Getting Serious about Globalism

THE RECENT humanitarian crises in East Timor and Kosovo have fueled new calls for a stronger United Nations.

Last week, Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, laid out a sweeping vision of a UN Security Council that had both the means and the will to intervene in civil wars around the world. And President Bill Clinton, in his address to the General Assembly on Tuesday, called for new UN capacities to rapidly deploy forces to global hotspots. Clinton cited the bloodshed in East Timor as a prime example of violence that the international community could and should curb.

These demands for a revitalized UN make much sense. Too often in recent years, the United Nations has dickered and dithered while horrifying carnage unfolded. Too often, as well, American leaders have faced an unpalatable choice: Either the United States provides the military muscle for an intervention, or no intervention occurs at all. A stronger UN capacity for deploying military forces into crisis situations would give the Security Council more options for decisive action and relieve the United States of some of the burden it now carries as the world's de facto policeman. The reality, of course, is that none of this is going to happen any day soon. To veteran observers of UN affairs, the latest round of speeches before the General Assembly provokes not excitement but rather a sad sense of deja vu. Again and again over the past decade, similar calls have been made for boosting the UN's collective-security powers. And, again and again, this rhetoric has not been followed by any action. A year from now, Clinton's speech on Tuesday is almost certain to be seen as just the latest in a string of empty U.S. promises and false enthusiasm for an empowered UN.

A fundamental problem with U.S. policy on the United Nations is that top American officials don't actually believe in empowering the UN, whatever Clinton may say in public. This resistance is puzzling - not least because the United States would be among the principal beneficiaries of a stronger UN. The reasons the United States would benefit are simple.

First, new UN capacities for preventive diplomacy would compensate for the limitations on Washington's own resources in this area. American officials should not have to worry constantly about so many global hotspots at the same time, nor can they. Greater UN powers for monitoring and dealing with nascent crises would relieve the United States of some of this burden. The UN secretary general should have the resources to dispatch observer teams, investigators and conflict-resolution specialists to wherever he or she believes they are needed. Resources should also be available for staffing regional UN offices and supporting more extensive liaison work with regional organizations engaged in preventive diplomacy. Ideally, the UN would even have its own intelligence-gathering capabilities in situations that pose threats to both global security and human rights.

The result of these steps would be a UN secretary general with greater global influence, and traditionally the American government has resisted this development. Inevitably, a stronger secretary general would occasionally act in ways that American policymakers deem counterproductive. American officials don't exactly thrill to the specter of a powerful UN secretary general criticizing American friends such as Turkey or attempting high-profile interventions in crises that Washington believes should be handled quietly. It is, however, a basic fact of life that delegating power of any kind means losing some control. A central adjustment in post-Cold War foreign policy must be for the United States to accept new limitations on its influence over the management of international problems.

Second, a true UN capacity for military action would help spare U.S. leaders from the agonizing dilemma they have repeatedly faced in recent years: Risk U.S. lives to stop humanitarian catastrophes or stand by passively and let many people die. The United States, of course, is not alone in this dilemma. The genocide in Rwanda went unchecked because no outside power felt that its national interests justified putting lives and prestige at stake to stop a wholesale slaugther in an obscure central African country.

The simple truth is that the international security system has no reliable mechanism for responding to genocidal thugs and a variety of lesser villains who operate in geopolitical backwaters. Unless this is changed, we can expect more distressing examples of the United Nations standing by impotently as acts of barbarism are perpetrated.

One commonly suggested remedy is to create a standing UN force made up of professional volunteers. A UN military corps of 5,000 to 15,000 experienced, battle-hardened troops could be deployed by the Security Council into crisis situations without member states anguishing over casualties in their national contingents.

Such a small force would have obvious limitations, but in many situations a highly trained and well-equipped UN force could prove more than a match for the kind of rag-tag militias and freelance killers who often spearhead the worst excesses of internal violence, as was most recently seen in East Timor.

Had such a UN rapid reaction force been in existence during the genocide in Rwanda, the Security Council would have had a more attractive set of options for halting the killing. Instead of begging for troop contributions and facing the delay of assembling an ad hoc force, it could have simply given orders to professional soldiers on the UN payroll. Instead of worrying about whether an ad hoc force could fight well together once in Rwanda, it could have had confidence in a veteran UN force that had long been training together. Likewise, in the recent East Timor crisis, a standing UN force would have allowed for a much quicker response and many lives would have been saved.

As an institution, a United Nations with military capacity would have to worry about maintaining its credibility and prestige, just as states do. It would want to avoid sending forces into situations where they would fail. It would want to make sure that intervening forces had achievable goals and an exit strategy. These criteria would prevent deployments in many situations, as would disagreement in the Security Council over whether UN action should be taken. However, a standing UN military corps could still make an enormous contribution to a more humane international order.

It is hard to imagine, in the present political climate, that the United States would support the creation of a UN military corps. American officials have a low regard for the institutional capacity of the United Nations and have believed in recent years that it is not prepared to handle new responsibilities. The resistance of the Republican Congress to paying off the United States $ 1.6 billion debt to the UN or granting the UN greater powers is another major stumbling block.

Still, it would be a worthwhile experiment for the Clinton administration to initiate a serious and sustained examination of how to boost the UN's military capacities. This work should involve all five permanent members of the Security Council and, in the process, activate the council's largely dormant Military Staff Committee - a body that exists to coordinate UN military activities but has never really functioned as envisioned.

By putting such a process in motion, President Clinton will be able to return to next year's General Assembly session - his last appearance before the UN - without being accompanied by the odor of endless U.S. hypocrisy toward the world's most valuable international institution.