It’s been a rough couple of weeks for UN peacekeeping, with (i) the fall-out of the DRC mass rape story; (ii) Rwanda’s threat to pull troops out of Darfur in response to the UN report on its role in the Congo; (iii) a less well-publicized but worrying Indian proposal to stop deploying helicopters in DRC and Sudan. This last development could signal a broader Indian disengagement from UN ops, with serious consequences for the organization’s overall operational abilities (something I’ve warned about before).
Two weeks ago, I wrote a brief post about the need to rethink the fundamentals of peacekeeping. I promised to offer a few ideas about this on the blog – and I still will – but for now these urgent developments are crowding out longer-term strategic issues.
I’d worry less about individual set-backs and withdrawals if they weren’t taking place in the context of worrisome debates about how much UN operations cost ($7-$8 billion a year) and if this can be sustained. The French ambassador to the UN recently told the Security Council that “in the context of budgetary austerity, the cost of peacekeeping [is] increasingly difficult to manage.” Private chats around and about NYC indicate that the French aren’t alone in this view. I’ve just written a briefing for ZIF, the German think-tank, on peacekeeping in the age of austerity. Here’s the opening summary:
UN peacekeeping has not faced drastic budget cuts during the financial crisis. But the UN is not immune to economic stresses: major donors, including members of the EU, are looking to keep costs down. These constraints could harm the UN as it prepares for possible crises in Sudan and the Middle East. Budgetary disputes could also damage relations with big troop contributors to the UN like Brazil and India. To avoid this, EU governments should make counter-cyclical strategic investments in UN peacekeeping to (i) sustain confidence in big UN military operations in Africa; and (ii) increase support to its light-weight political missions, including those in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
I’m not suggesting that we’ll see a collapse in funding for peacekeeping. But it’s easy to see how budgetary worries can distort strategic debates about what the UN can do:
France wants costly missions downsized but opposes shrinking UN forces in former colonies like Côte d’Ivoire and Lebanon. The U.S.defends the mission in Liberia. If the U.S. queries the cost of a mission France likes, the French duly question the number of peacekeepers in Liberia.
There are deeper tensions between the main financial supporters of UN missions and big troop contributors like India (which provides crucial assets to UN missions in Africa) and Brazil (which is essential to the mission in Haiti). The latter argue that their decision to put soldiers in harm’s way means they should have more say in peacekeeping decisions.
Major financial contributors like Germany and Japan respond by arguing that they should also be given more opportunities to shape the future of the missions they pay for. They complain that the rising Asian economies pay a tiny part of the peacekeeping budget. While Germany still pays 8% of the costs (a slight reduction on previous years), China pays 4% and India less than 2%.
There are always tensions between “those who pay” and “those who play” in UN ops, but I can imagine a perfect storm emerging as (i) budgetary pressures push the payers to be ever tougher on costs, and (ii) exogenous strategic concerns and bad PR drives players like India and Rwanda to take their forces away from the UN. To counter these converging trends, we need stronger strategic arguments for UN ops. I raise some in the ZIF paper, and will return to the topic here soon, as promised.
