Can United Nations peacekeepers ever transform themselves into effective war-fighters? This question has dogged the organization since its failures in the Balkans, Somalia and Rwanda. But it has gained additional urgency over the past year as the U.N. has searched for new strategies to stabilize Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Security Council has wagered that blue helmeted troops can neuter determined rebel forces in both cases, if under very different strategic circumstances. Some U.N. officials fret that the council has placed too much faith in these military efforts. Yet there has been some good news [...]
In diplomacy, it is easier to pull off a stunt than sustain a long-term strategy. Last week Saudi Arabia managed some multilateral acrobatics at the United Nations by winning a seat on the Security Council unopposed and then almost immediately renouncing it. Most states lobby for a council seat for years and cling desperately to the kudos that it offers. But the Saudi Foreign Ministry declared that the U.N.’s failures to resolve the Palestinian issue and intervene effectively in the Syrian civil war add up to “irrefutable evidence and proof of the inability of the Security Council to carry out [...]
If you had to make a reckoning of the United Nations’ failures in recent years, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Syria would both rank high on the list. The U.N.’s setbacks over Syria have been extensively chronicled. The trouble in CAR is less well-known, but equally depressing. In March this year, U.N. political officers in the persistently unstable country were caught off-guard as rebels advanced on its capital, Bangui. Their reports to New York were delayed and got no serious response—U.N. personnel were evacuated just in time, as the rebels triumphed and launched a reign of chaos that still [...]
