operations. Less than 40 military are presently serving in 15 current U.N. peacekeeping operations. We need

to take a look at the recent report which delineated some of the

shortcomings in the U.N. And it’s peacekeeping efforts.

The price tag is significant. But the price tag of not having

peacekeeping is far higher. U.N. peacekeeping operations have

helped us bring to a close conflicts in El Salvador and Guatemala,

saving the American taxpayers millions of dollars and countless

lives in those areas.

For Congress and the Administration, there is a choice. Either

we will find a way to establish an international peacekeeping force

that has a capability to end and prevent conflict, or we will spend

our days here debating resolutions and memorializing those who

die.

It may be understandable that we spent a day here last week debating the Armenian Genocide. Those were the failures of a past

generation, a generation that may have not been informed of what

was happening in a timely manner. Today, from CNN and other

news sources, every citizen knows almost immediately when ethnic

cleansing and murder is brought down on a civilian population.

And for those of us who think foreign policy is an important part

of a superpower’s responsibilities, we have to figure out how to

make it a successful effort on every continent and not simply allow

mass murder to occur in the continents that either do not have the

political appeal or the economic interest immediately at hand.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you Mr. Gejdenson. Let me just address one point that you’ve raised, Mr. Gejdenson. We do not feel

it is a partisan attack when we simply asked the State Department

to cooperate with the GAO and its investigation and review, a review that both you and I requested. And furthermore, we just want

to put the facts about PDD–25 before the Congress so that we can

examine closely whether or not our peacekeeping missions are

properly planned.

Mr. GEJDENSON. Mr. Chairman.

Chairman GILMAN. Yes.

Mr. GEJDENSON. Mr. Chairman you will understand the confusion in the Administration when there seems to have been an almost unending political assault on the Administration’s foreign polVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:59 Mar 08, 2001 Jkt 069979 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\FULL\H101100\69979 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
4

icy clearly articulated by the leadership of the Republican party

here. And again, Mr. Chairman, this is no reflection on you. Actually, I don’t think you even participated in the RAG report led by

Mr. Cox or the North Korean Advised Group, but for the Administration, viewing what happens here on Capitol Hill, it is very easy

to come to a conclusion that the Republican majority’s primary purpose in dealing with foreign policy issues is to try to gain political

advantage and ignoring the old admonition that partisanship

should end at the water’s edge here.

I think that we are going to have to work—whoever is in control

of the next Congress, to try to rebuild a sense that there is a seriousness to the work of Congress, when it involves itself in foreign

policy. And again, the two reports by Mr. Cox in particular, and the

public statements by leaders of the Republican party where they

said they are going to make foreign policy an issue in the campaign, would give any Administration pause in dealing with the

Congress seriously.

Chairman GILMAN. Mr. Gejdenson. I don’t want to belabor the

point, but if you examine the hearing agenda before the Cox Committee, a Committee that consisted of all of the leading Chairmen

in the Congress, you will find that there were bipartisan witnesses,

including Mr. Brzezinski, who was a national security advisor.

But I think you will find, if you review the report by the Cox

Commission, there are serious problems involving corruption in

Russia. It is not intended to be a partisan attack but an attempt

to dig into the problems confronting Russia and our Administration

and what we should or could be doing to improve that.

Mr. GEJDENSON. Mr. Chairman.

Chairman GILMAN. Mr. Gejdenson.

Mr. GEJDENSON. Did any Democrats serve on those two Cox

Commissions?

Chairman GILMAN. The Commission was appointed by the

Speaker.

Mr. GEJDENSON. And excluded every Democratic Member of Congress.

Chairman GILMAN. It did not exclude. He appointed the Chairmen of the major Committees in the House.

Now I think it is time we ought to proceed with our testimony.

We are pleased to welcome Mr. Bolton back to the Committee

where he frequently has testified on a wide range of foreign policy

and security issues. Mr. Bolton is the Senior Vice President of the

American Enterprise Institute, and he has served as an assistant

Secretary of State for International Organizations and has assisted

the attorney general at the Department of Justice and is the President of the National Policy Forum.

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN R. BOLTON, SENIOR

VICE PRESIDENT, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

Chairman GILMAN. Mr. Bolton, you may proceed. And you may

summarize if you desire, and your full statement will be made part

of a record.

Mr. BOLTON. Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here today to testify on this important subject, and I do

5

have a depressingly long, prepared statement that I will try to

summarize very briefly.

Chairman GILMAN. If I might interrupt. I am being called to another Committee for a few moments. I am going to ask Mr. Gillmor

if he will preside in my place.

Thank you.

Mr. GILLMOR. [Presiding} Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You may

proceed, Mr. Bolton.

Mr. BOLTON. Thank you very much. First I would like to spend

a minute on PDD–25, the central document defining the Administration’s U.N. peacekeeping policy. And I think that the basic issue

with PDD–25, although I laid out some details at length in the prepared statement, the central problem with it is that it does not

really provide policy guidance on peacekeeping. It is very general

and, in fact, in some cases internally contradictory. I think is a

good example of the notion that sometimes the U.N.’s best friends

can be its worst enemies. Let me just mention two central conceptual problems with PDD–25. The first is it consciously blurs the

distinction between traditional U.N. peacekeeping operations on

the one hand with peace enforcement on the other.

Traditional peacekeeping basically requires three prerequisites:

the consent of the parties involved in the dispute; U.N. neutrality

between those parties; and the U.N. use of force essentially only in

self defense. Peace enforcement, by contrast, necessarily contemplates the active use of military force by the U.N., or whatever

the implementing agency is. It is simply not correct, as PDD–25 asserts, that there is a spectrum between traditional peacekeeping

and peace enforcement. There is a very sharp division between

them, as both military and political experts would confirm. And I

think that central conceptual problem has lead the Administration

into a number of difficulties in peacekeeping, some of which I will

get into when I come to the five specific examples that I consider.

The second major problem with PDD–25 is its stress, indeed its

emphasis on U.N. involvement in intrastate conflicts, conflicts that

do not, in my judgment, amount to real threats to international

peace and security, which is the triggering threshold for Security

Council involvement in international affairs. In fact, this reliance,

this emphasis on intrastate conflicts, I believe, is simply the continuation of the Administration’s initial effort, sadly unsuccessful

and tragically for the United States, in nation-building in Somalia.

The fact is, Mr. Chairman, I believe in flexibility in executive

branch decision-making, and I think that the experience of the five

cases that I consider here shows that it really is inappropriate to

have a one-size-fits-all peacekeeping policy, that a reflexive and indeed, discriminate resort to U.N. Involvement actually can make

matters worse.

As I say, I have laid out five examples of current U.N. operations, current or contemplated U.N. operations, and I won’t go

into details, but I did run through this at some length and with citation to publicly-available information to make the point that

these situations are really quite diverse. And let me just consider

them quickly in order.

The first, the contemplated U.N. peacekeeping force in the Democrat Republic of the Congo. I think that the history, the recent hisVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:59 Mar 08, 2001 Jkt 069979 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\FULL\H101100\69979 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
6

tory of the Congo shows going back to the fall of the Mobutu and

the rise of Laurent Kabila to assume power in that country is the

complexity of the situation, not only with the shifting loyalties in

support of Kabila, first from the Tutsi minority in the Eastern part

of the Congo and now ironically from Hutu—in fact Interahamwe

forces in that part of the country—but the substantial involvement

of neighboring countries in Africa. This is an extremely complex

situation, where the Secretary General has recently reported that

military operations in the Eastern Congo and the preparation for

military operations continues at a high pace. Now, I do think that

the Congo represents a situation where there is a clear threat to

international peace and security. That is to say, I think this is at

least theoretically a legitimate area for the Security Council to be

considering.

But I think that the efforts by the Secretary General, in particular, to press for deployment of a peacekeeping force could result

in a premature deployment that could really be a debacle for the

United Nations. And it would make the existing already confused

political situation even worse.

Indeed, the Secretary General himself has acknowledged this recently when he said it is clear that the United Nations peacekeeping operations cannot serve as a substitute for the political

will to achieve a peaceful settlement. Now I think this is a situation where U.N. involvement really has a substantial risk of the

U.N. becoming part of the conflict. And I don’t think that the Administration has fully appreciated this.

Indeed, in February, Secretary Albright, urging the deployment

of a peacekeeping force, testified before this Committee as follows:

‘‘We are asking for a peacekeeping operation there. We believe that

it is essential that we support that because Congo is not only large,

but it is surrounded by nine countries.’’ Now, I am not sure I quite follow the logic of that, but it has the

situation backwards. First there has to be political agreement between or among the parties to the conflict which, as I previously

noted, are many and diverse. Then it would be appropriate to consider what kind of peacekeeping Force to deploy. I think it really

is premature for a U.N. force in the Congo and may well be premature for a long time, especially as the Lusaka Agreement, the

underlying thing that we are supposedly looking at here, appears

to be in a near-death situation.

Secondly, let me turn to Sierra Leone, where the U.N. is already

deployed, but where instability in that country for nearly 10 years

has led to a perhaps equally confused situation on the ground. The

National Democratic Institute, recently issued really quite a good

paper on Sierra Leone, where they described the origins of the revolutionary united front, Foday Sankoh’s organization, which has

been accused of uncounted atrocities. The National Democratic Institute characterized the origins of the RUF, and I quote, ‘‘as a rebellion against the years of authoritarian one-party state, that had

sunk the country into poverty and corruption.’’ And it noted that

Sankoh’s original platform was ‘‘free education and medical care,

an end to corruption, nepotism and tribalism.’’

The situation is not only complicated because of the internal disputes which I think really left on their own would not amount,

7

would not amount to a threat to international peace and security,

but have been complicated by outside intervention, first in the form

of ECOWAS, the Economic Organization of West African States

intervention led by the Nigerians. The Nigerians quite obviously,

I think, had an agenda on their own and ended up participating

in the civil conflict within Sierra Leone, in effect, as parties to that

conflict, making it harder to get resolution among the Sierra

Leonian factions, not easier.

Second, the Lome agreement of July 1999 which was the basis

on which the Secretary General recommended deployment of more

substantial U.N. peacekeeping forces, I think had two essential

problems with it. The first problem was a problem of the Security

Council. And I think that this is something quite clearly that is the

fault of all of the member governments.

There really was no adequate consideration by the Council

whether the Lome agreement represented a true meeting of the

minds among the parties to the Sierra Leonian conflict, thus

whether there was a consent, and thus whether there was an appropriate basis to deploy a peacekeeping force at all. But second,

I don’t think adequate attention has been given to the Secretary

General’s own reservations attached to the Lome agreement, where

one of the central elements, at least from the RUF point of view,

was an amnesty for Foday Sankoh and his followers.

Now, I just ask you to think about this for a moment from political point of view, without regard to what we think of the RUF or

without regard to what we think of the Sierra Leonian government.

I think it is fair to say that the RUF regarded that amnesty as a

pretty important part of the agreement. And yet the Secretary General of the United Nations specifically disclaimed interest in upholding that part of the agreement. I think it would be reasonable,

as a purely political matter, for Sankoh to conclude he did not have

agreement on what for him was an essential element of the Lome

agreement. And this agreement was backed by the Administration

I think for good reasons. Assistant Secretary Susan Rice said ‘‘if we

want a solution in Sierra Leone, that entails by necessity whether

or not we like it, a peace agreement dealing with the rebels.’’

So if you are willing to follow that logic to undercut it, as the

Secretary General’s reservation does, it seems to me to call into

question whether you have an agreement at all.

Now most recently we have what is essentially an unprecedented

public disagreement between the force commander, General Jetley,

an Indian and the Nigerian contingent of UNAMSIL, resulting in

the Indian government’s recent announcement that, it’s going to

withdraw all of its peacekeeping forces from the country.

So on the one hand, we have the Secretary General recommending the deployment of 20,500 peacekeepers including, 18 infantry battalions, and yet we find that the peacekeepers themselves cannot agree on command and control structures and their

appropriate responsibilities.

Let me turn now quickly to the Ethiopia/Eritra conflict. I think

this is a classic case and perhaps one of the best ones that I am

going to consider this morning, certainly among the three African

ones, for the deployment of U.N. peacekeeping observers. This is an

interstate conflict. It has a ceasefire in place. The parties have conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:59 Mar 08, 2001 Jkt 069979 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\FULL\H101100\69979 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
8

sented to the deployment of the U.N. and I think it is exactly the

prototype of what U.N peacekeeping should be. And yet, even there

the Secretary General has recommended not simply the deployment of U.N. observers, but the deployment of three battalions of

infantry to be prepared for a full combat eventuality. I think this

is part of a larger agenda. Mr. Delahunt is here. We talked about

this a couple weeks ago in a Subcommittee hearing on the Brahimi

report recently submitted to the Secretary General.

I won’t cover that ground again, except that I think the recommendation, and indeed it has been accepted by the Security

Council to deploy the three infantry battalions, is a real mistake.

Quite apart from the extra cost that is involved, I think it risks

turning what could be a successful peacekeeping observation mission into something much more complicated.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I have also considered in the prepared

statement two examples, two current examples of U.N. civil administration in peacekeeping in Kosovo and East Timor. I began that

section by discussing why I think the whole concept of the U.N.

Trusteeship does not have—at least as implemented in those two

places—does not have support in the U.N. Charter. I really do not

think there is authority in the Charter for this. I don’t think the

U.N. has experience in this kind of activity and I don’t think it has

capacity.

So it is perhaps no surprise that in the two concrete examples

that I consider, Kosovo and East Timor, the U.N. is in serious trouble. In the case of Kosovo, very briefly, Mr. Chairman, I don’t think

this is a case of individuals not performing up to their capacity. I

don’t think it is so much a question of U.N. mistakes. I think the

problem in Kosovo for the U.N. is inherent, and that is, they were

inserted into a situation where the political status of the Kosovo remains unresolved.

That is a problem that continues right to the present despite the

good news from Belgrade, with the replacement of Milosevic by

Kostunica. I think if anything, that situation, that political situation just got more complicated.

Many people have said, ‘‘but if you did not have the U.N. involved in civil administration of Kosovo, what would the alternatives be?’’ I have suggested two. One would be to have KFOR,

the Kosovo force itself, responsible for civil administration. I think

one of the problems in Kosovo now is that we have got, in effect,

turf fights among international organizations. We have KFOR

doing one set of things. We have the U.N. Mission in Kosovo,

UNMIK doing another set of things. We have the OSCE doing another set of things. Then we have literally hundreds of nongovernmental organizations also doing their own thing. I think it would

have been cleaner to have considered simply charging KFOR itself

with this operation. Another alternative, I think less desirable from

the U.S. point of view, but one which we should have considered,

would be to have the European Union responsible for this. That

would have been, I think, much more sensible than the situation

we have now, where I think with the U.N. civil administration we

really have the risk of the worst of both worlds, that we have large

responsibilities and insufficient resources. And I think there that

the U.N. responsibility in Kosovo is poised at the edge of massive

9

failure, failure cause by the ambiguous and contradictory nature of

its mandate, the inadequacy of the U.N.’s capacity to undertake

such a mission, the radical political uncertainty and sometimes violent disagreement among the parties that persists to this very day,

and as I said, the tension between unmixed aspirations and its resources.

Finally, the last example, Mr. Chairman, is the U.N. Transitional

Authority in East Timor which is, in large part, shaped by the

U.N.’s failure in the earlier conduct of the referendum where the

violence perpetrated by the anti independence, pro-Indonesian militias caused such death and destruction after the referendum,

where the U.N. itself now says ‘‘well, we didn’t anticipate there was

going to be any violence.’’ And the Secretary General said ‘‘if we

had an inkling, it was going to be this chaotic, I don’t think anyone

would have gone forward with the vote. We are no fools.’’ And yet

it is hard to believe that if you’ve read anything about the militias,

that they would have taken a vote for independence by East Timor

lightly, and said ‘‘oh well, I guess we lost the vote,’’ and went away.

One thing you can say about the U.N. presence in East Timor

is that at least the ultimate political future of East Timor is clear,

that it is going to be an independent state. That is obviously unclear in the case of Kosovo where some people want independence,

and some people quite obviously want it back as part of Yugoslavia.

But I think, even with the political status clear, that the United

Nations has embarked on a kind of mission that it really can’t handle. And the Secretary General was quite straightforward about

what he thinks that mission is. He says, in discussing the difficulty, he said ‘‘the organization has never before attempted to

build and manage a state.’’

I think the performance in East Timor has demonstrated that

the U.N. cannot build and manage a state, and that the comments

made by some of the East Timor’s independence leaders indicate

that they are becoming increasingly frustrated. Without necessarily

endorsing everything, for example, that Jose Alexander Gusmao

has said, I note that he has argued that the East Timorese government could really, logically need to be one-fourth the size of the

prior Indonesian government. That sounds like a man after my

own heart, and I wish the U.N. would take note of that. I think

if you want to build a social democratic state, there is an argument

for virtually infinite U.N. participation. I don’t think we should encourage that. I don’t think that is ultimately best for the people

there, and it is certainly not within the U.N.’s capability anyway.

Just to conclude, Mr. Chairman, the U.N., as these examples

demonstrate, is overextended and in danger of becoming more so.

It is involved or considering involvement in operations where it has

neither the competence nor the authority to be effective. Now, to

be sure, a large part of the blame here is due to the member governments, and especially to the United States, which have assigned

the United Nations contradictory or impossible mandates in ambiguous political situations. What we sorely need, Mr. Chairman, is

sensible American leadership to restore U.N. peacekeeping to a

more even keel.

Thank you very much.

10

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bolton is available in the appendix.]

Mr. GILLMOR. Thank you very much, Mr. Bolton. And we are now

very pleased to have with us Ambassador David Jett who has

served as our Ambassador to both Mozambique and Peru. He has

held numerous important policy positions in the Department of

State and the National Security Council. He’s now the Dean of the

International Center at the University of Florida. And the author

of Why Peacekeeping Fails which was published in March of this

year.

Ambassador Jett.

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DENNIS JETT, DEAN OF THE

INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

Mr. JETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor and pleasure

to be here today to speak on this important topic. I will try to summarize my statement that I have submitted for the record, and try

to do so in a way that doesn’t repeat too much of what John Bolton

just covered. A number of the cases I will touch on, but I will try

to do so in a little bit different way, though I agree with much of

what John Bolton has said.

Part of the problem in discussing peacekeeping is you immediately get into a problem of definitions. Peacekeeping is a term

that gets applied to a lot of different situations from Cyprus to Somalia, and everywhere in between, where there are very different

kinds of tasks. The interstate conflicts that John Bolton mentioned

are the ones that traditionally the U.N. had to deal with earlier in

its history. And they were easier because basically, there was a

struggle between two countries over territory. The job of the U.N.

Was to get between them when there was a cease-fire, control the

contested territory, or at least patrol it, build confidence and allow

time for a line to be drawn on the map dividing the territory.

Sometimes that takes quite a long time. They’ve been in Cyprus

since 1964. The line is still not on the map. But just the absence

of renewed conflict is enough. Unfortunately, there are very few examples of those kinds of conflicts today. Eritrea-Ethopia is one,

about the only conflict between countries.

While it has international implications, as long as the Eritreans

and the Ethiopians were killing each other, nobody did anything

other than send diplomatic missions to try and stop them.

So even though it was a conflict between two countries, it didn’t

really have the implications for spreading too much beyond that

particular area and those particular countries. The problem the

U.N. faces is today’s war is typically a civil war, a war within a

state over political power, and in the third world you cannot divide

political power very easily. Basically, you are either in power or

you are out of luck. And when there is a peace, the U.N. Is faced

with tasks like assembly of troops, demobilizing them, reintegrating them into civil society, forming a new army and eventually

holding elections to choose a legitimate leader. All of those are

daunting tasks. These were the tasks that were attempted in Angola and Mozambique. I was an ambassador in Mozambique when

the U.N. succeeded, so in my book, I look at that and I compare

it to Angola where those same tasks the U.N. failed.

11

When the United States looks at participation in the peacekeeping it has three simple options: it can participate in the peacekeeping operations with its own troops along with U.N. troops; it

can allow the U.N. to go in alone without a U.S. presence; or it can

use its power as a permanent member of the Security Council to

prevent the U.N. from engaging in a peacekeeping operation. I

think PDD–25 gives a good framework for analyzing the various

factors that come into play in peacekeeping. The central conclusion

of PDD–25 is that when properly conceived, a well-executed peacekeeping can be a very important and useful tool. That is not a particularly remarkable conclusion. The catch is how do you properly

conceive it and how do you execute it well? The purpose of PDD–

25 was to selectively use peacekeeping and to use it more selectively and more effectively. In looking at the history of peacekeeping, it sort of ebbed and flowed through six different periods.

Since the creation in the United Nations, somewhere between 5

and 11 years for each period of growth in peacekeeping or contraction with an average of 7 years.

In 1993, we entered a phase of contraction doing less peacekeeping, so I think, in that period, PDD–25 caused peacekeeping

to be used more selectively. And perhaps because it was used less,

it was done more effectively. But now we seem to be entering into

a new phase, a growth period, since we are about 7 years from

1993. That is probably the half life of a bad idea or the institutional memory of your average bureaucrat. 1993 is a watershed

date because that is the date in October when the 18 U.S. servicemen were killed in Mogadishu. Ever since then, it has been virtually impossible to use Americans in peacekeeping operations with

very few exceptions.

I am sure we will listen to the presidential debate tonight. I was

struck in the first debate when candidate Bush said on two occasions that he would allow no U.S. troops to be used for nationbuilding, and he made no apparent attempt to hide his disdain for

the term. I don’t know whether that is an applications of the Powell doctrine or his defense strategy is based on the idea that we

have to be ready to fight two regional wars. And the Powell doctrine seems to state that you never deploy the U.S. Armed Forces

in a size less than an division and never outside of Europe, Japan,

Korea or a Middle Eastern oil producer.

The problem is there will be very few Desert Storms, I doubt

there will ever be two, there may not even be one in the future.

But there will be a lot of Sierra Leones and Somalias in the future.

So that is what the U.N. has to deal with. Nevertheless given the

unpopularity of the first option, the U.N. can’t rely on U.S. participation with troops. We are left with the two remaining options, letting the U.N. do it alone or doing nothing. The problem with that

second option is the U.N. does not do it very well. In this regard

it is useful to think of the U.N. in terms of two different aspects,

the U.N. as a bureaucracy and the U.N. as organization of 189

member states. You’ve heard the testimony about the Brahimi report. One of the things the Brahimi report mentioned was that

U.N. bureaucrats aren’t always of the best quality and that the

U.N. should become more transparent and become a meritocracy.

12

Unfortunately, this flies in the face of longstanding tradition, and

I don’t think it is going to happen. The Brahimi report also says

that the 189 members should support peacekeeping politically, financially and operationally. Well, politically, it is difficult because

the 189 members are typically pursuing their national interests

through this international organization, and they rarely seem to

sacrifice them for the common good. Financially, 97 percent of the

peacekeeping is paid for by the first world for peacekeeping operations that all happen in the third world. I doubt, given the fact

that we are hundreds of millions of dollars in arrears now, that

there is any particular sentiment iin Washington for spending

more money on peacekeeping operations.

Operationally, I have talked about the difficulty of engaging

American troops. The problem is that is not unique to the United

States. In general, in the first world, and the countries with the

best armies but they are the ones that are least likely, least enthusiastic about participating in peacekeeping. The countries with the

worst armies are the ones that have them available for these kinds

of tasks.

That said, I think the Brahimi report was a good effort. It was

at least honest. I think you have to congratulate Secretary General

Annan. The Rwanda report, the Srebrenica report, the report on

Angola diamonds and now the Brahimi report, now show a remarkable bucking of the long-standing tradition of the United Nations

to avoid introspection.

The other thing that the Brahimi report said is that the bedrock

principals of peacekeeping are consent of the parties, impartiality,

and the use of force only in self-defense. Unfortunately, that almost

never exists in today’s kinds of conflicts. You can imagine if there

were a repetition of Rwanda and you tried to apply those three

bedrock principles, you would not get very far. I think the real

fault though of the Brahimi report or the U.N. in general is that

it mentions in passing three factors, that are critically important,

but doesn’t suggest any way to deal with those. And part of the

problem is these are factors that the U.N. can influence but can’t

control. Those three factors are the local actors, the internal resources and the external forces.

The local actors are the people on the ground, the players in the

conflict who usually see peacekeeping as a way to further their own

political goals through different means other than using military

means. And their sincerity in signing the peace is usually suspect

and it lasts only as long as they are not losing power or losing out

in the struggle for power. The internal resources are diamonds

typically. The big difference between Angola and Mozambique is

that Mozambique has shrimp and cashews. And while it makes a

nice stew, it doesn’t fuel a civil war the way diamonds have in Angola or as diamonds have in Sierra Leone or in the Congo. And the

external forces are the neighboring countries. In Sierra Leone the

big problem is not because the RUF decided it was a corrupt regime in power and they were going to overthrow it. You could take

Foday Sankoh’s political philosophy and it wouldn’t fill the back of

a napkin. The real problem is that when the peacekeeping forces

came into Monrovia and Liberia, west African peacekeeping forces,

Charles Taylor looked at them as an obstacle to power. And I hapVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:59 Mar 08, 2001 Jkt 069979 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\FULL\H101100\69979 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
13

pened to be there at the time in Monrovia and I can tell you, the

peacekeepers probably didn’t even have a street map of downtown

Monrovia, let alone a clue as to what they were going to do. But

they did freeze the situation militarily.

To get back at the Nigerians, Taylor basically inspired the unrest

in Sierra Leone. He continues to do it today, simply because he

wants to control Sierra Leone’s diamonds. There are about $200

million in diamonds exported out of Liberia, a country that only

produces about $25 million in diamonds. Until you control Charles

Taylor’s greed you will not have peace in Sierra Leone. Since the

Nigerian peacekeeping force which was in Liberia and Sierra Leone

for almost all the decade of the 90’s was never able to impose a

military solution to the conflict, the U.N. should prepare for a long

term commitment in Sierra Leone.

In the Congo, you have a situation that is even worse. You have

the armies of six countries, as John Bolton described, and no peace

to keep. It is almost a cliche. And so until you influence those countries and solve the problem about what to do with the people who

committed genocide in Rwanda who are now fighting in the Congo,

then you will probably never have a chance for any peacekeeping

operation to succeed. As John pointed out, there is a proposal to

go up to 20,000 U.N. troops in Sierra Leone. The Congo is 10 times

larger in terms of population and 32 times larger than Sierra

Leone in terms of territory. So you can imagine what kind of peacekeeping force you would have to put in there. Another problem is

they would probably have a muddled mandate, and be just standing around.

Another example of the way that the U.N. doesn’t do a very good

job on peacekeeping is the one that John Bolton mentioned, Eritrea

and Ethiopia. There you have a classical peacekeeping scenario, a

struggle over territory between two countries. It is something that

the U.N. has done well in the past and could do well and probably

will do well in this instance, but it won’t do it very efficiently.

As John pointed out, there are three battalions, 3,000 of the

4,200 troops will be these three infantry battalions. Their task is

to man checkpoints and to provide security for the members of the

military coordination commission. That is the group that is implementing the peace treaty. I suspect that they are providing security

to the members of the coordination commission, from irate taxpayers, since having 3,000 troops stand around will undoubtedly be

expensive.

But I think the reason this was added late, these troops into the

peacekeeping mix for this particular operation, is that bureaucracies tend to ignore problems when they can, and when they can’t,

they tend to overreact and do things that are wasteful and inefficient but at least display action, zeal if not effectiveness. So when

the peacekeepers were attacked in Sierra Leone, people got concerned about the security of peacekeepers. Therefore these three

battalions were added, not that they will do anything, not that they

will have any particular result.

In that regard, if I could offer an aside, this all sounds like the

security measures being taken at the State Department. I am sure

Madeleine Albright will sleep better at night knowing that if I return, or any other retired officer misses the food in the State DeVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:59 Mar 08, 2001 Jkt 069979 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\FULL\H101100\69979 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
14

partment cafeteria and we drop by for a meal, that we will be escorted by a security officer. But I don’t think that is where the

problem is, and I don’t think spending resources on dealing with

that aspect of security is going to be particularly effective.

The third option I mentioned was doing nothing. That is a real

option but a real problem. Certainly, when you let the U.N. do it,

there is the possibility of a great deal of waste and also the possibility of failure. But to do nothing is basically to say, for large parts

of the world, there is no superpower. We simply don’t care enough

to do anything and whoever is the meanest person or the meanest

power in the neighborhood is the one that is going to dominate.

So I think doing nothing is a difficult option and the U.N. ought

to be pressured to do better. And the U.S. needs to carefully evaluate its contribution. I think perhaps more military observers—I can

recognize the reluctance to deploy units of armed forces to these operations. But there is a military observer component, those are individual officers who play critical roles in making sure that confidence building exercises succeed. So that would be one area where

the U.S. could have a presence with very little exposure, very little

risk.

I think there are logistics and intelligence support that could be

provided without trying to underwrite a major portion of the Pentagon’s budget by charging the U.N. for these services. But I think

basically they will all have to lean on the U.N. to do better, to do

more when it comes to dealing with these external factors, or in

some cases, to do less. In the case of the Congo, I think that is one

where basically you just walk away from it until you can find a political solution. And perhaps you can stop treating Mr. Kabila like

the president and more like the gangster that he is. The same with

Charles Taylor.

In any event, one critical aspect is what we are here to do today,

and that is, to have a dialog about peacekeeping. I hope the Administration will come back to the table. I hope that when Congress

interacts with the Administration, it is designed to evaluate some

difficult situations, evaluate some unpleasant alternatives, none of

which is particularly good and come up with what is right for the

United States, and not get into a partisan game of gotcha. And in

that spirit, I am very honored and pleased to be here today.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jett is available in the appendix.]

Chairman GILMAN [presiding]. Thank you very much for your extensive analysis, Mr. Ambassador Jett, and now we turn to Edward

C. Luck. We are pleased to have on our panel Mr. Luck, the Executive Director of the Center for the Study of International Organization and a recognized authority on U.N. issues. He has held numerous key positions with the United Nations Association and is the

author of scores of articles on international organizational issues.

You may proceed Mr. Luck. You may summarize your statement,

put the full statement on the record or in any manner in which you

deem appropriate. Please proceed.

15

STATEMENT OF EDWARD C. LUCK, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS OF THE NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW AND

THE WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, UNITED NATIONS ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES

Mr. LUCK. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for that offer

of flexibility. However, I will exercise uncharacteristic self restraint

and avoid commenting on the points made by my two colleagues on

the panel. And I will indeed offer an abbreviated version orally of

my testimony, and if I could submit the written for the record, I

would appreciate that.

Chairman GILMAN. Without objection.

Mr. LUCK. Thank you. It is certainly an honor, Mr. Chairman,

to testify before this distinguished Committee and certainly on

such a timely and important topic. Over the past decade, our nation’s support for peacekeeping has resembled nothing so much as

a roller coaster ride; rising, falling and rising again in breathless

succession. In the process, we have accumulated peacekeeping arrears on the order of $1 billion, undermined our credibility as a reformer and a leader in the world body, and crippled the U.N.’s ability to do the job right in the first place. This hearing will serve our

national interests well if it calls for two things: one, a bipartisan

approach that meets the legitimate needs of both Congress and the

executive branch; and two, an equilibrium between the overuse and

underuse of this often misapplied and misunderstood security tool.

Mr. LUCK. In fact, one of the things I agreed with in John’s testimony was his reference to needing to keep peacekeeping on an

even keel. I think that is something we can all agree on.

In terms of the first point, on bipartisanship, Mr. Chairman, we

would do well to recall that the surest route to a strong and affirmative foreign policy is maximizing executive-legislative cooperation

and minimizing partisanship.

None of us would embrace all of the provisions of PDD–25 or the

Helms-Biden bill with great enthusiasm, yet they do offer the basis

for a politically sustainable approach to peacekeeping, one that

may even permit our nation to speak with a single voice in international fora. Of course, that again makes me an optimist, but I

think it is at least conceivable.

On the one hand, an overly rigid interpretation of the tenets of

PDD–25 ensured international inaction in the face of unfolding

genocide in Rwanda in the spring of 1994. On the other hand, the

prudence embodied in PDD–25 has encouraged some positive steps

as well.

One, command and control arrangements have been clarified.

Two, greater discipline and selectivity have governed Washington’s choices about whether peacekeeping is the right option and

whether the U.N. is the right vehicle.

Three, full transparency has been introduced into Security Council decision-making and into U.N. operations on the ground.

Four, the Security Council has worked to bring greater clarity

and specificity to peacekeeping mandates to deal more explicitly

with the economic motivations to conflict, to bring the perpetrators

16

of war crimes to justice, and to undertake more on-site inspection

tours like the current one in Sierra Leone this week.

Five, sharing the burden, NATO has been given responsibility for

the largest operations, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosovo, and

regional actors originally took the lead in East Timor, Liberia, and

Sierra Leone.

Six, others are supplying 97 percent of the U.N. forces and taking most of the risks.

And, finally, seven, the executive branch is consulting earlier,

more frequently, and more fully with Congress and is encouraging

more congressional visits to field missions.

I am pleased to see that over the past year legislators on both

sides of the aisle have supported a series of new or expanded missions aimed at either stemming violence in places like East Timor,

Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo or securing

internationally recognized borders, as between Lebanon and Israel

and between Ethiopia and Eritrea. There appears to be a growing

recognition even in this town that while peacekeepers are not miracle workers, and conditions often are not propitious for U.N. intervention, there are times when peacekeeping offers the best available option. This is particularly the case where we share with others an interest in seeing a conflict dampened, but our national security interests are not so acute as to justify unilateral action.

Turning to my second theme, regaining equilibrium, it is worth

recalling that from 1998 to 1994 U.N. peacekeeping deployments

quadrupled, reaching unprecedented levels. This rapid expansion

was propelled by the end of the Cold War, the changing nature of

conflict and the ‘‘CNN effect,’’ not, I would emphasize, by the predilections of one party or Administration. The initial surge, in fact,

occurred under the Bush Administration, which approved a dozen

new U.N. peacekeeping operations and several U.N. observer missions.

At its outset the Clinton Administration maintained this momentum, but, with rising concerns on Capitol Hill and reverses in the

field, it, in fact, led a rapid retreat from peacekeeping after 1994.

By mid-1999, just a little over a year ago, the number of deployed peacekeepers had fallen to a post-Cold War low of just over

12,000, about one-sixth of the levels in 1994. Today, the total number of peacekeepers, including soldiers, observers, and police, has

grown to a bit under 40,000, of which less than 900 are Americans,

and, of course, many of those Americans are police or observers.

The expansion over the past year has been rapid by any standard, tripling in just 12 months, but the current level is still only

one-half of that of 6 years ago.

Now, should Members of Congress be concerned that peacekeeping is growing out of control? At this point, I would say no for

several reasons. One, the U.S. and other permanent members of

the Security Council are monitoring the situation and are quite

cautious about undertaking new commitments.

Two, it is generally acknowledged that the growth rates of the

early 1990’s were not sustainable, and there is no desire to repeat

the mistakes of a decade ago.

17

Three, the near debacle in the early stages of the Sierra Leone

operation this past May rang alarm bells at the U.N. and in national capitals about the capacity of the system for further growth.

Four, the Secretary General, sharing the caution of key member

states—and I would say that the three of us agree on this on this

panel—has refused early deployment in the Congo given uncertain

conditions there and doubts about the adequacy of the current

plans.

And fifth, as Ambassador Jett has properly noted, the fact that

the U.N. has commissioned a series of candid assessments on

Srbrenica, on Rwanda, and by the Brahimi panel is itself an encouraging sign of the growing openness to external and internal

criticism. Each of these reports contained sober warnings about

again promising more than the U.N. or its member states individually are prepared to deliver.

In assessing U.N. capacity to oversee its peacekeeping operations, I would stress that it would be wrong to overemphasize the

importance of quantitative measures. Capacity depends essentially

on the willingness of member states to provide military, political

and financial support for the missions they vote for. Qualitative

factors—and, again, I think the three of us would agree on this— particularly the attitudes and motivations of the parties on the

ground, usually matter more in determining the success of a mission than the numbers of blue helmets. Therefore, it is easier and

more productive to undertake a number of well-conceived and wellreceived missions than just a few problematic ones. The key is getting the mandate right through stronger staffing, better intelligence and analysis, and the employment of prudent worst-case

reasoning in Security Council deliberations.

In closing, let me offer a few words on how to encourage further

steps to strengthen U.N. peacekeeping capacity. The prospects for

achieving further reforms, such as those proposed by the Brahimi

panel, will depend in part on the maintenance of bipartisanship in

our national policies. The willingness of other member states to go

along with the U.S.-backed reform proposals and the Helms-Biden

benchmarks, including a reduction in U.S. assessments, could well

be undermined if the U.S. approach again becomes subject to strident partisanship, sudden fluctuations, and uncertain or inadequate funding.

Last month’s Millennium Summit, including sessions of the Security Council and the P–5, reaffirmed the continuing need for strong

and effective peacekeeping. The world’s leaders all recognized that

peacekeeping is just one tool in our security tool kit, which includes

conflict prevention, peaceful settlement, peace-building and peace

enforcement, and, yes, John, sometimes nation-building as well,

and that the burdens should be shared with regional actors wherever possible.

They acknowledged that a great deal needs to be done before the

U.N. can even begin to realize its potential as a force for peace, and

that it is in national capitals and in parliamentary hearings such

as this that this vital work must begin.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to contribute to

what hopefully will be a process of reflection and reaffirmation.

Thank you.

18

[The prepared statement of Mr. Luck is available in the appendix.]

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Luck, and the entire panel

for your excellent testimony today. We are very much concerned in

the Congress that there is proper oversight and proper review before engaging in peacekeeping. We are also concerned about a report recently issued by the GAO at our request that estimated the

cost of U.N. peacekeeping for the current U.N. budget will be about

$2.7 billion, which is something that gives a great deal of concern

to many of the Members of Congress.

Mr. Bolton, let me address the first question to you. What are

the chances that the U.N. can effectively implement the recommendations of the recent report issued by the former Algerian

Foreign Minister Mr. Brahimi, and will the organizational culture

of the U.N. block such an implementation?

Mr. BOLTON. Mr. Chairman, I think that the odds of being able

to implement many of the recommendations of the Brahimi report

are quite small for a number of reasons, but I think the problem

with the Brahimi report comes not so much from the technical aspects of what that group recommended as from the fact that it basically misses the larger point.

The problems in U.N. peacekeeping are not primarily technical

in nature. They are primary political in nature. Let me just go back

to the example of Sierra Leone, because I think that is a good illustration of the point.

The Brahimi report makes a lot of recommendations about command and control interoperability, joint training and things like

that. The dispute that now exists between the Indian force commander General Jetley and the Nigerians has nothing to do with

training, or communication; it has to do with fundamental political

differences. General Jetley believes the Nigerian forces and indeed

the Nigerian Government are pursuing their own separate agenda

in Sierra Leone. The arguments that the Nigerians are making go

to the fact that they resent being controlled by General Jetley and

the U.N. as a whole, which to me tends to corroborate what General Jetley has been saying from the outset. But these are not fundamentally technical questions.

Second, I think the thrust of the Brahimi report—and I did

elaborate on this in my prepared statement before the International Operations Subcommittee—the thrust of what they argue

would transfer substantial responsibility to the Secretariat, on the

assumption that you are going to have a large increase in U.N.

peacekeeping responsibilities of some variety. I am not going to

argue whether that is good or bad at the moment. It just simply

assumes that that happens, that it has already happened. The

Brahimi report vests most of the operational functions necessary to

carry these new mandates out in the Secretariat, in parts of the

U.N. that are responsible directly to the Secretary General rather

than being directly responsible to the Security Council. I think that

is fundamentally wrong.

I think that even though, obviously, large parts of the Charter

have never come into operation, as contemplated by Chapter 7, if

you were to have a continuation and expansion of U.N. peacekeeping activity, I think operational responsibility for those U.N.

19

operations should be responsible to the members of the Security

Council, and particularly responsible to the five permanent members, whether that is through the Military Staff Committee, as the

Charter provides, or something else.

I think the Brahimi report is a conscious and fundamental recommendation to shift responsibility from the member governments

to the Secretariat, and I think that is wrong.

Chairman GILMAN. Mr. Bolton, what are the main deficiencies of

the Administration’s overall implementation of our policy toward

U.N. peacekeeping as embodied in PDD–25?

Mr. BOLTON. Mr. Chairman, I think the central problem with

PDD–25 is that it really does not put constraints on what the Administration wants to do. And I would have to say here that while,

as a former executive branch official myself, I am a vigorous advocate for flexibility in executive branch decision-making, I think

when the executive announces a policy that it intends to follow, it

ought to be something that can be debated and that the Administration can be judged on. And I think the problem with PDD–25

is that fundamentally it is so internally contradictory that it does

not really provide policy guidance at all. I think that is reflected

in the recent upsurge in Administration support for the peacekeeping activities we have been discussing here today.

I don’t think this is a partisan issue, I really do not. I know that

from times I used to testify before this Committee when I was in

the executive branch, I know what it is like for the Administration

to be on that side of the dispute, but would argue that the fundamental incoherence of PDD–25 is what causes much of the problem

in the ongoing disagreements between Congress and the executive

branch. I think the real impetus within the Administration is to be

extremely supportive of peacekeeping. I think that is why in principle they have been as vigorous as they have been, and I do not

think that we have had a real discussion of where that leads.

For example, the next big peacekeeping operation, UNGWB, the

U.N. Gaza-West Bank mission, which I think is something that we

are going to start hearing about in the near future, I think that

would be a catastrophe, but I think the Secretary General’s wheels

are already spinning on that.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Bolton.

Mr. Jett, Ambassador Jett, I am going to ask you the same question I have asked. What are the chances the U.N. can effectively

implement the recommendations of the recent report of the former

Algerian Foreign Minister Mr. Brahimi?

Mr. JETT. I think, Mr. Chairman, it will be able to make some

of the changes. Some of the organizational changes are possible. I

think changing the basic character of the institution is probably

not possible, but for me I don’t think it matters all that much

whether the changes are made if the U.N. continues to ignore the

other factors that I mentioned, the factors like a country’s resources, whether the diamonds are fueling the civil war, what role

the neighboring states are playing, what role the politicians within

the country are playing.

Until you attempt to influence those factors, you can have the

best peacekeepers in the world and put as many of them as you

want into a situation, but if the local actors are determined to

20

fight, if there are diamonds there to fuel their arms purchases, if

the neighboring countries are all involved either for profit or for

other reasons, then you have got a hopeless situation, and peacekeeping will not succeed.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you. And my time—I am overstaying

my time here, and just, Mr. Jett, would you comment on the same

question, the Brahimi report, Mr.—Mr. Luck, would you be able to

tell us whether that report issued by Mr. Brahimi, what are the

chances it can be effectively implemented?

Mr. LUCK. Yes, I would be happy to.

There are a number of aspects. I agree that some parts would be

difficult to implement. There is one very important provision that

I think is utterly implementable, in some ways is already happening. That is the Secretary General and the Secretariat ought to

be able to tell the member states in the Security Council when the

mission is not implementable, when the plans are not sensible. And

that, in fact, is what has happened in the case of the Democratic

Republic of Congo. The Secretariat has said, no, let’s slow this

down. We are not ready to go forward. These plans simply do not

make sense. And I think that is very refreshing and is very much

needed.

Second of all, there are a number of things that individual member states can do if they want to in terms of stand-by sources and

interoperability and other things. And the initiative is up to the individual member states, not up to the Secretariat, although the

Secretary General has been encouraging such steps for many,

many years.

There are some dollar signs attached to the Brahimi report, and

a lot of what they recommend is a bolstering of the Secretariat capability, and that would cost money, and that may not be a popular

thing in this town, particularly with our arrears in peacekeeping

being so large.

Finally, I would say that much of the report reads really as a

wakeup call to the member states, telling them to get serious about

this if they want positive results. And that, I think, is something

which is utterly implementable, but unfortunately the track record

has been quite lamentable in terms of most member states.

Chairman GILMAN. I regret I am going to have to go on to another hearing. I am going to ask Mr. Bereuter to conduct the balance of the hearing.

And Mr. Delahunt is recognized.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I agree with some statements by Mr. Bolton, interestingly. I

would direct my questions to Mr. Luck.

You indicated earlier in broad terms that these issues are very

complex, and there are no simple answers, and that flexibility is

essential, and that the idea or the concept that there is a one-sizefits-all approach is just simply unworkable.

My own sense is that each of these cases, I would suggest that

the only true measurement in terms of potential success and in

terms of what should be done is the adequacy of that particular

plan and whether, after careful and thorough review, there is a

level of expectations of success that meet the requirements. Any

comment?

21

Mr. LUCK. Yes, I would be happy to. And actually I did agree

with a number of things that John said, but we have done this

back and forth so many times, we have to kid each other a little

bit.

But I certainly agree with his point about one size fits all. I

would say, though, that if you look at the last 5 or 6 years, there,

in fact, has been a lot of flexibility both on the part of the Administration and on the part of the U.N. The approach has been different, really, in one case after another. We see cases where NATO

has taken the lead in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. We see

places where an individual member state, in the case of Australia,

takes the lead in East Timor, and others follow where there is no

strong regional organization. And we have seen the up-and-down

effort by ECOWAS and others to try to resolve problems in Liberia

and Sierra Leone. So I think we have seen a lot of flexibility on

this.

Again, what matters in the end is whether the parties to the conflict are at all amenable to a reasonable solution. If they are, then

the international community can be very helpful. But it is very,

very difficult to impose that. Ambassador Jett mentioned his experience in Mozambique, where the people really ran with it, and it

was a considerable success, and as he pointed out—— Mr. DELAHUNT. But I think that underscores my point about individual cases and conditions and the analysis and evaluation of

conditions and circumstances in a particular situation. And if there

is a certain clarity, whether it is the United Nations or whether

there is an alternative response available, that, in my opinion,

ought to be the measurement of particularly United States engagement, United States involvement.

Mr. LUCK. I think there is a sense by many other member states

that the U.S. and Congress in particular are fundamentally allergic

to peacekeeping and fundamentally allergic to involvement. It is a

political feeling as much as anything else—— Mr. DELAHUNT. I think there is a certain validity to that sentiment, because I think we find ourselves in a conundrum. We have

the GAO report. The Chairman indicated that there are a lot of

Members concerned about a $2.7 billion financing of peacekeeping.

Yet I think it was your term, unless our national interests are particularly acute, i.e., oil or some other something else that fits the

description of acute, we do not want to make a commitment of

American troops.

So there is a utilization, I do not want to call it a manipulation,

of the United Nations to do the dirty work—and I think the most

clear case is Rwanda. I mean, what do we do in a situation intrastate like Rwanda where there is a genocide that is occurring,

where 800,000 people are being slaughtered? Do we do nothing? Do

we take the third option? I think maybe that was Ambassador

Jett’s—what do we do? Is that an option that is available to a civilized superpower?

Mr. LUCK. If I could just make one a little comment on that, it

seems to me that there is a tendency very often to say that we either have national interests or we don’t have national interests.

Like a light switch, it is either on or off when most of these cases

are shades of gray. We have some interests, and I think upholding

22

international human rights and humanitarian standards and preventing genocide are part of our fundamental national values. But

we have to sort of calibrate this and not say we have zero interest

or total interest——

Mr. DELAHUNT. I do not disagree, and the reason why I utilized

the Rwanda case is I think there is a degree there, there is a level

of atrocities or crimes against humanity that are committed that

almost compels something to happen. What do we do? What do we

do, Mr. Bolton, in the case of Rwanda?

Mr. BOLTON. Well, to take the specifics of Rwanda, it seems to

me that the cold, cruel fact is there is very little that we are able

to do. And I think that while there is certainly a moral outrage

that everybody feels watching what happened there, there are

moral obligations that the President of the United States has as

well for the protection of American life.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Can I ask you this question? What would have

been—this is hypothetical, obviously—in terms of intervention by

the United States in a lead role in Rwanda to save 800,000 lives,

what would have been our exposure even just simply to freeze the

situation?

Chairman GILMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired, but

I want him to have the leeway, so please proceed with your response.

Mr. BOLTON. I don’t think it is possible at this removed date to

calculate what the risk to Americans or others who might have

taken part in such an intervention would be. But I think that the

decision-maker, in this case the President, has an obligation, has

a moral obligation to be able to justify what interest it is of ours

that permits him, or compels him if you will, to put American

troops in a situation where we could be pretty sure that some substantial number were going to be killed or wounded.

And I think if I could refer to the example of Somalia, it was the

feeling in Congress, after the deaths of the 18 Rangers in

Mogadishu, on a bipartisan basis really, that the Administration

was not able to explain why they had died. It was not a case where

Congress said ‘‘18 dead Americans is too many.’’ It was a case

where Congress said ‘‘18 dead Americans for no reason is too

many.’’

Mr. DELAHUNT. I guess what I am saying, Mr. Bolton—if I could

have another additional minute or so, Mr. Chairman?

Chairman GILMAN. The gentleman is recognized for an additional

minute without objection.

Mr. DELAHUNT. In the case of Rwanda, it is my memory that

there was substantial information and available data that indicated that hundreds of thousands of people were being slaughtered.

If that in and of itself is not sufficient rationale for action to be

taken, hopefully multilateral, for some sort of intervention to prevent that from happening, where are we? Where have we come?

Mr. BOLTON. Well, I think in that sense it would be extremely

helpful to hear the debate within the Administration. Secretary of

State Albright has said publicly now that although she cast the

U.S. votes in the Security Council while the Rwanda situation was

unfolding, that she did so under instructions and in protest.

23

Mr. DELAHUNT. What is your opinion, Mr. Bolton; where would

you be in that situation in that—I am not sure I have all the facts

available to me, so acknowledging that, do you agree with me in

terms of my conclusion that, if there is anything that should be a

vital interest of the United States, it is the calculation that we do

have the capacity to stop a genocide of hundreds of thousands of

people, and there is some sort of moral obligation on the part of

this country to prevent that from happening.

Mr. BOLTON. I think it was very hard to see at the time and to

predict what the extent of it was going to be. What went through

the Administration’s mind, I cannot say. But I can say that looking

at decision-making in Washington and in London, and in the other

capitals of the five permanent members of the Security Council,

that it was not simply in Washington that there was no desire to

be involved. Quite the contrary. In the case of France, I think there

was active involvement on the other side.

So while in retrospect the moral question looked clear at the

time, I think it is a lot more complicated. And I am not defending

the Administration’s position. I do not know what I would have

done in those circumstances. But I think it is a mistake simply to

say that there is a moral obligation on the part of the United

States that triggers an unlimited, immeasurable commitment of

American blood.

Mr. BEREUTER. [Presiding.] The time of the gentleman has expired.

The Chair recognizes himself under the normal order.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for your testimony.

Mr. Luck, there is an allergy about the use of peacekeeping

forces of the United States abroad, and it relates, I think, to very

bad decisions by Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and those around

him in terms of what happened in Mogadishu. Let’s be blunt. The

Defense Department ignored the requests of the field commanders

for additional resources that caused us to be unable to respond.

The United Nations got the blame, in large part without cause, for

what happened there. And, the U.N. got the blame because the

Congress was bypassed with respect to peacekeeping operations in

Bosnia, and because the best advice of Congress was ignored in the

case of Kosovo.

Ambassador Jett, you have two points I want to follow up on in

your testimony. First, your comments about the impact of patronage on the leadership necessary at the United Nations to lead

28,000 peacekeepers with only 32 officers in New York. The developing countries or less developed countries object because those officers in New York are primarily from developed country military

as you put it. What do we do about that situation? Do we persist

and say, okay, that is where the leadership comes from, and we

simply have to have greater capacity there even if it comes mostly

from developed countries? What do we do with what I think is a

real problem that you point out?

Mr. JETT. Well, Mr. Chairman, I do not have an easy solution to

that problem either, but I think we have to be fairly insistent. The

gratis personnel were offered—I think some of them were there,

and then this objection came from people who saw those as plum

jobs to be had for their people.

24

The Brahimi report it talks about changing the culture of the organization. That is one of the ways that the culture of the organization has to be changed.

There is this attitude that peacekeeping is something somebody

else pays for, when 97 percent of it is paid for by the First World,

and so it is a cost-free exercise for everybody else, and, in fact, may

result in a few jobs. So that kind of attitude needs to change. I am

not sure it will, but I think we should be insistent that it does.

Mr. BEREUTER. You also point out in your paper that you believe

the U.S. should push the U.N. to look beyond internal reforms to

control those external factors that prevent successful peacekeeping.

Can you give me an example of what you mean there, please?

Mr. JETT. Yes, sir. Again, those external factors are the local actors in the conflict, the country’s resources and the country’s external forces or neighbors usually. In the case of the Congo, you have

the armies of six countries involved, some for—like Rwanda, because they are not going to stand by and see the people who committed genocide be given safe haven in the Congo. You have other

countries like Zimbabwe involved because the President there supposedly is making a profit off diamond concessions. So you have all

of those countries involved for various interests, generally playing

an unhelpful role.

You have Mr. Kabila, who is as irresponsible a leader as one

could find these days, who seems ready to pay any price as long

as it is not his hold on power. Yet he comes to New York, and he

is feted and treated like a world leader. And then you have the diamonds in the Congo that are again being used to fuel the conflict.

You have got diamonds in Angola which the U.N. has attempted

to control, but did not do very well at. One of the reports that Secretary General Annan has had come out recently is showing up

how porous the sanctions against Angola were, and it named

names. It named the President of Burkina Faso as taking an envelope of diamonds to allow fuel and weapons to go into Savimbi’s

territory and diamonds to go out.

Yet but what happens when they were confronted with that evidence? The U.N. appointed a commission to study the question. So

you have got to connect with some enforcement.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you. I appreciate those examples.

I do want to fit in one more question for any and all of you. I

would like to know what you think about PDD–25 or about American foreign policy with respect to our role as a world leader to try

to motivate other countries to take an appropriate role.

For example, in the case of Rwanda, what was the responsibility

of the European countries, because of the colonial heritage that

they left, because of closer association with the situation in Rwanda, to act? Was what happened in East Timor with the Australians

stepping forward to take a very important leadership role something that we should suggest should happen in Africa and other

places as part of our world responsibility for leadership? To what

extent do we have a responsibility to motivate other countries to

take the lead for peacekeeping activities?

Mr. BOLTON. Perhaps I could take a quick shot at that. I think

that it is pretty clear that particularly in those areas where the

United States has only the slightest interest, that it is important

25

that others who feel that their circumstances are more directly

threatened do have a larger role. But I also think we have to acknowledge, and I think the case of Sierra Leone is a good example,

that the regional powers can have interests as well, and that their

interests may fall on one or another side of a conflict like that. So

that in the case of Indonesia, where the prior role of the Australians in supporting the Indonesian takeover, the military takeover, or where the Portuguese role has long been seen as unhelpful

by the Indonesians, that ultimately these things cannot be just devolved to the regional organizations.

The real issue is what the United Nations—from the American

point of view—what the United Nations can do. It has to be very

carefully limited. And I think part of the problem is member governments too readily throwing something into the United Nations’ lap without knowing what the consequences are going to be. I think

the referendum in East Timor is a good example of that. I think

everybody said, ‘‘let’s have the referendum,’’ without thinking

through what the militias would do, what the consequences of that

would be, and what would follow from it.

So I want to be clear. I do assign a major part of the responsibility here to the member governments, including the United

States, for not being clear in what they are asking the U.N. to do.

Chairman GILMAN. I want to give these gentlemen a chance to

respond to this. Mr. Luck, I noticed you had your hand up.

Mr. LUCK. It is a very interesting question. From the outside,

PDD–25 looks like a treaty between Congress and the executive

branch. It looks like it is primarily dealing with consultations, relationships, prerogatives between the two branches of government.

And I think what many countries see when they look at it, and

see in addition the Helms-Biden legislation, is, one, an inability of

the U.S. to speak with a single voice, and that, I think, undermines

a lot of this. They feel the Administration will say one thing, and

Congress will undercut it, and the Administration is not able to deliver the money, is not able to deliver Congress. And that, I think,

is a very serious problem.

And I would point out that in the Helms-Biden legislation, there

is a provision saying that if any country—if any of the 189 member

states—signs an article 43 agreement with the U.N., which is part

of the U.S. Charter, for standby forces, then the arrearage will not

be paid.

So this is extraterritoriality writ large. We are not only saying

we do not want to have any standby forces for this kind of contingency, we say no one should have these kinds of arrangements

with the U.N. In that sense I think we are extending ourselves a

little far, and that is not the kind of leadership role that we ought

to be playing.

Mr. BEREUTER. That is the kind of issue of sovereignty that some

European countries do not share with us, as we do in the United

States, the loss of sovereignty to the United Nations.

The gentleman from New Jersey? Unless the Ambassador has a

comment.

Mr. JETT. Just one comment. I think you are right. I think we

do need to encourage other countries to take the lead. Peacekeeping operations work best when there is a First World country

26

taking the lead, or NATO in the case of Kosovo, Bosnia. In the case

of East Timor, the Australians took the lead, because they saw it

in their vital national interest to do so and committed somewhere

between one-half and a quarter of their army, navy, and air force

to the initial operation, and it was very successful. Whether it succeeds in the longer term depends on the Indonesian military and

whether they will stop supporting the militias.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Ambassador.

The gentleman from New Jersey Mr. Payne is recognized.

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. And I thank the gentlemen

for their very important testimony.

I tend to agree with the line of questioning that Mr. Delahunt

started with regarding the appropriateness of when we do intervene. I guess that is going to be the question in the future. When

is it right, I guess, for us to become involved? And that is going

to be a very difficult question to answer in light of what we have

seen in the past.

I agree that the Rwanda situation—I tend to disagree—one of

the answers that was we don’t know what the loss of life would

have been if we had intervened militarily, say, the Western countries or the U.S.-led forces. It would appear to me if a group of exiles in Uganda, the RPF, not even a real army per se, but people

who had been refugees from Rwanda could have come down to

Rwanda and defeated the entire militia—not militias, but the entire army of Rwanda and had them eventually go—with protection

of the French go into Goma, it would appear to me that if sort of

an unorganized group could have routed an entire military, then I

think we are disingenuous and really have a low opinion of our

military if we question what the result would have been if they

were U.S. Rangers or Green Beret. I think that it would have probably have been an operation that would have seen virtually no casualties in that particular situation.

The other example, we are dealing with Charles Taylor, and it

seems that it has been proven that he is involved with the rogue

state and their leaders in Sierra Leone, but once again, when Doe,

who was the military dictator, was held up in Monrovia, that there

was an expectation that the marines were just going to come in

and take him out. That would have ended the whole situation.

Once again it has been calculated that there would have been no

opposition to the U.S. military. As a matter of fact, it was expected

that the marines would have gone in. That is why he stayed in

Monrovia and did not leave, because they just assumed that that

would have happened. But, of course, at the same time we had the

Persian Gulf situation, and the Administration at that time, the

Bush Administration, felt that we shouldn’t get involved.

So I do think that we have really an instance where there, in my

opinion, should have been involvement on the part of our Administration. There was none, and I think that it is perhaps a trend for

the future, which I do not see being in the best interest of stability

around the world.

I just have a question in regard to Sierra Leone with the Indian

officer in charge resigning or withdrawing and Nigerians feeling

that they should have the command. Could any of you comment?

What do you think should be—if the fact that Nigeria is going to

27

have and has had the largest number of peacemakers attempting

to make peace, that is it out of line for them to feel that they

should have control and command, or do you think that there is

other reasons why that is being requested?

Mr. BOLTON. Perhaps I could give a brief answer to that. It

seems to me there is the question of the Nigerian role, going to the

implications for peace and stability in Sierra Leone, to have a country that has—and I am not being critical here, but that has had

a prior role, in this case the restoration of the Kabbah government,

and has in effect been deemed by the RUF to have taken sides.

Again not being critical—I am just asking as a matter of basic political perception, whether you want a government like that substantially involved in the follow-on U.N. peacekeeping force that at

least in the first instance was supposed to be neutral among the

parties implementing the Lome Agreement.

The example that occurs to me, thinking about that, was in Somalia when Mohammed Farah Aideed saw the Pakistani battalion

land in Mogadishu and immediately make a deal with the Hawadle

subclan to provide them security at the Mogadishu airport. Aideed

concluded that the U.N. had sided with his enemies, and from that

relatively simple misperception, the involvement of one small

subclan, affected Aideed’s view about the subsequent U.N. deployment, which I think was not the only, but a major contributing factor to the ongoing problems we had in Somalia.

I think there is an argument in the case of Sierra Leone, given

the ECOMOG role and the leading Nigerian role in it, that a truly

neutral U.N. peacekeeping force, which was what was envisioned

under the Lome agreement, should not have included participation

by forces in the prior ECOMOG force. Now, that would have entailed bringing in new troops and would have involved a higher

cost. That is something that the United States and the other members of the Security Council should have faced at the front end. It

just seemed easier to rehat the ECOMOG force and the Nigerians,

I think, without adequate consideration of what that did to the political balance and political perceptions within Sierra Leone, and

that, I think, in turn caused some of the problems.

I don’t think you can move from peace enforcement back to

peacekeeping to peace enforcement, whatever flag is flying over the

troops. I think once a force loses its neutrality, it cannot get it

back.

So the question about the use of the Nigerians seems to me to

precede who ought to be in command. I think bringing in an outsider was probably a good thing to show that the new U.N. force

was not simply going to be nothing but a follow-on to the original

ECOMOG force.

Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Luck wants to respond to your question, too,

and perhaps Ambassador Jett.

Mr. LUCK. If I could just respond quickly. It is a judgment call,

but I would see the situation a bit differently than John. I think

Sierra Leone was not a place for peacekeeping; it was a place for

peace enforcement. People are afraid to use that term anymore

partly because of the resistance in this town to anything that says

‘‘enforcement’’ in it. It was a place to take sides. There were bad

guys and good guys. There were an elected government and others

28

who were committing the most incredible atrocities one can imagine.

And, yes, when the Nigerian forces were there as part of

ECOMOG, they did commit some violations here and there. That,

unfortunately, comes with the territory. It wasn’t a place where

you send in disinterested peacekeepers from far away, because,

quite frankly, when things get nasty, countries have to have an interest to stay. The disinterested stay home, or they do not fight effectively.

And, in fact, the two Sierra Leone resolutions were in part or in

whole taken under Chapter 7, the enforcement part of the Charter.

And I think the problem was that it was implemented as if it was

peacekeeping. So I think I would have seen that a bit differently.

Mr. BEREUTER. Ambassador Jett?

Mr. JETT. Just a comment. I think John and Ed are both correct,

but the idea of replacing the Nigerians with somebody else begs the

question: Who? There did not seem to be anybody willing to step

up to the plate and play that role, and you are left just as the

Lome accord was the only deal possible because nobody wanted to

impose peace, as Ed suggested. The Nigerians are basically there

because nobody else wants to do it, and they have a long history

of corruption. The best news that has happened for democracy in

Africa has been the election of President Obasanjo, but he can’t

change the culture of his military or his country overnight. And

ECOMOG was known as ‘‘every car or movable object gone’’ because they spent most of their time looting.

I might note that when the British sent in troops, to Mr.

Delahunt’s question, they had 400 troops in Sierra Leone in the beginning to stabilize things and did it very quickly with very few

casualties. I think a first-rate army with a relatively few number

of troops and casualties can stabilize these situations. That also

begs the question of how do you get out? What is your exit strategy, because you might be there for a long time.

Mr. BEREUTER. I need to adjourn. I thank the panel for their excellent testimony, oral and written, and to my colleagues for their

questions. I know we could go on. The gentlewoman from Florida,

I am going to have to turn the chair over if the gentlewoman would

take her questions from here.

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to

look at their written statements. I have not had a chance to review

them yet.

Mr. BEREUTER. I do not want to cut the gentlewoman off if she

has questions.

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. I will check back.

Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Delahunt.

Mr. DELAHUNT. If the gentlewoman will take the chair for a moment, I just have one question.

Mr. BEREUTER. And as I leave, I would like to mention—address

the point Mr. Luck brought up, and that is that PDD–25 has no

congressional input. It is not a treaty; this is something the Administration has set out. And under article 7 it would be interesting

to see—that is the one labeled Congress and the American people

trying to build support—whether or not—if the staff would examine

whether or not we have had the kind of consultation with the ConVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:59 Mar 08, 2001 Jkt 069979 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\FULL\H101100\69979 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
29

gress from the Administration that they in their own PDD–25 said

they would conduct. Thank you.

Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Delahunt, since the gentlewoman is in the chair,

would you yield for a second?

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. [Presiding.] Mr. Delahunt is recognized.

Mr. DELAHUNT. I yield to my friend from New Jersey.

Mr. PAYNE. Did Mr. Bolton want to respond?

Mr. BOLTON. I just wanted to make one point about the Lome

agreement, to disagree with what Ed said about sending in the

peace enforcement force from the U.N. The Lome agreement agreed

to by all the parties made Foday Sanko Vice President of Sierra

Leone and put him in charge of natural resources, including the

diamonds.

Now, you can say that the Lome agreement was flawed and that

that is the wrong thing to do, although our government supported

it, but I understand why there is an adage that says you can’t

make peace unless you include the people who are causing the war.

So the whole idea of the Lome agreement was an effort at national reconciliation. Maybe they never should have agreed to it,

and that goes to the point I made earlier that the Security Council,

before agreeing to any deployment, should have said: Do we have

a real agreement here? And I think the subsequent events proved

that we did not. But what the parties thought they were doing was

classic peacekeeping.

Mr. PAYNE. And I couldn’t agree more. That was a peacemaking

operation. The same way in Liberia, the Nigerians were there to

make peace, not to keep peace. There was no peace there, and had

the Nigerians not been there, there would never have been an election. And the election turns out looks like the bad guy won, but it

was the Nigerians making peace in order to have the elections.

And, secondly, in Sierra Leone there is no question about the fact

that they were peacemakers. If it wasn’t for the Nigerians there

trying to make peace, the Kabbah government had no military at

all, and it was the Nigerian military that kept the RUF from just

consuming the whole country and taking it over. And it definitely

was a flawed peace plan, as I conclude, but at the time there was

no other solution. Nigerians were talking about leaving because

they had—you know, both Presidents ran on ‘‘bringing the boys

home,’’ so to speak, in their Presidential election. They both agreed

that they want to bring the Nigerians home. Now they have agreed

that they would go back.

But that was a political position, and so there wasn’t very

much—if the Nigerians left being as strong as they were at the

time, then they would have consumed the whole country. And so

in hindsight there is a lot of criticism about the Lome accords, but

at the time they had to stop the RUF some way. They couldn’t do

it militarily. They tried to come up with the accord. They broke it.

Now I think peacemakers should go back in and make the peace

and then scrap the Lome accords and start with a whole new system. Thank you very much.

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Delahunt.

Mr. DELAHUNT. I would like to just listen or hear your thoughts

on the concept of nation-building. Obviously, at least it is obvious

to me, that there are situations such as East Timor where there

30

is a need for nation-building, and yet the idea does not have much

currency here. It immediately evokes a negative response. Yet we

have done that in the past. I can’t think of an example where, you

know, security, military presence has not been required in terms

of nation-building.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, I am thinking of

Japan right now, and that might not be an appropriate analogy. I

think it was Mr. Bolton that talked about the lack of capacity of

the United Nations in terms of providing an appropriate trusteeship. Well, where those situations cry for nation-building, where is

that initiative, where is that effort, where does the mechanism

exist for that responsibility to be posited? Mr. Luck?

Mr. LUCK. If I could comment briefly, I am sure that John or

Ambassador Jett may have comments on my comments.

But if one thinks of nation-building as something that we do for

other countries, I would agree that is probably not a doable proposition. But if it is a question of the international community providing some sense of stability, then I think you are right; some

sense of security, providing some of the tools, providing encouragement, providing incentives, then I think, in fact, we can assist and

have assisted quite successfully in a number of cases of peacebuilding. I would point to Namibia as one case in point, Mozambique being another, El Salvador, Cambodia, which is a mixed case,

but at least much better than the ‘‘killing fields.’’

And if you go back—though it is often said that this is brand

new, the U.N. has never done this before, never intervened in internal conflicts before—I would remind people that the largest U.N.

peacekeeping operation was in the Congo in the 1960’s. It was a

rough one and had lots of enforcement aspects to it. Maybe in a

sense the results did not last forever, but they did give stability

and installed someone at least the West liked, our country liked,

for a number of years. It controlled the security situation, it controlled the government and really ran the Congo in those early

days.

So I think it can be done and has been done, and the main question in terms of who does it best, I think, is who has political legitimacy on the ground, who is accepted by the people. And largely,

if one nation state intervenes, it is not in a position to achieve that.

It involves an obviously postcolonial kind of mentality. It may be,

as John suggested, that the EU would do a better job than the

U.N. in Kosovo. I am not sure that is true. I think it is awkward

to have the military side run by one organization and the civilian

side run by another organization. That certainly is very awkward.

But it seems to me that the U.N. has done at least a respectable

job in Kosovo under extremely difficult circumstances, and we will

see in a few years whether, in fact, it produces a sensible result.

Mr. JETT. Well, I think it is a good question, Mr. Delahunt. I

don’t know the responsibility can lie besides the U.N. in most

cases. There may be a regional organization, like John suggests, in

Europe, but I think Europe is sort of organization-rich. There is an

alphabet soup of organizations in Europe all looking to justify their

existence, including NATO, and so they are willing to take these

tasks on.

31

But that is not true in most of the rest of the world. And basically nation-building is looked at with some disdain because it is

hard to do. How long does it take to construct an institution? But

I think the U.N. has to do it in these cases. You cannot ignore

them. And I would say that U.N. can do much more, particularly

when, like in the case of Mozambique, essentially they walked

away from Mozambique after the elections. And there are a lot of

imperfect institutions. I am not sure how long the peace will last

in Mozambique if they do not stop having elections where the outcome is rigged by the ruling party that has been ruling every since

independence.

So I think it is something—I don’t think the U.N. does anything

particularly effectively, but if there is nobody else, the U.N. has to

do it.

Mr. BOLTON. I don’t think the U.N. has ever done this before. In

other cases like Namibia, the U.N. supervised an election, and then

it left. In the case of El Salvador and Nicaragua, it oversaw elections, had some minimal role after that, but basically in both Nicaragua and El Salvador, the people tried to put aside their differences and put a government back together again.

I do not want to disguise this. I think in part this depends on

your philosophy of government. I don’t believe that the Government

of the United States can do nation-building in this country very effectively. I think we are engaged in a 220-plus-year effort of our

own in nation-building exercise, and we are far from complete.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Maybe they should call it nation-nurturing or the

nurturing of democratic institutions. I think we all become the captive of these labels that for different reasons have different implications for different folks.

Mr. BOLTON. Let’s just call it the ‘‘X factor’’ for a minute. In East

Timor the people who are going to accomplish the X factor are the

East Timorese, and I think it is patronizing to assume they can’t

do it.

Mr. DELAHUNT. As you said earlier, each of these situations have

different attendant circumstances and conditions. And, of course,

there is a point in time when there should be a phasing down or

a winding down, and these nations have to evolve on their own,

given their culture, their philosophy of government.

But you know, I think just to say it can’t be done, I think, opens

us to potential instability all over the planet, which I dare say is

vital in terms of our national interests to see that from not occurring, that from not happening.

Mr. BOLTON. May I just follow up on one small point there that

I quoted earlier. Let me just read it again. These are not my words.

This is what the Secretary General said about what is going on in

East Timor. And referring to the difficulties that the U.N. faces,

and he says, and I quote, ‘‘The organization has never before attempted to build and manage a state.’’

Now, it is my contention that it is neither the function nor within

the competence of the United Nations to build and manage a state.

It is not within the competence or the authority of the United Nations. I think the people who are going to build and manage the

new state of East Timor are the East Timorese——

32

Mr. DELAHUNT. Let me interrupt you. You made that quote, and

I have no reason to disagree with its accuracy. But at the same

time my interpretation is that the context there is much larger in

terms of an incremental, early-on investment of resources, assistance, guidance, for lack of better terms, and as some institutions,

some of the infrastructure take hold, a withdrawal. Ambassador

Jett is right, we do not want to talk about it because it is tough.

Maybe it is impossible. I don’t know. But if you do not give it a

try, I think the alternative carries with it a much higher risk.

Mr. Luck?

Mr. LUCK. I would just say that I suppose what the Secretary

General was referring to, in saying that this is so new, is that this

really a case of self-determination, where there was no nation,

there was no identity, there was no governance whatsoever by the

local people. And that is very tough, and in a sense that is what

one might or might not face in Kosovo, but I think, as John pointed

out rightly earlier, it is very uncertain which way this is going to

go.

But clearly most of the cases that we have talked about, Mozambique, El Salvador, Cambodia, are places where there was, in fact,

a sovereign government, there was some kind of internal disturbance, and things needed to be solved. I think the Namibia case was

a little bit closer. I would say it was more than what John suggested, but there was a case of moving from a colonial situation to

a postcolonial situation. But in that sense East Timor is special.

But some of these are rather different; in that case not just nationbuilding, but creating any sense of a nation and having it accepted

as a sovereign state.

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you. And following up on Mr.

Delahunt’s questions related to the missions and the competence of

our U.N. peacekeeping missions, do you think that we should try

to move our U.N. peacekeeping efforts back to an earlier period

when it monitored cease-fires, it kept opposing armies apart until

a permanent peace could be established? And that is what we have

been talking about, whether that is time to get back to the basics

and let that be really the policy blueprint for the U.N. peacekeeping missions.

Mr. Luck?

Mr. LUCK. Well, I would say that, while it would be very attractive to be able to follow that option, it is really saying let’s go back

to the old-Cold War days when things were defined in a very different way. Unfortunately, most of the security challenges that we

are facing are not of that nature. And, yes, occasionally there is an

Iran and Iraq, or there is an Iraq and Kuwait, or an Ethiopia and

Eritrea, and then, yes, we can go back to traditional peacekeeping.

Mr. LUCK. To me, what the problem is, and I think this is a problem in the Brahimi report as well, and John suggested this earlier

as a problem with PDD–25, is fuzzing traditional peacekeeping

roles with some kind of enforcement role. I think most of these situations what we are seeing are really not truly intrastate conflicts.

We are seeing some kind of trans-national conflict, where the resources and the forces and the refugees and the populations travel

back and forth across borders that are very poorly defined. And

most of those require some real use of force to create a secure enviVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:59 Mar 08, 2001 Jkt 069979 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\FULL\H101100\69979 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
33

ronment. It would be nice simply to say let us do the easy ones.

Let us only go back to cases where the U.N. would only be doing

traditional peacekeeping. But then the question comes, who is

going to handle all the rest of the situations? And these are the

really dangerous ones. Someone will have to do it or else I think

we will have a great deal of chaos in many parts of the world.

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. In following up on the PDD–25 reference,

how can we improve the consultation process between Congress

and the executive branch, and what comments do you have about

the ongoing efforts on the GAO to investigate this presidential decision directive 25?

Mr. BOLTON. I think there is a fundamental problem between

Congress and the executive at this point because the—precisely because PDD–25 is so unclear and so vague. And it permits so many

different kinds of U.N. operations under the broad and elastic language that it contains. But I think there is also a question of disagreement over what legitimate role the U.N. can play. There I do

disagree with Ed Luck in where the U.N. has utility. I think the

U.N. has a role, but I think it is a limited role. And I think it is

useful in relatively small number of conflicts. Ethiopia, Eritrea

today we have discussed seems to me to be a classic place where

the U.N. can play a role. In Sierra Leone, I think it is almost inevitably not going to succeed. And if the question is what other options are there, I think you are hindering the development of thinking on that if you reflexively use the United Nations. So part of

this is a disagreement between the executive branch and Congress

over what the role of the U.N. is. I wish we could have a more

straightforward debate about that and have the Administration

here and go at it. I think that is the way you move these debates

forward.

Mr. JETT. I would just add again that the only options I see here

is the U.S. participates, the U.S. lets the U.N do it without United

States participation, or we do nothing. Unfortunately, the Eritrea/

Ethiopia conflict where classical peacekeeping is possible is the

rare exception today. It is a civil war that is today’s typical conflict

and those are much more messy situations. Would we really stand

by and let Rwanda happen again in a place like Burundi or somewhere else. I suspect that actually we might because we haven’t

gotten very far in the discussion about what we would do in such

a situation, and I hope this hearing pushes that discussion a little

further forward.

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. MR. LUCK.

Mr. LUCK. Just to comment briefly on the question about PDD–

25 and congressional-executive relations, I agree with John that

there is a general problem on foreign policy, and I would guess on

domestic policy as well, between the executive branch and Congress

these days. I don’t recall, going back 10, 20 years, that on peacekeeping and other things having to do with the U.N., there was

this very intense partisanship and mistrust on both sides. And I

think that very often the U.N. is used as a way of getting after the

Administration or vice versa. I think a lot of it has to do with

money and the prerogatives of Congress over finance.

And I understand why Congress does not like being presented

with bills and told oh, we have already signed off on this in New

34

York. I think a much better and much earlier form of consultation

needs to be worked out. And I hope after the elections and after

we get to a new Administration and a new Congress, this can be

looked at again because viewed from New York and viewed from

other member states, the U.S., for all of its unprecedented power

in the world, seems totally unable to deliver on our power and our

promise because of this kind of blockage, which comes up again

and again and again.

We will see what the dynamics and what the relationships are

come January. But I hope we can start anew, because otherwise I

think we will look like a rather pathetic giant up in New York.

Thank you.

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much. Thank you, gentlemen,

and I thank the visitors for being here with us. The Committee is

now adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

(35)

A P P E N D I X

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CON- GRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

I am very pleased to welcome our witnesses this morning to this long-delayed

hearing on a ‘‘Review of the Administration’s Peacekeeping Policy Blueprint’’ and

how the Administration has applied its policy blueprint for four key UN peacekeeping operations.

We were briefed last week on the long-delayed investigation by the General Accounting Office into the Presidential Decision Directive Number 25—the process

whereby the U.S. approves U.N. and other multilateral Peace Operations and provides timely and relevant information to Congress concerning their implementation.

This report was requested late last year by this Committee on a bipartisan basis

and follows a number of similar GAO reports on peacekeeping-related topics conducted over the past several years on a timely basis and with the cooperation of

the Administration.

Today, U.N. peacekeeping is facing very difficult challenges on the ground—The

decision by the Indian Government to pull its peacekeepers might well lead to a

breakdown of UN peacekeeping efforts in Sierra Leone, the Government of the

Democratic Republic of the Congo has refused to cooperate with the UN in the deployment of a peacekeeping force in that country, as there are continuing obstacles

from the Indonesian military and police forces in the ongoing mission in East Timor.

These developments in turn raise key questions about the process on how the U.

S. approves and supports these missions.

Today we still have many questions about the process whereby the Clinton Administration approved these missions. Unfortunately, we got few satisfactory responses from the GAO on how the Administration has applied its own policy blueprint to the missions now on the ground in Africa, Asia and Europe.

This project was requested on a bipartisan basis with the Ranking Member Mr.

Gejdenson. The GAO reported to us that it lacks full and independent access to

agency records needed to complete its work. Furthermore, it has no access to key

documents that would show whether this peacekeeping policy blueprint was fully

taken into account when deciding to support some peacekeeping operations. With

no independent access to records, the GAO feels that the integrity and reliability

of its work has been compromised.

The GAO investigators have produced an extensive summary of their requests to

the Administration, many of which were ignored or denied on very dubious grounds.

The summary, which I will make available at today’s hearing fully documents the

stone-walling and delaying tactics from State department officials that has seemed

to characterize this entire investigation into the process by which we review and approve multilateral peace operations, including U.N. Peace Operations.

While the work of the GAO in this area is not yet complete, it is becoming clear

that the Administration has yet to take a cooperative attitude toward the completion of this peacekeeping review by the GAO investigators.

In short, there is a concern that Congress is being shortchanged in the quality,

quantity and timeliness of the information we require to make our own decisions

concerning these missions.

In short, we are still in need of timely and complete cooperation from the Administration on this pending review by the GAO of how these operations are approved

and conducted. And most disappointing of all is the failure of the State Department

to make available to the Committee the two witnesses we had requested. Undersecretary Thomas Pickering and Deputy Legal Adviser James Thessin are evidently not

36

going to join us and discuss how the department is handling policy and process

questions related to this GAO investigation.

I will, however, ask for their cooperation in providing answers within 48 hours

to questions related to this ongoing GAO investigation.

Today, we are very fortunate to have with us an outstanding private sector panel

to review the peacekeeping policy issues before the Committee today. The panel includes the Honorable John R. Bolton, Senior Vice President of the American Enterprise Institute and former Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, Ambassador David Jett, Dean of the International Center at the University

of Florida and former Ambassador to Mozambique and Peru and Mr. Edward C.

Luck, Executive Director of the Center for the Study of International Organization.

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70