Peacekeeping and Collective Security Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Peacekeeping and Collective warrantor - Essay ExampleIf the UN is to maintain its credibility, he says, it has to conserve its resources--unless(prenominal) its members are prepared to approach peacekeeping operation in a more serious and generous spirit.On May 13th Mr Boutros Ghali told the Security Council that it was impractical to launch UN peacekeepers to Bosnia while the war there was still pursued with such ferocity. If the council members wanted to intervene, they should not try to do so on the cheap they would have to consider sending in tens of thousands of troops equipped with vile capability. Even if they opted, at this stage, only for armed escorts to protect the relief convoys, they would have to think along besides expansive lines a convoy led by the UN had been brutally ambushed by Muslim militiamen. But the council, ignoring his warning, voted 2 days later for the provision of armed escorts without going into their military needs.The new secretary-general, who for many years was the banknote grise of Egyptian foreign policy, is not a table-thumper, a politician or even a candid speaker. But he is beginning to show a sure touch and may be less worried than his predecessor about making enemies. One sign of this is his readiness to accuse the council of telling him to hold people to do difficult and dangerous things without giving them the wherewithal to do them. He believes that when regional groups are strong, as the European Community supposedly is, they should work more consistently to bring about a peace. The UN peacekeeping operation is kept eternally and humiliatingly on the verge of bankruptcy. If the Security Council insists on sending a force into Bosnia without adequate political and military backing, the result on the ground could be a wild farce. The background to Mr Boutros Ghalis caution is that the newly assertive ambassadors at the Security Council, unlocked from American-Soviet rivalry, are trying to do something exciti ng, but they are doing it by stealth rather than accepting that there may have to be changes in approach. The argument for stealth is that pragmatism works attempts to bring the changes into daylight could open a rap of troubles. One of the troubles is the membership of the council itself the five permanent members are the victors of the Second World War. Japan, murmuring from the outside, wants to join the permanent five by the time the UN has its 50th anniversary in 1995. More important, the new peacekeeping trading operations exploding around the councils head are no longer of the traditional kind and do not needfully call for traditional answers, let alone traditional fund-raising. That the UN charter makes no mention of peacekeeping is handy since it lets members be inventive in stretching the international peace and security criterion. Iraqs invasion of Kuwait was exceptional in cosmos the type of conflict the charter writers had in mind. Most of the conflicts with which th e UN is now involved are civil or ethnic--domestic matters into which the Security Coun