MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

30 WADSWORTH STREET
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 02139

6 April 1970

Dr. Henry Kissinger
The White House
Washington, D.C.

Dear Henry:

My associate Miss Amelia Leiss has just completed, under my
supervision, a major study on arms transfers to less developed
countries for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. This
is the only effort I know of to begin with the facts and work
carefully toward policy conclusions. I think you will find it
fascinating and useful. God and the State Department print shop
willing, copies should be available within a few weeks from the
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and from the Center for Inter-
national Studies at M.I.T. In view of the high political
saliency of this issue at the present moment, I wanted to call this
study to your early attention. I think Miss Leiss has managed
to structure this highly complex problem in ways that are directly
relevant to numbers of issues outlined in the President's report
on U.S. foreign policy for the 1970s and to the hearings underway
at this moment in the Congress.

I wanted in particular to call your attention to one of the
recommendations that emerged from Miss Leiss' study. We are
pressing the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, in the first
instance, to look seriously at the possibility of utilizing U.S.
Government data more effectively in support of U.S. arms transfer
policy. The enclosed memorandum makes, I think, a persuasive
case for such an effort. Someone on your staff may be interested
in following this.

LPB:bjs
enclosure

2 April 1970

Amelia C. Leiss

Center for International Studies
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology

In U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970's: A New Strategy for
---
Peace: A Report to the Congress, February 18, 1970, President Nixon
identified as one of the key foreign policy challenges facing the
United States in this decade:

Limiting the Flow of Weapons to Regions in Conflict--When peace is in everyone's interest, we must find a way to control conflict everywhere. We must not be drawn into conflicts by local rivalries. The great powers should try to damp down rather than fan local passions by showing restraint in their sale of arms to regions in conflict. We stand ready to discuss practical arrangements to this end. (p. 151)

Elsewhere in this same document, the President reiterated the central
thesis of the "Nixon Doctrine":

...the United States will participate in the defense and development of allies and friends, but...America cannot--and will not--conceive all the plans, design all the programs, execute all the decisions and undertake all the defense of the free nations of the world. We will help where it makes a real difference and is considered in our interest. (p. 6)

In speaking of U.S. General Purpose Forces, the President listed
as one premise for determining American requirements the following:

...we cannot expect U.S. military forces to cope with the entire spectrum of threats facing allies or potential allies throughout the world....We may be able to supplement local efforts with economic and military assistance. (p. 127)

Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird was even more specific in his
Statement...Before a Joint Session of the Senate Armed Services Com-
mittee and the Senate Subcommittee on Department of Defense Approp-
riations on the Fiscal Year 1971 Defense Program and Budget, February
20, 1970:

It is important for all of us to understand that the Nixon strategy also will affect our Military Assistance Program (MAP). An important aspect of our continuous efforts to curtail our overseas involvements and expenditures is our ability to persuade and help allied and friendly nations to do more than they are now doing in their own defense. We must continue to provide them the tools they need. Therefore, in the interest of laying a solid foundation for peace while maintaining an adequate U.S. defense posture at minimum cost, we should be ready to increase MAP funds and credit-assisted sales of military equipment abroad. (p. 11)

2 April 1970
A. C. Leiss

These quotations underscore vividly the important place of an
effective and controlled military assistance and sales policy in the
U.S. strategy for peace. Effective military assistance and sales
can enhance U.S. security and can help to reduce the likelihood that
direct U.S. military commitments in local conflicts will be required
in areas that are felt to be essential to U.S. interests. Uncontrolled
military sales can help fan the flames of local conflicts in ways that
disserve U.S. interests.

This dilemma and the policy conclusions that flow from it are
thoroughly analyzed in a recently completed study by the Center for
International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under Contract ACDA/
WEC-135. The research at M.I.T. was directed by Amelia C. Leiss.
A major contribution to this study was made by the International
Studies Division of Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., under subcontract
to M.I.T.*

* The main volume in this report is Amelia C. Leiss with Geoffrey Kemp, John H. Hoagland, et al., *Arms Control and Local Conflict*, Vol. III, *Arms Transfers to Less Developed Countries*, Center for International Studies Pub. No. C/70-1, February 1970. Major supporting studies are: Amelia C. Leiss, *Changing Patterns of Arms Transfers*, Pub. No. C/70-2; Geoffrey Kemp, *Classification of Weapons Systems and Force Designs in Less Developed Country Environments*, Pub. No. C/70-3; Jacob S. Refson, *U.S. Military Training and Advice*, Pub. No. C/70-4; Geoffrey Kemp, *Some Relationships Between U.S. Military Training Programs in Latin America and Weapons Acquisition Patterns*, Pub. No. C/70-5; and John H. Hoagland, *World Combat Aircraft Inventories and Production, 1970-75*, Pub. No. C/70-6. These volumes are currently being printed by the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and should be available shortly from the Agency and from the Center for International Studies at M.I.T.

2 April 1970

A.C. Leiss

One of the M.I.T. study's findings warrants particular attention. The study demonstrates that there are discernible patterns of behavior by states in their arms acquisitions from all sources. Some states follow what the study defines as a "replacement" pattern, acquiring new weapons at a quantity and a rate sufficient to maintain a stable inventory of operational systems. Other states have an "accretion" pattern, acquiring arms in such quantities and rates as to cause their inventories to grow. A special case, which represents a sharp departure from previous behavior, can be identified as a "surge" pattern where in terms of both quantity and rate of acquisition, the inventory shows a sharp upward swing.

Patterns of weapons mixes within inventories can also be established. Speaking in very general terms, some states emphasize systems that are designed primarily to deliver ordnance; others emphasize systems with a primarily transport role; still others acquire more systems with a patrol and liaison function.

Not only can these patterns be used to identify the behavior "style" of individual states, but also the existence of these patterns helps to establish how states react to the acquisitions of their neighbors. Some forms of this interaction among neighbors bespeak the classic "arms race," where states are vying with each other for military supremacy; others represent more an "off-setting" or "deterrent" pattern; still others reflect a "prestige" competition with little obvious attention to the military significance of new acquisitions. It is important to add that, while all of these interactive patterns reflect a conscious "competition," some are intensely de-stabilizing to regional balances while others represent an effort to maintain a regional balance. (Too frequently this distinction is not made and any evidence of competition is labeled an "arms race," by definition bad.)

The patterns described above were derived empirically from a study of the arms acquisitions of a sample of 52 less-developed

2 April 1970

A.C. Leiss

countries from 1945-68. The M.I.T. study also produced a series of models or patterns of the force structures a rational defense planner in a less-developed country (i.e., with technological and resource restraints) would select for a given military mission in differing terrains and under different assumptions about the equipment of his opposing force, if his sole motivation were to spend his marginal military dollar to greatest military effect. These general patterns can be used to reach judgements about the military significance of a new acquisition, whether a country perceives a new threat, or whether its intentions (i.e., the missions it is planning to be able to undertake) have changed.

The U.S. Government systematically collects information on the weapons acquisitions, equipment status, and force structure of the armed forces of all countries of the world. It keeps account of arms supplied by countries of the world other than the United States. Records of U.S. activities are also kept by the individual agencies responsible for licensing the sale or directly arranging and making the transfer.

What is not done, to the best of our knowledge, is to utilize this vast body of data in ways that are operationally relevant to the often difficult decisions that have to be made on whether to approve, reject, or modify a request for a particular transfer of arms. These calculations are clearly made on an ad hoc basis in some instances. Press accounts of the recent U.S. Government decision on Israel's request for additional F-4s and A-4s, for example, suggest that careful calculations were made of future Israeli and Egyptian inventories under varying assumptions of Israeli strategy and consequent attrition rates.

The M.I.T. study, working with completely public data, demonstrates that by utilizing high-speed computer capabilities plus a knowledge of the kinds of questions the policy-maker must answer in making an arms-transfer decision, the Government can

2 April 1970

A.C.Leiss

utilize the data it already collects for other purposes to make
policy-relevant information readily available.

Two things must be stressed. In a policy-area as complex
as this, there are no easy formulae that will provide universally-
valid answers to the policy question. What a systematic information
system can do is to organize known data in such a way as to provide
information to the policy-maker in policy-relevant form.

Second, a system that provides only an efficient way to store
and retrieve information about arms transfers may be useful for
reporting purposes and to provide convenient inputs into other
research efforts. But to be policy-relevant, a system must also
manipulate the data in ways that can discern trends, analyze
behavior, assess effects, identify anomalies, and in other ways
use both data and an understanding of the policy-process to produce
insights that go far beyond the mere aggregation of data.

The purpose of this memorandum is to urge that serious consider-
ation be given to the development and implementation of such an
information system within the U.S. Government. The dilemmas that are
pointed to in President Nixon's report will not vanish just by
virtue of improving our capability to make judgements about the
effects of transfer decisions. But our ability to make judgements
about arms transfers--our own and others'--can be greatly improved
by better utilization of information already available.

AUG 6 1970

GENERAL

Dear Line:

Thank you for your note and for sending me your
paper on "What a U.S. Commission on the UN
Can Accomplish." Things being out of channels
don't disturb me terribly and besides, I found
it most interesting. I appreciate your sharing
it with me and am passing it along to the ap-
propriate member of my staff.

Professor Lincoln P. Bloomfield
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Center for International Studies
30 Wadsworth Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

jlp:8/5/70

RECEIVED
AUG 7 1970
CENTRAL FILES

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It has comforted some Americans to believe that the
growing decline of the UN was chiefly the fault of the Soviet
Union. At one time I believe this was so. Up to the present
time the Soviets continue to take a narrow view of national
advantage as they - along with everyone else- consistently
pursue their own national interest through the UN. Moscow
- like Washington - invariably wants to be sure the UN not
be permitted to interfere in situations in which it believes
it has a vital interest in the outcome. The Soviets want
the Charter to be interpreted strictly, to have a veto on
all important actions and, through the highly dangerous
Brezhnev Doctrine, to retain the right to intervene unila-
terally anywhere a Socialist regime is "threatened". (The
US attitude on these points is more ambiguous.)

But increasingly the US itself has acted unilaterally,
often in disregard of majority opinions, and in ways, I
would argue, which have also weakened the UN. This policy
of lip-service to multilateralism but unilateralism in fact,
has been thoroughly bipartisan. This country has consis-
tently avoided the UN on matters considered truly vital
(Vietnam, Berlin and the division of Europe, Cambodia, the
Dominican Republic, are prime examples). It has preferred
the UN route only for matters that are either marginal or
undisputed. While arguing that the UN was unable to
handle a question ( or that its action would not necessarily
accrue to our benefit) we have given it less and less
important things to do. The effect is to create a kind of
self-fulfilling prophecy, helping to produce a UN that is
increasingly incapable of dealing with anything very important.
Fully granting the important exceptions in supporting UN
responsibility in the Middle East and Africa, US policy at
the same time has clearly worked to discourage UN involve-
ment in Latin America, Europe or South East Asia.

South East Asia is a prime example. In the early 1950s
France and subsequently the US interpreted the situation, and
their interests, in a way that excluded a multilateral
organization from playing any important role. As a consequence
the UN became totally detached from one of the major problems
of peace and security of our age. When in 1966 the US came
to the UN after 12 years of unilateral involvement in Vietnam
it could scarcely expect either support or substitution,
particularly since about half of the key participants in the
Vietnam war were not members of the UN (largely because of
US opposition over the years).

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## Prognosis

The chief danger is not that the UN will die, but that it will settle into a condition of permanent invalidism, acting only on matters of race and colonialism, and totally disconnected from the main issues of world politics. Nothing short of fundamental changes in direction, emphasis, and organization is likely to alter the trend. And, without such changes, the United States will continue to enjoy the worst of two worlds - committed to membership in a defective enterprise, but unable or unwilling to use it effectively for important policy matters.

Even that would be bearable if it were not for two factors. First, the US is decreasingly likely to intervene unilaterally to rectify regional imbalances or threats, outside of a few vital areas; a multilateral substitute may become a sheer necessity rather than a luxury.

The other reason is that some of our own rhetoric about the need for an improved world order is persuasive, and deserves to be converted from myth to reality.

## Prescription

Let me advance for mind-stretching purposes very far-out proposals. They rest on the premise that whatever we have been doing is not working, and thus there is not much point in simply doing more of the same:

1. One favorite American argument is that we might destroy the UN if we "overburden" it with more than it can handle. While intrinsically valid this has become, generally speaking, a cop-out for not giving the UN anything serious to do, or at least anything the US cares very deeply about.

What would happen if we "turned over" to the UN (with all the problems that would predictably entail) a major problem area for settlement? I have in mind the "quasi-legislation" of the sort stemming from the Italian Peace Treaty of the 1940s which asked the UN General Assembly to settle the future status of the former Italian colonies. Somehow, despite the Cold War and all tensions, the result included statehood for both Libya and Somalia, inter alia. For another example, the British "turned over" the intractable Palestine problem to the UN in 1947 and the result, wars and all, was the State of Israel. One may argue, in retrospect,

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that the UN should not have been given those tasks. I would contend that the world would be an even worse place if both sets of problems had been simply left to fester, or were handled - and opposed - unilaterally.

One such intractable problem is the future status of the Indochina successor states. Without going into any of the well-known details, it seems clear that, however long some US troops stay in Vietnam, there is likely eventually to be a coalition government in Saigon, and both Laos and Cambodia are unlikely to be free of Communist rule at least in major parts. I know of no one who disputes either of these assessments. The US, rather than staying around to deal with all this unilaterally, is now in the process of pulling out. The biggest unanswered question concerning Vietnam is what the US will do if, after it leaves, the anti-communist regimes in the three capitals are unable to continue to function. It would seem reasonable to begin now to arrange to place the entire question, complete with problems of elections, boundaries, reunifications, peacekeeping, neutralization under international law and all the rest, to something other than blind chance. The various alternatives that might be supported by a two-thirds vote in the General Assembly do not seem particularly worse than the alternative if the US pulls out and Hanoi simply takes over.

2. A quite different proposal goes to the very root of the UN as an organization. It rests on our long term interests and those of the world as a community. As things stand, the chances for any basic improvements in world order now depend on the consent of the lowest common denominator. In other words, the Russians must agree, as must the great majority of new and poor states, most of which are hostile to the great powers. To make a better world order depend entirely on the least cooperative states seems to me an easy escape from the responsibility of implementing virtually any of our lofty national rhetoric about the need for a world under law, for more effective means of settling international disputes, compulsory arbitration and adjudication of disputes, and all the rest. What it adds up to is the posture that we will ourselves abide by the will of a majority in important matters when virtually everyone else comes to share our views and our outlook.

Here again we have the worst of both worlds; an aspiration and genuine belief in law and order at the world level, and an arrangement which ensures that it cannot possibly come about under any conceivable conditions.

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I propose that the US consider organizing a coalition (or bloc or caucus or even non-geographic "regional organization") *within the UN* composed of those who are willing now, without waiting for the Communists to become capitalists or the poor to become rich, to accept the will of a qualified majority on questions of genuine importance to the nations concerned. In other words, to create a fragment of community, so to speak, by initially limiting it to those who share the basic values and premises that in *any* polity make up a true community.

This "coalition of the law-abiding" would agree *in advance* and without reservations of any sort to be bound by the judgments of compulsory arbitration and adjudication in justiciable matters, and to terms of settlement of disputes reached by the Security Council under Articles 37 and 38, in disputes involving two members of the coalition - but *only* with respect to other countries that have taken the same pledge!

3. The third "far-out" proposal aims at breaking another self-constructed log-jam. The US correctly is unwilling to accept as having binding force the judgments of a majority of members of the UN who collectively could, in theory, represent only a tiny fraction of the world's power or even contributions to the UN budget. But at the same time we have written off the remedy to this, i.e. weighted voting, on the equally correct ground that a majority would probably never agree to have their power so weakened.

What I propose is that the US *unilaterally* decide that it will accept as binding the judgments and recommendations of the General Assembly (and perhaps of other organs as well) on important questions if, by a weighted voting scale we *would unilaterally adopt*, that vote represented a meaningful majority, i.e. a real majority of units of strength, population, power, etc., in the world. No Charter change would be necessary. No one else has to change anything he is doing. Only the US need make this calculation. Our gamble would be that others would gradually (or even quickly) come to see the common sense in our policy, and the great promise it brings of actually moving toward a working world order.

Some other areas are less far-out, but nonetheless offer important prospects for movement and improvements in the UN. I suggest ten tangible and practical steps toward middle-range reform of the UN peace and security system that might help move it toward a more effective role.

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1. **Peacekeeping.** It is timely to work out some new ground rules which nations will find it in their interests to observe. For example, to seek tacit agreement that UN peacekeeping could not be used - as many have feared it would be used - to achieve one or another ideological outcome. We can work toward a common understanding that in internal conflicts (see below) the proper use of the UN is to insulate such situations from external military interference, thus limiting conflicts that may threaten a larger peace while permitting internal change to take place. It is vital to accelerate progress in this direction since this is the one thing the UN should be best at doing but is doing badly or not at all. In this connection, governments should fully support the efforts of the *International Peace Academy* this summer in Vienna to experiment with serious professional training of international peacekeeping and mediatory personnel. This should be done without worrying about how the 38th floor of the UN Secretariat feels; they will always be cautious, so long as there are differences between governments.

2. **Internal Conflicts.** The UN and indeed the whole structure of international organization and law is not really relevant to about 50% of the conflicts that do in fact take place, i.e. within the boundaries of nations. Instead of wasting time, energy, and money on the futile exercise of trying to "define aggression", a comparable effort should be invested in relating the UN and law to the real-life conflict situations that threaten the peace as much or more than the interstate variety. This relates to point No. 1 on peacekeeping, in which the central political requirement now seems to be a new understanding that majorities will not try to exploit international peacekeeping either to smash their enemies (as the Afro-Asians wish to do in southern Africa) or to achieve a preferred political outcome as the Western majority is suspected by some of having done in the past and which the Soviet minority would doubtless have done if it were in a majority.

3. **Peaceful Change.** Progress should begin to be made on better procedures for perhaps the most needed process of all - peaceful change. As urged by Louis Sohn and others, an Equity Tribunal should be set up without further delay. A special committee should be established to examine the possibilities inherent in Article 14, which after all is supposed to encourage action on the central problem of peaceful change which the League of Nations failed to handle.

# The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Prospects for Peacekeeping

LINCOLN P. BLOOMFIELD

## I.

WHEN the United Nations Charter was drafted in 1945 the provisions for keeping the peace had to be drawn up in the abstract. There was no tangible enemy, crises were in the future, and commitments were made in a vacuum. It was only when it became clear what the world was really like that "peacekeeping" was invented. It turned out that in most conflict situations there was no definable aggressor or victim, that the danger was uncontrolled escalation of local conflicts into the nuclear realm, and that the real enemy was a fantastically complex set of instabilities, inequities, and passions to which 1945 international ground rules were inadequately related.

In the 1970's the need for international action to keep the peace must be related to the real situations we can foresee. The capacity of the international system to act must be calculated in terms of the real political environment. This is the context in which to take another look at multilateral peacekeeping and peacemaking and in general at the limiting of local conflicts.

The postwar years can be divided into four periods of peacekeeping as we know it today. In the first period, 1945 to 1956, "peacekeeping" in the sense of noncoercive military forces under the banner of the UN, was unknown. In the second period, 1956 to 1965, following the invention of just such forces for Palestine and the Congo, peacekeeping seemed full of promise as the answer to the question of law and order in the "ghettos," so to speak, of the

LINCOLN P. BLOOMFIELD, a member of the Board of Editors of this journal, is a professor of political science and a senior staff member of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. Originally prepared for presentation at the National Convocation on the Challenge of Building Peace, sponsored by the Fund for Peace, in New York in April 1970, a revised version of this article will appear as a chapter in a forthcoming book, *The Challenge of Building Peace: A Soviet-American Dialogue*, edited by Joseph P. Lyford, to be published by Praeger Publishers, January 1971. Reprinted by permission.

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549

world. In the third period, 1965 to 1970, it became dubious, contentious, and subject to the disabilities and suspicions of all like efforts to tackle turbulence in the developing areas as problems of "law and order," intelligence, and, as it were, urban renewal. What of period four, beginning now?

There is no reason to think that the 1970's will be just like the 1960's—or that we can tell much about the 1970's. But the past gives some clues. According to recent research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,¹ 55 or so "local conflicts" have taken place since World War II—small wars or near-wars involving no direct military confrontation between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Some are still going on, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict and those in Kashmir and Cyprus. The rate is not necessarily high—an average of 1.5 new ones per year. New wars during the last two years were: the renewed Arab-Israeli fighting in 1967, the civil war in Nigeria, and the Honduras–El Salvador conflict. Over 90 percent of them occurred in the developing areas. American military power was involved, directly and indirectly, in almost one-fourth of these small wars, and Soviet power and influence in approximately the same proportion (though not in all the same areas).

Already changes are discernible in the patterns of local conflict. It used to be that the easiest cases to predict were the inevitable decolonizations, some peaceful, some violent. But now only the Portuguese African territories and South West Africa remain pressure points, and even here history could arrange for Angola and Mozambique not to explode, i.e., for them to become happily biracial or perhaps to be protected for 25 years by white South African power—although this seems doubtful.

Neither is the old category of automatic Soviet activism, countered by automatic United States opposition, necessarily valid for the 1970's. Not activism but serendipity accounts for the Soviet position in such places as Cuba, the United Arab Republic, Algeria, Nigeria, and Somalia. Other people tend to make their own revolutions and then look around for outside support. (The United States did the same after its revolution and found it in Jacobin France, to the disgust of the conservative European powers.) An increasingly valid distinction can be made between local conflicts in which the Soviets involve themselves for relatively inexpensive influence, such as those now disturbing various parts of the Moslem world, and conflicts in which Communist regimes, established of, for, and by Communists, are at stake, such as Hungary in 1956, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) in 1950–1953, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) throughout.

The sources of deliberate insurgency-fomenting will more likely be the People's Republic of China (Communist China), North Vietnam, Cuba, and possi-

¹ See Lincoln P. Bloomfield and Amelia C. Leiss, *Controlling Small Wars—A Strategy for the 1970's* (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969).

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bly Algeria. Of these only Communist China has or is likely in the 1970's to have nuclear weapons. Conflicts fomented by North Vietnam or Cuba have at least so far been unable to trigger direct Soviet or Chinese involvement and thus do not raise the same danger of escalation one fears in those threatening an American-Soviet collision. But whether or not touched off by Communist arsonists, "wars of liberation" will be in the forefront in the 1970's as colonial problems were previously. This leads to the second change in the local conflict picture.

This second change is an outgrowth of the virtual end of decolonization; the Congo collapse in 1960 was its harbinger. A second generation of leaders and ideas is already making its appearance in the less developed countries. The "morning-after" phenomenon is becoming institutionalized, with less and less hope that promised growth rates and modernization effects will soon be achieved. This "revolution of risen expectations" will be continuously fueled by growing literacy, radio, television, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) sessions, and technical assistance operations. It is ironic that a form of stability has manifested itself in inherently unstable situations such as that in the southern half of Africa or the eastern half of Germany. Paradoxically, the reverse may also be true. Inherently hopeful situations characterized by national independence, aid programs, growing school populations, and concerned citizens may well be the ones most likely to generate violence in the period ahead. In this sense West Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf are not much different from Detroit, the Chicago South Side, Bedford-Stuyvesant, or Roxbury: They all illustrate Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin's aphorism that the hopeless do not revolt (but once hope is born, watch out!).

Anyone requiring persuasion that change and turmoil will be the order of the day should study the ages of men who rule important parts of the world, often where there is no tradition of peaceful transmission of power. The science of gerontology will not save them from a certain fate (and might give us important clues to their behavior in the meantime): Chiang Kai-shek is 83, Francisco Franco 77, Marshal Tito 77, Jomo Kenyatta 76, Mao Tsetung 76, and Walter Ulbricht 76.

It seems inevitable that a decade of turmoil, revolution, small wars, and attempted takeovers lies ahead. The failure of overnight modernization will create more fertile soil for "wars of liberation," and the latter, while often arising out of genuine revolutions, will also be fomented or egged on by Peking, Hanoi, or Havana and rather nervously supported by an increasingly stability-favoring Soviet Union (and nervously opposed by an increasingly neo-isolationist United States).

A third source of convulsions lies in the *developed* world. Possibly the most dangerous single situation for the future of mankind is a possible Sino-Soviet nuclear war (perhaps the best argument to reexamine the conventional wis-

PROSPECTS FOR PEACEKEEPING

551

dom that excludes UN involvement from great-power conflicts). Linguistic and religious clashes already bedevil Ulster, Belgium, and Canada.

There may be still other sources. No great stretch of the imagination is needed to foresee a struggle between Hanoi and Peking given the lengthy history of tensions, particularly when the common interest in dealing with an external enemy disappears. Nuclear accidents may become more likely if additional countries get the bomb, and a whole new set of "reassurance" techniques may be needed of the sort developed for United States-Soviet strategic relations.

In short, "peacekeeping" can come to mean some new and different things demanded by changing times. Indeed, until now peacekeeping has meant something very different to the chief parties thereto. In the logic the United States has recently followed, it has meant an agency for "stability" and thus the prevention of the spread of communism. To the Soviet Union it has meant a convenient agency for pacification of situations that become uncontrollable and thus dangerous to Soviet interests as long as peacekeeping operations themselves remain controllable.

To actual peacekeepers—the Scandinavians, Canadians, Indians, Pakistanis, Brazilians, and others who have sent the troops—it has been a contribution to an improved world order. And to many of the actual and potential "peace-keepees" it connotes something entirely different: the means to achieve one side's objectives of power, justice, or retribution against its enemy.

It takes all four of these factions to peacekeep, and inevitably different interests will be at stake. But great-power relations remain central to the prior question of how important and dangerous local conflicts become to the world, and the ideological element has been in fact crucial in putting the Big Two at odds on peacekeeping. A crude symmetry may now be developing between American and Soviet desires, at least in some areas, to restrain third world states from generating international violence (though not internal violence). However imperfect, this is the central possibility on which to construct a peacekeeping and conflict-minimizing strategy for the 1970's.

## II.

If a limited common interest has developed between the United States and the Soviet Union to limit local conflicts, it has surely grown out of the ac knowledgment that unilateral intervention is not very profitable and may on occasion entail costs that far outweigh the presumed benefits. In the United States few secrets are kept, and it is clear that there is a growing indisposition at all levels to see this country become directly involved at the present time with its own military forces in new local conflicts. It may be that only a clear and present danger will override these fears of getting "involved" in another

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such situation, at least in the immediate future. As an American one can welcome this shift as a healthy and overdue corrective for over-involvement around the world based on the assumption that the United States had a stake in the provisional outcome of virtually every local situation or that a temporary victory for anti-United States elements anywhere constituted a prima facie threat to United States security.

We do not really know anything about the internal debates which may be taking place within Soviet leading circles that lie behind the apparent growth in Soviet concern for improved means of controlling and limiting local conflict. One can only hope that Moscow has also learned about the limits to local "victory," the costs of being, in effect, controlled by a local faction one supports, or the evanescence of even a billion dollars worth of investment in arms (as in Indonesia—though that could change too).

Having rejected unilateral intervention, the tendency may be to retreat into hand-wringing rather than a search for constructive alternatives. An important alternative would be for the superpowers to carve out spheres, not of influence, but of abstention (or restraint as former Undersecretary of State Elliot Richardson recently called them). If the United States, for one, is not willing to use its military power directly to intervene in some local conflict situations that may upset a local or regional balance, a wider peace may be threatened, requiring urgent measures of pacification; or longer-term stability may require that the roots of the conflict be dealt with through peaceful change procedures of peacemaking. In other words action may still be needed.

Put differently, a decision not to intervene, whatever its other merits, may sometimes leave a dangerous vacuum. This defines a broad interest in conflict-prevention and lends urgency to improving two elements that are traditionally weak: 1) a conflict-minimizing or controlling approach and 2) multilateral substitutes for American or Soviet power in local conflict situations. A decision not to intervene unilaterally needs to be accompanied by nonmilitary or peacekeeping measures that are likely to deal effectively with conflict-generating pressures. The inexorable logic of this gives new pertinence to the availability of agencies of action aimed at tranquilizing local conflict or at least furnishing substitutes for superpower unilateral military intervention in order to prevent, contain, or terminate conflicts—what has been called a "strategy of conflict control."²

In other words, far from being the ultimate decision, the decision against unilateral military intervention ought to be regarded as only the preliminary to other equally—or more—important decisions in the political, economic, social, psychological, and multilateral spheres. There is an undiminished need for treatment of acute symptoms, i.e., actions toward deescalation, separation of combatants, peacekeeping devices, aid to regimes enjoying popular sup-

² See ibid.

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port, control of arms shipments, and the like. There is an even greater un-
filled need for longer-range remedies that are addressed to causes.

In the face of predicted conflicts accompanied by United States retrench-
ment the "multilateral option" is clearly a most important means for achieve-
ing the needed precrisis conflict-prevention and the later conflict-limiting
functions. Long relegated to the realm of political theology—except at times
of great need, it is called for now by the logic of the times. At the same time
it remains elusive and by no means as promising as it was a decade ago.

III.

There has been some movement toward revival of peacekeeping. The UN Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations (committee of 33) has made a good, if modest, start in its "Model I" which spells out the elements of ob-server missions, i.e., those missions short of UNEF-type peacekeeping but extraordinarily useful for preconflict prophylaxis. The Soviet Union said some forward-sounding things about peacekeeping in 1964 and has expressed in-terest recently in moving forward, though how much remains to be seen. In the United States, while President Richard Nixon's failure to even mention the subject in his maiden UN appearance in 1969 was discouraging, new in-terest is being shown by work such as the United Nations Association of the United States of America panel report on peacekeeping whose recommenda-tions were subsequently urged on the president by 80 members of the Senate and the House of Representatives.³

Still, the prospects are no better than fair for some very serious reasons. In
examining those reasons it is important to distinguish between the gut issues
and the nuts-and-bolts questions. Details of earmarking, financing, logistics,
staff work, and the like are all relevant to making peacekeeping more effec-
tive. Indeed, improved capabilities might help create the much needed climate
of expectation that multilateral peacekeeping is a realistic option—an expecta-
tion that has been declining in recent years. But the basic obstacles lie deeper.

One grave defect of the whole concept (including both observer missions
and peacekeeping forces) is that it involves two things that seem to be the
hardest for any government to do—taking preventive steps in advance of a
calamity and resting its confidence in an organization over which it has only
minimum control. The latter preoccupied the Soviet Union during the ten
to fifteen years in which it was a small and distrusted minority, itself pro-
foundly distrusting any "uncontrollable" organization. Today the United
States also distrusts the UN's "swirling majorities," given the latter's frequent
anti-American attitudes, to carry out a peacekeeping operation either effi-

³ Controlling Conflict in the 1970's (A report of a national policy panel established by the United Nations Association of the United States of America, 1969).

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ciently or in ways that conform to United States estimates of its own national interest. Among the "gut" issues of multilateral peacekeeping and peacemaking, then, is the growing superpower distrust of a majoritarian organization. This distrust is even likely to increase, not diminish, to the extent that the Big Two compromise some of their remaining differences and agree on improved multilateral capabilities. But the time has not yet come when the Big Two are once again, as in 1945, lined up against the rest on the issue of who controls UN operations. The Soviet Union suffers contradictory impulses; it is torn between the desire of a Great Power with internal problems to keep the rest of the world relatively stable and the dynamics of a world outlook that entails a struggle for allies within the Socialist world plus the traditional czarist policy of expansion south into the Persian Gulf, all flavored by remnants of messianic and doctrinaire communism.

The Soviet Union, in contrast to Communist China, supports bourgeois nationalist leadership and movements in the less developed countries, in many places scorning the local Communists who are often outlawed and/or in jail. The Soviets are believed to disapprove of Castro's militant and violence-provoking tactics in fomenting Latin American revolution. Premier Alexei Kosygin in fact spoke of a conflict control strategy to the UN General Assembly in 1967:

> A seemingly small event, or so-called "local war," may grow into big military conflicts. This means that every state and government should not only refrain from bringing about new complications by its actions—it must undertake every effort to prevent any aggravation of the situation and, moreover, the emergence of hotbeds of war, that should be quenched whenever they appear.⁴

But the signs remain contradictory. In recent times Moscow has both reafirmed its worldwide commitment to the "national liberation movement" (see, e.g., commentator V. Mayevsky in *Pravda*, June 19, 1968) and its opposition to armed uprising by Communists to seize power in underdeveloped countries (*Pravda*, September 15, 1968). Soviet amphibious and airlift capabilities have improved; landing forces are being trained; Soviet naval activity and military assistance in the Mediterranean has increased substantially since the Middle East war of 1967 as an accompaniment of an activist Soviet influence-seeking policy in the Arab Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. We seem, as a Yugoslav commentator recently wrote, to be witnessing

> the increasingly obvious effort of the USSR to break out of the bounds of the continental Eurasian geostrategic shell without relying directly on nuclear missiles of intercontinental calibre.⁵

⁴ *New York Times*, June 19, 1967.

The raging flames of these fires together with other hot spots in the world present an extremely serious threat to the interests of universal peace.

*Izvestia*, November 26, 1969.

⁵ Andro Gabelić, "New Accent in Soviet Strategy," *Review of International Affairs*, reprinted in *Survival*, February 1968 (Vol. 10, No. 2), pp. 45-46.

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But as others, notably Marshall Shulman, have warned us in recent years, the
Soviet shift may also be a result of Moscow's calculations that the *United
States* had adopted a basic strategy of intervention in any and all "small wars"
in the developing regions to enhance American influence and control. "This,"
says the Yugoslav writer,

also makes it clear why the Soviet Union is endeavoring to develop naval
power, certain branches of the air force, etc. Unless all the logical assumptions
deceive, *this is an effort to counter the imperialist strategy of local and re-
stricted wars with its own weapons, the weapons of that selfsame local and
restricted war.*⁶

Precisely the same set of questions must be addressed to this development
as to, say, the recent Soviet buildup in strategic weaponry. Does it represent
a new and malevolent thrust toward victory in the Cold War, a catching-up
with American military doctrines after the usual three-to-five year lag, an
effort to stem the "mad" Americans in *their* drive for "world domination"
or a bureaucratic victory for one or another organizational unit in the Soviet
internal power struggle?

There is some evidence to support the belief that, while all four questions
could be answered affirmatively, the dominant argument lies in the second
and third. The Soviets will probably bring more influence to bear in local
conflicts where their power is available. On the same evidence they will not
invariably use their power to help the Syrians or Algerians or Cubans or Viet-
namese to escalate local fighting to the potentially thermonuclear level. On
the contrary, they are likely to use their power as they habitually use power—
to accomplish desired political results. In the case of the Middle East this
probably includes deterring the Israelis, giving the Arabs highly tangible—
and thus dangerous—expressions of Soviet support, deterring the United States
from seeming to threaten the Arabs, and, we can hope, aiding deescalatory
policies when things get too threatening for comfort. Still, the presence of
Soviet vessels, transport aircraft, fliers, and, above all, paratroopers would give
an entirely new and portentous dimension to any local conflict, and this de-
velopment must be watched closely.

When it comes to internal struggles, "wars of liberation" will retain their
sacred place in the Soviet litany—as long as nuclear escalation does not
threaten and preferably under terms with which increasingly pragmatic So-
viet trade and aid policies can continue to live comfortably. It remains to be
pointed out that the so-called "Brezhnev Doctrine" implies the right of the
Soviet Union to intervene militarily with no sanction from any external agen-
cy in any country it defines unilaterally as within the "Socialist" camp, to
quell what it interprets as threats to the continued purity of Moscow-defined
socialism and the orientation of policy toward Moscow. It can be assumed

⁶ Ibid. (Emphasis added.)

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that this covers the Eastern European states including Romania, and possibly Yugoslavia, and undoubtedly North Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba. (China and Albania are dubious, Algeria and other "bourgeois socialist" clients even more so.)

## IV.

It is necessary to be equally frank about the United States. The latter's policy, whether because more idealistic, more sensible, or more certain of the UN's political compatibility with American interests, has historically been far more supportive of the UN's multilateral mechanisms than has Moscow's policy.

Despite the official rhetoric (and frantic efforts to get international peacekeepers onto the scene in specific crises) there is no doubt of the very low priority the multilateral capability has in fact enjoyed at the highest levels of United States policy. This may seem a harsh indictment, particularly of the special parts of the American government where positive efforts have been persistent. But in terms of larger United States strategic perceptions one must conclude that, over and above Soviet rigidity, the United States has itself never really assigned a significant *priority* to genuine improvements in multilateral peacekeeping capacity.

The inner reason for this may lie in the highly selective nature of United States interests in such a capability. The United States has a demonstrable interest in multilateral peacekeeping for Africa and the Middle East, an interest that at times verges on the desperate. But the United States has also traditionally rejected this approach for much of Southeast Asia as well as for Latin America and the Caribbean. Washington's total failure in the Cambodian operation of 1970 to pay even lip service to the UN Charter or to UN peacekeeping and peacemaking possibilities merely dramatized the low estate into which the UN approach had fallen.

There is thus an inner tension in United States policy growing out of partial and selective acceptance of an international potential. This in turn stems from a central ideological component no less real than Moscow's. Those critical of the United States assert that it uses the UN and the Organization of American States (OAS) to support the status quo against change, even legitimate change. The change is of course a distortion. (Moreover, stability is not a meaningless goal for any nation.) But in order to take full advantage of multilateral diplomatic and other international machinery the United States needs to persuade others that its resort to multilateral agencies is neither a cover for planned unilateral military intervention nor a tool aimed at shoring up repressive and unpopular military dictatorships. It must persuade other members of international political organizations that the United States is sincere in its desire to minimize conflict while accepting and even encouraging legitimate internal and external changes in the status quo.

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In this connection one principle of international peacekeeping that seems increasingly persuasive is that of using multilateral machinery to insulate, i.e., "neutralize," a conflict area from external interference while processes of change work themselves out internally. A motto for the approach might be "change without escalation." A more relaxed United States stance toward the process of change is far more feasible—and potentially constructive—if in the meantime significant external interference is coped with (as it never could be in Vietnam). Harassed officials argue, with some justice, that the OAS (or UN or whatever) is weak, refractory, unsympathetic, inefficient, etc. But it may also be that the process is a circular one.

More generally stated, any conflict-control policy is futile if genuine popular aspirations are suppressed in the name of antiviolence; some turbulence in the short run may be the only assurance of longer-term stability in today's world. Thus to "control" a conflict, far from suppressing it, may imply allowing certain things to take place that the United States might earlier have considered unacceptable as a threat to its interests or an open invitation to extremists to meddle in or take over.

This prescription calls for a more objective judgment, in the longer lens of United States history, about the proper attitude of this country toward revolutionary movements that have demonstrable popular support. Its concomitant is a Soviet policy that learns to trust multilateral action as not automatically working toward United States—or at a minimum anti-Soviet—ends. Clearly this is the price of any durable and meaningful understanding between the Big Two about multilateral alternatives to unilateral intervention.

At a more concrete level there are two other hang-ups that impede American-Soviet collaboration in using the multilateral option. One, both substantive and procedural, grows directly out of the ideological attitudes discussed above. It has to do with how the operation is to be *controlled*. The symbol around which the argument evolves is the UN secretary-general. There is a profound difference in the ways in which the two sides see that figure. To the Soviets, particularly since the days of "Secretary-Generalissimo" Dag Hammarskjöld in the Congo, the secretary-general's office is viewed precisely as are all other institutional forms—in terms of the reality of political power. The secretary-general, if he is to have authority to act, must by definition be part of a system in which the Soviet Union has a veto over actions it disapproves.

The United States, on the other hand (perhaps because the UN secretary-general has always been relatively friendly and politically trustworthy), typically sees the problem as one of *efficiency*: How, once a political decision is made to launch an operation, can it be most efficaciously handled? It positively offends the American sense of managerial competence to contemplate a secretary-general hamstrung in his day-to-day execution of a political mandate by a presidium of voting state representatives breathing heavily over his

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shoulder. (There have been recent modest signs of improved Soviet understanding of the American position here and vice versa.)

Other problems arise outside the realm of superpower relations. The middle powers referred to above—in a way the most important element of all—have remained faithful, with the (Scandinavian) Nordic peacekeeping force continuing to be trained and made available and with ten countries (Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iran, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden) earmarking standby troops.

But the wave of enthusiasm in Canada three to four years ago for peacekeeping as the new métier of the newly unified Canadian armed forces suffered a serious setback when the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was unceremoniously withdrawn from the Gaza strip in May 1967. Japan has now spoken publicly of such a métier,⁷ and the peacekeeping "fire brigade" of old is probably still faithful. But the great irony of contemporary politics is that the much-hoped-for American-Soviet cooperation has the effect of making lesser powers suspicious.

The countries most likely to be peacekept, so to speak, represent another obstacle to advance agreement on a reliable and functioning peacekeeping system in the period ahead. There exists in the Afro-Asian nations, and in Latin America as well, suspicion of "neocolonialism"; opposition to international pacification and tranquilizing efforts that obscure what are conceived as just causes; and a preference for homegrown or indigenous peacekeepers in the form, for example, of the Organization for African Unity (OAU) but without many signs yet of either efficacy or capability for serious operations in the field.

Another international "structural" difficulty is that the UN has yet to find an answer to the question of how the international community can and should relate to internal conflicts in which there is an international interest. Virtually the whole array of "third-party" mechanisms that have been developed seem to be almost useless when it comes to the most intractable conflicts of all—those not involving a clearcut invasion of one country by another. This calls for a major effort to apply international law to the new situation in ways that will command the respect of the majority of nations while adapting to dynamic change; the "peaceful change" field remains in urgent need of serious rethinking (see below).

In addition, by its very nature the UN is a blunt instrument, exposing countries to large numbers of conflicts, generating publicity, and mixing any new item with other quarrels nations bring into the UN with them. Diplomats typically prefer not to go that route if they believe they can deal with a situation in camera or in their vest pockets—what one might call the "John Foster

⁷ See, e.g., Kei Wakaizumi, "Japan Beyond 1970," *Foreign Affairs*, April 1969 (Vol. 47, No. 3), p. 514.

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Dulles syndrome.” There is invariably someone who does not wish UN machinery to be invoked, usually someone from a country with a “special position” in the area. In the 1950’s it was France in both Indochina and North Africa (a France that, in Dean Acheson’s retrospective words, “blackmailed” the United States into supporting its positions).⁸ In the Suez preinvasion summer of 1956 the barrier was Secretary of State Dulles’s overweening diplomatic egotism (my own retrospective words).⁹

All these reasons were, in the light of later history, poor ones, entailing political and human costs (wars in many cases) outweighing any conceivable political embarrassment or messiness so feared by the cautious diplomat. If the United States had followed its deeper instincts in all these cases and had not put first its European allies’ aberrant and self-defeating colonial policies, the outcome for all would have been better. To the extent that in the therm nuclear age UN action *does nothing but isolate a conflict from great-power involvement*, to that extent it is a uniquely valuable instrument of conflict control.

Another “structural” point has to do with timing. As with nonmilitary policy options in general delaying until a full-blown crisis the use of such machinery is likely to rule out a wide spectrum of possibly constructive policies.¹⁰ Beyond this, the very existence of a crisis is likely to render the utilization of effective multilateral machinery either impossible or unpersuasive because the direct interests of external powers may have already become so apparent.

Some final issues go to the nature of the international “community” itself. The international system has in fact retrogressed since the early 1960’s when Dag Hammarskjöld refused to withdraw the UN operation in the Congo (ONUC) every time Patrice Lumumba or Joseph Kasavubu alternatively announced its ejection. As long as the rule persists of unlimited power to the “host government” to refuse admission and to eject UN observers at will, this vital capacity can remain at the mercy of one side to a quarrel who in a real-life situation could be the least responsible and the most “guilty” of the parties involved.

There have recently been unofficial indications that the Soviet Union may be reconsidering this absolute veto by a host government. If there were no such veto, it would be of central concern whether multilateral peacekeeping is to be entirely of the “consent” variety or whether it may be coercive. Chapter VII of the UN Charter on Security Council enforcement, particularly ar-

⁸ Quoted in *New York Times Book Review*, October 12, 1969.

⁹ Elaborated on in Lincoln P. Bloomfield, "The U.N. and National Security," *Foreign Affairs*, July 1958 (Vol. 36, No. 4), pp. 597-610.

¹⁰ My associates and I have documented the “reverse curves” of, on the one hand, multiple options available for conflict-prevention in early stages of conflict when great-power leadership is uninterested, and, on the other hand, the dramatically shrunken options that are by then available when those leaders do finally notice an explosive situation. See *Controlling Small Wars: A Strategy for the 1970's*.

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ticles 42 and 43 about military forces, was considered to be a dead letter until three things happened in recent years. ONUC wound up fighting (and de-feating) the Katangese forces of the refractory Moishe Tshombe, thus in ef-fect "winning the war"—not what most supporters of the operation had been told was intended. The second thing that has happened is a new interest in the West in meeting the Soviet Union halfway on peacekeeping, perhaps by the route of article 43 (but really as a way to reassure Moscow that normally the Charter-Security Council-Military Staff Committee-veto route can be fol-lowed and without implying any serious intention to revive the emphasis on *coercive enforcement* that article 43 originally implied). The third thing that happened was Security Council Resolution 255 of June 19, 1968 provid-ing guarantees in connection with the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, guarantees that may one day lead the way to collective enforcement not because of any abstract theory of collective security but because the Soviets and Americans wish a legal framework for countering a Chinese (or other) nuclear threat.

Sometimes referred to as chapter "6½," the new peacekeeping approach could, under some circumstances, turn into coercive enforcement despite the rhetorical disclaimers. This is not because any particular precedent has been set; the UN "police action" in Korea was not really peacekeeping and in any event was not *formally* taken under chapter VII; and Katanga is deemed an unlikely-to-be-permitted-again freak. But, as noted earlier, peacekeeping to some African states means a UN-backed coercive assault on the white suprem-acy bastions of Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. This purpose stands in stark contrast to the accepted peacekeeping pattern of observing alleged in-filtration, enforcing standstill agreements and truces, and conciliating be-tween potentially reconcilable differences. It should be recalled that if the In-ternational Court of Justice (ICJ) had changed its balance by one vote in its ruling of 1966 regarding South West Africa, the possibility would have been open for the Security Council to call for enforcement of the court's judgment under article 94 of the Charter, with evidence that some Western powers were willing to follow this legal road to multilateral coercion.

The point is that in some cases (though by no means in all) there *is* a com-mitment by the UN to a specific political end—in the case of southern Africa the end of apartheid and the principle of one-man-one-vote. Thus a UN peace-keeping operation might go to the scene of violence there with an a priori commitment for one particular outcome rather than impartially and in a con-ciliating mood, as in Kashmir, Cyprus, the Middle East, Yemen, and indeed all the observer missions. Or such a purpose could develop out of an initially more limited purpose. (An instructive analogy might be Korea where an ex-panded aim of reunification of Korea became in the fall of 1950 the rationale for expanding the "police action" into a march across the 38th parallel and

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up the peninsula toward the Yalu River.) We may really be speaking of chapter "6¾" when we speak of peacekeeping via article 43, and we ought to know what we are getting into.

This expansion of peacekeeping toward enforcement is all entirely speculative, though sobering. In fact equal significance may attach to the other end of the spectrum where the efforts of the committee of 33 have concentrated so far—observer missions. Often loosely spoken of together with the UNEF-type force as "peacekeeping," these missions ought to be distinguished from the latter because of their special qualities. The UN committee of 33's "Model I" referred to earlier on small observation fact-finding and reporting operations looks modest alongside the spectre of UN "peace-enforcing," so to speak, in southern Africa or Ulster or wherever. But the political early warning and even deterrence function of "the man with the binoculars" has been consistently underrated.

Consider how modern history might have differed had the French defeat in Vietnam in 1954 been followed by a UN conciliation and observation mission and UN observation of elections (as spoken of at the Geneva convention of 1954) rather than by the United States of America. Consider how, when the first complaints were made of infiltration and indirect aggression from outside the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), a functioning multilateral observation operation might have then been mounted to observe and report. If one really wishes to stretch one's mind, consider a billion-dollar "McNamara electronic line" that really worked, manned by 20,000 UN observers—and consider that the former was, in fact, finally constructed but never really used and that the latter represents the size of ONUC. The combined costs would have surely been trivial by contrast to the bloodshed and treasure ultimately expended. And virtually any outcome of such a political/peacekeeping approach would have been better for everyone concerned than what resulted from an insistence on unilateralism. The Soviet Union may also come to reckon the calculus of costs of its unilateral intervention and control policy in more enlightened terms as those costs mount with declining benefits.

It is time to apply these lessons to new situations where new tragedies threaten. Serious consideration should be given to multilateral neutral observation of complained-of infiltration and external subversion; at the same time care should be taken not to interfere with processes of internal social, economic, and political change that may take place within a country. The portentous implications of a Sino-Soviet war are sufficient to warrant suggesting international observation of the disputed borders while proposing multiple techniques of "third-party" resolution of the issues. Neither excessive delicacy, legalism, nor "realism" seem valid reasons for missing a step that might help to avert worldwide disaster.

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V.

What can and should be done? Action seems possible under three headings.

Partiality

"Partial" great-power interests have tended to make UN peacekeeping a continuation of great-power policy rather than a substitute for it, with the Congo perhaps the most egregious case. But Cyprus illustrates the possibility of common sense and a "higher realism" that in this case ultimately overrode the initial impulses of the United States to keep the matter within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (thus getting on NATO's agenda a country that considers itself in a different region, with predictably polarizing results in the area). It also overrode the initial impulse of the Soviet Union to gain a new foothold by a quick arms supply deal (thus widening further the area of potential great-power conflict). In West New Guinea American interests, at least on paper, would have favored its NATO ally, the Netherlands; instead, given the realities of the situation, the United States became "neutral."

In other places where narrow national advantage is being sought, the mounting dangers of war may be contained through the means of augmented third-party presences and mechanisms. In the Middle East it is not too late to reintroduce a serious peacekeeping and peacemaking capability. The pre-conditions are Soviet willingness to apply more restraint both to themselves and to Cairo and Damascus; and United States willingness to demand from its de facto ally Israel compliance with Security Council Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967, if necessary, in exchange for the American protective alliance. In the Persian Gulf the Soviets are on record as aspiring to a physical presence in the centers of oil.¹¹ Even if they did not, change would still be inevitable in the feudal societies of that region. Indeed, conflict in one or another form is also inevitable there, given the potent oil and strategic interests including those of Japan (which depends on the Middle East for 91 percent of its crude oil).

The prescription is not for utopian panaceas on the part of either human nature or the international community. What is needed is a more explicit mutual recognition that conflict should be regulated and potentially violent power-plays kept within tolerable limits—an improvement, in other words, over the game of chicken now being played in the Middle East between both clients and suppliers. Two other prescriptions suggested above are, first, that it is possible to harmonize concern with "popular" social forces and concern with "external aggression" by means of an observation capability that con-

¹¹ I refer to the well-known proposal by V. Molotov to Hitler in 1940 that Germany recognize as the focal point of the aspirations of the Soviet Union "[the area] south of Batum and Baku in the general direction of the Persian Gulf." Reprinted in Raymond James Sontag and James Stuart Beddie (ed.), *Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939-1941: Documents from the Archives of the German Foreign Office* (Washington: Department of State, 1948), p. 259.

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cerns itself only with charges of *external* interference. A second suggestion involved the Sino-Soviet conflict, where the stakes are much too high to follow the rule book about UN impotence and where Moscow might be brought to see the value for itself, as a "status quo power" in the region, of neutral third-party observation. Needless to say, the utility of the third-party mechanism in such cases would be greatly enhanced if UN membership were universal (the nonmembership of three parties to the Vietnam war created a prima facie handicap to any possibility of UN peacekeeping).

## Peacemaking

What some have called peacemaking in connection with peacekeeping is really our old friend *peaceful change*, about which much has been said and little done, at least voluntarily and purposively, in the period of history in which change is the swiftest and most inexorable. The realms of change are social, economic, political, and territorial, and in all cases of interest they involve the very centerpiece of politics—the distribution of power. Power is not usually surrendered without a fight by those who have it; wars, local conflicts, and the cries of justice and equity all arise out of the human failure to regulate this process more intelligently.

The UN Charter was an improvement over the League of Nations Covenant in this respect. But the machinery is still defective, as is the ability of those holding power to comprehend both the virtue and the long-term wisdom of magnanimity. This is true whether the issue is United States investment policy in Latin America, Arab refusal to accept the permanence of Israel, Israeli intransigence toward Arab refugees, South African inhumanity toward blacks, Indian retention of Moslem-majority Kashmir, Chinese suppression of Tibetans, or Soviet control of Eastern Europe.

Assuming a human inclination always to emulate the Bourbons with regard to voluntary change, machinery is obviously needed to enhance the process of peaceful change. The present General Assembly is incapable of coherent policies in detail, being often committed to extreme and extrava-gant outcomes with little regard to the rights of minorities. The Security Council is more efficacious, but its majority is entirely *parti pris* in the Middle East, for example, and thus incapable of presiding over statesmanlike changes. The ICJ in the South West Africa case in 1966 showed itself as unsound and politically motivated as was its predecessor in the comparable Interhandel case of 1931 that wrote its earlier epitaph. In short, the system itself seems to favor either no change or violent change.

This is, of course, an exaggeration. But the extreme caution of chapter VI about recommending terms of settlement in disputes ought to be increasingly ignored in cases where commitment to a particular outcome will be more beneficial than the necessarily impartial fire-fighting activities. As long urged

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by Louis B. Sohn and others, an equity tribunal should be established. Some new uses of the ICJ might be found via implementation of article 50 of the court's statute concerning fact-finding missions. Today, taking a case or a piece of a case to court may be a good face-saving device at a crucial moment in some dangerous or deadlocked instances that look—and are—profoundly political¹² (for instance, at some point the future status of Taiwan, Indonesia-Philippine claims to disputed lands, even Sino-Indian and Sino-Soviet border claims, and Near East water rights). Until the UN is made universal, impartial arbitration ought to be revived from its moribund condition. Mediators ought routinely to accompany observation and peacekeeping forces. Alternative proposals for dangerous deadlocks ought to be put forward by others rather than permitting the argument to continue between intolerable extremes (as in South Africa and Rhodesia).

### Improved Capabilities

It is in this deeply political context that one can support with enthusiasm detailed proposals to improve the peacekeeping mechanism, particularly those advanced in the UNA-USA panel report entitled “Controlling Conflicts in the 1970’s.” Modified article 43 modalities for peacekeeping should be thoroughly explored with a view to finding a new synthesis that conforms to Soviet concern for constitutionalism and American concern for maximum efficiency. Standby forces would encourage and facilitate peacekeeping when the need arises. The United States Military Assistance Program should implement its unused provisions for helping nations build up peacekeeping forces. A peace fund of $60 million should also give peacekeeping a shot in the arm, though Moscow and Paris must cooperate by contributing. Double-earmarking to both the regional and UN levels is constructive. Support should be given to the peacekeeping training under the new International Peace Academy centered in Vienna.

All of these “nuts and bolts” improvements have the dual virtue of making peacekeeping more effective while helping generate a new climate of expectation that peacekeeping is real and can realistically be turned to. Finally, proposals along these and other lines might best be advanced by middle or smaller powers, which are themselves in default for standing on the sidelines and waiting to see what the superpowers would say or do instead of filling the vacuum with imaginative and compelling proposals of their own.

## VI.

In conclusion, the prospects for a workable system of multilateral peacekeeping remain fragile. But what the Communists call “objective factors”

¹² I have changed my mind about this since writing “Law, Politics, and International Disputes,” *International Conciliation*, January 1958 (No. 516).

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make them somewhat more favorable as we go into period 4 of the age of peacekeeping. It remains futile and even destructive of progress to insist upon a sweeping transformation of either human nature or the international system. It remains imperative to work mightily, and in tangible ways, toward a broader interpretation of national interest. The dramatic failures and high costs of unilateralism, combined with forecasts which envisage a planet that continues to be convulsive and conflict-ridden, generate an iron logic that *ought* to make multilateral peacekeeping and peacemaking less a meaningless political litany, and more an accepted instrument of conflict prevention and limitation. But until national leaders at the highest level look to that alternative first instead of last and until a climate of genuine expectation about multilateral peacekeeping exists, the circuit between the iron logic and a system of purposeful conflict control cannot be closed.