by Richard Gowan | May 27, 2010 | Africa, Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia, North America
The UN has had peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo for a decade. Congolese President Joseph Kabila, hoping to show he’s not reliant on the blue helmets, wants the force to go in 2011. Almost every outside analyst thinks that this could precipitate a disaster, with militias running rampant, the hopeless Congolese army unable to cope and the country’s neighbors moving in to gobble up territory.
The UN hopes that it will be able to keep at least some troops – maybe about 6,000, compared to the current 20,000 – to protect civilians in the especially vulnerable eastern Congo. This would do some good, but how much? The peacekeepers were thoroughly outmaneuvered by militias in the east in 2008, and I’m not sure that a reduced presence could do more than stifle low-level violence. What is to be done?
Over at World Politics Review, David Axe quotes Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings, who argues that the U.S. and its friends should tell Mr. Kabila (still in a very precarious position) that it’s time for more peacekeepers, not fewer:
“Ideally, we’d see an entire American brigade, but that’s not realistic. Barring that, how about a battalion doing a mission along the lines of Special Forces, doing intelligence-gathering and planning? . . . That would enable a country like France, which is not as globally committed but is afraid to stick its neck out [to deploy troops]. We need more Western forces. There’s not much of an alternative if the mission is to do what it was designed do.”
I’m afraid that’s not going to happen, although I applaud O’Hanlon’s advocating an idealistic but unpopular line. France is trying to cut back its presence in Africa, and there are huge obstacles to it playing a role in the Great Lakes region – the locals haven’t forgotten the questionable French part in the Rwandan genocide.
But I think that there may be a broader fallacy here: the idea that getting new combat forces into the Congo is what’s needed in the first place. Yes, the UN has struggled with 20,000 troops – but as I think O’Hanlon himself once noted, you might need up to 200,000 to stabilize somewhere on the scale of Congo. Rather than focus on numbers, I’d try to see if there are any light-weight ways the U.S. can affect the political decision-making of Mr. Kabila and his neighbors (especially the hawkish Rwandans).
Here’s one possible formula. While the UN should maintain the 6,000 troops on active protection duties, the U.S. should deploy around 100 military observers to operate in the UN framework. Why? The UN already has a bunch of observers in Congo, and the U.S. is said to have spooks and special forces in the east. But American colonels and captains publicly monitoring the situation would send a clear message to the Congolese and their neighbors that Washington wants calm. This American mini-presence would also play a tripwire role: it’s one thing to outflank and embarrass standard UN infantry, but quite another to play games in front of U.S. observers.
What makes this option half-credible is that the Obama administration has already thought about sending more military staff officers on UN missions – the President said so himself last year – so this idea is not too far from current policy. That said, the U.S. has just 10 military experts in UN operations at present (the figures are here). 2 of them are in the Congo. The Pentagon is rumored to be unenthusiastic about helping the UN – but 100 personnel is not beyond the realms of the possible. They don’t need to be O’Hanlon’s green berets… though that would be nice.
I don’t think that 100 Europeans would have the same effect. China, which has invested a lot in the Congo, could send more observers or regular troops and reinforce the American message. I can see this proposal running into lots of quibbles, but it might be just the low-cost, high-profile help the UN needs in Congo now.
UPDATE: the Security Council agreed the first reduction of the DRC force today.
by Alex Evans | May 27, 2010 | Economics and development, Global system
We interrupt our regular coverage to bring you breaking news from Geneva: WTO negotiators have managed to agree on something in the Doha Round!
Unfortunately, what they’re agreeing on is that we’re screwed, as ICTSD reports:
A meeting of senior officials from 19 WTO members last week was valuable primarily for helping participants reach “a common diagnosis” of the “seriousness and depth” of the problem governments face in trying to conclude the Doha Round trade talks, officials said.
Plus ca change. In other news, negotiators at the NPT review conference had been underway for 19 hours as at 6.30am UK time today – but John Duncan, the UK’s Ambassador for multilateral arms control, tweets that they’re “still some way from an agreement”.
Come on, multilateralism. Give us something this year. Anything.
by Richard Gowan | May 26, 2010 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, East Asia and Pacific, North America
With things looking very bad on the Korean peninsula – and quite a few experts wondering whether the Pyongyang’s aggressive behavior is a sign that the regime is falling apart – it’s worth rereading an article Robert Kaplan wrote for the Atlantic in 2005 entitled “When North Korea Falls”. This looks at what the U.S. and other big powers would have to do if a war led to the collapse of central authority in the North:
In order to prevent a debacle of the sort that occurred in Iraq—but with potentially deadlier consequences, because of the free-floating WMD—a successful relief operation would require making contacts with . . . various factions of the former North Korean military, who would be vying for control in different regions. If the generals were not absorbed into the operational command structure of the occupying force . . . they might form the basis of an insurgency. The Chinese, who have connections inside the North Korean military, would be best positioned to make these contacts—but the role of U.S. Army Special Forces in this effort might be substantial. Green Berets and the CIA would be among the first in, much like in Afghanistan in 2001.
Obviously, the United States could not unilaterally insert troops into a dissolved North Korea. It would likely be a four-power intervention force—the United States, China, South Korea, and Russia—officially sanctioned by the United Nations. Japan would be kept out (though all parties would gladly accept Japanese money for the endeavor).
How would this intervention work, and where would it lead?
South Korea would bear the brunt of the economic and social disruption in returning the peninsula to normalcy. No official will say this out loud, but South Korea—along with every other country in the region—has little interest in reunification, unless it were to happen gradually over years or decades. The best outcome would be a South Korean protectorate in much of the North, officially under an international trusteeship, that would keep the two Koreas functionally separate for a significant period of time. This would allow each country time to prepare for a unified Korea, without the attendant chaos.
Following the Communist regime’s collapse, the early stabilization of the North could fall unofficially to the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) and U.S. Forces Korea (which is a semiautonomous subcommand of PACOM), also wearing blue UN helmets. But while the U.S. military would have operational responsibility, it would not have sole control. It would have to lead an unwieldy regional coalition that would need to deploy rapidly in order to stabilize the North and deliver humanitarian assistance. A successful relief operation in North Korea in the weeks following the regime’s collapse could mean the difference between anarchy and prosperity on the peninsula for years to come.
And you think Afghanistan’s hard?
by David Steven | May 26, 2010 | UK
Last night saw a well-attended late night debate in the Commons on the proposed 55% for dissolving Parliament, which I picked up on when it popped up in the initial coalition agreement.
The debate was initiated by a Conservative backbencher, Chris Chope, indicating the potential for the bill itself to trigger an early backbench rebellion when it is finally debated.
The Liberal Democrat Deputy-Leader of the House, David Heath (“without wishing to sound too much like Mr. Pooter, I want to record the fact that the hon. Gentleman has given me the opportunity to be the first Liberal Minister to speak from the Dispatch Box since Sir Archibald Sinclair on 16 May 1945”), defended the Coalition’s proposal:
A strong Parliament is able to remove the Government of the day. A strong Government should not be able to remove the Parliament. That is the distinction that we are trying to address.
The Government will still have to resign if they lose the confidence of the House, and that will still be on a simple majority. There is no ambiguity about that. If the Government lose a vote of confidence, they are no longer the Government of the day.
He was very light on details though, suggesting the level of the threshold was open for debate, while admitting that, as in Scotland, a time limit would need to be set to ensure that “a zombie Government that had] lost the confidence of the House” from sticking around in office.
The plan is to push legislation through before the Summer recess.
