NEW ZEALAND AND PEACEKEEPING.

• Author: Rolfe, Jim

Jim Rolfe calls for a restructuring of New Zealand's military forces better to meet UN needs.

Discussion abut the United Nations' need for certainty of troop contributions, for proper and uniform training standards and for uniform standard operating procedures date from at least the 1970s and no doubt earlier still. In the latest contribution to the recurring debate, the United Nations has reviewed the way it manages and conducts peacekeeping operations with the publication of the so-called `Brahimi Report'.(1) The report has two broad themes: that the United Nations must improve its way of preparing for and managing its military operations; and that individual contributing states must accept additional and specific military responsibilities to support collective UN responsibilities.

The examination was `forced' on the United Nations because `over the last decade, the United Nations has repeatedly failed to meet the challenge' of saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war. This was because until the end of the Cold War UN peacekeeping operations `mostly had traditional ceasefire-monitoring mandates'. The sequence of events and decisions leading to UN involvement `was straightforward', but there was little thought of peacemaking or conflict resolution. Since the end of the Cold War, however, UN peacekeeping `has often been combined with peace-building in complex peace operations deployed into settings of intra-State conflict'. It is not, it would seem, the complexity of the operations at issue (military operations are often complex), rather that the United Nations itself and the UN system can not manage complex operations.

Although the United Nations as an organisation must reform its own processes and operations, there is also an `essential responsibility of Member States for the maintenance of international peace and security, and the need to strengthen both the quality and quantity of support provided to the United Nations system to carry out that responsibility'. In summary, individual states need to:

* support the United Nations' capacity to deploy on operations `rapidly and effectively' (that is, within seven, 15, 30 or 90 days depending upon the type of operation) by providing troop (and civilian) contributions as individuals and in formed units;

* ensure that troop contributions are properly trained in peacekeeping operations `to a common standard' and are able to work with other contributing states;

* be prepared to commit themselves in advance to participation in a (multinational) force of up to brigade strength which would have already `developed common training and equipment standards, common doctrine and common arrangements for the operational control of the force'; and

* where appropriate, form partnerships with less developed countries to `provide financial, equipment, training and other assistance ... to enable them to reach and maintain the minimum standard'.

These desiderata provide a challenge for countries, such as New Zealand, which maintain a commitment to the United Nations, but which do not necessarily wish to make any firmer commitment than a general acknowledgment that support will be provided on a case by case basis. New Zealand's long standing position has been that UN operations are accepted or not according to the needs of the moment (as defined by New Zealand) and that the best preparation for UN operations is a level of military training to a standard that will ensure war fighting capabilities. This is a typical response from a country that puts its sovereign right to determine for itself its own needs in relation to those of the United Nations. If this attitude continues generally, however, it will mean that the United Nations will continue to be hobbled by national interests competing with a greater international or global interest.

Little appreciation

We seem in New Zealand to have little consistent appreciation of what it is we are supposed to be doing in UN operations or how we are supposed to do it (other than by providing forces on an ad hoc basis) and keep doing it for more than a short time. Statements of principle rarely go beyond the pious and the obvious, and the practical record is little more illuminating.

Along with some 66 other states, New Zealand has given the United Nations a list of capabilities it could be prepared to make available to UN operations.(2) With 44 other countries, New Zealand has provided a planning data sheet to the United Nations describing its potential contributions in terms of types of major equipment, the level of self-sufficiency the forces have and the force's ability to deploy itself.(3) These documents, in...