Panellists
Ambassador Vijay Nambiar, Deputy National Security Adviser
Professor Ramesh Thakur, Senior Vice Rector, United Nations University, Tokyo.
Major General Dipankar Banerjee (Retd), Director, IPCS
Chair
Ambassador Eric Gonsalves, Former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India

Introductory Remarks: Maj Gen Dipankar Banerjee

This book, titled 'Emerging Challenges in UN Peacekeeping Operation: An Indo-Japanese Dialogue', is the result of a conference held in February 2005 in India. This is a historic bilateral dialogue between India, the largest force contributor to international peacekeeping today and Japan the second largest contributor to the UN budget.

I have great pleasure in introducing the panelists. First, is Professor Thakur, Rector of the United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan. He is the world's leading civilian expert on UN Peacekeeping having written extensively on various UN Peacekeeping missions around the world and is also a senior member of the UN bureaucracy. His experience on this subject brings together both India and Japan. He is also the coeditor of the Book along with me.

The other speaker today is Ambassador Vijay Nambiar, perhaps India's most distinguished diplomat having represented India as an Ambasador in Afghanistan, Malaysia, China, Pakistan and the United Nations. He is presently thte Deputy National Security Adviser an no doubt greater honour awaits him in the future.

We miss General Satish Nambiar in this panel. A moving spirit in this project and a principal participant at last year's conference. He is undoubtedly India's and the world's leading peacekeeper. He is unable to be present due to a sudden accident and we pray for his early recovery.

Amb Vijay Nambiar

The coming together of India and Japan for such an enterprise is not unnatural given the large contributions made by both countries to Peacekeeping Operations.

Peacekeeping is not envisaged in the UN Charter but is born out of state practice. In order to understand the changes in peacekeeping operations, one must look at the larger picture of reform in the UN.

Prof Thakur in one of his articles on the issue of UN reforms, has described this present phase of reforms as a possible 'San-Francisco Moment' or an 'Einstein Moment'. The allusion to San Francisco basically being indicative of the possibility of a whole new beginning for the organization, while the 'Einstein Moment' being an allusion to the madness of doing the same thing over and over again. I would prefer to describe it as a 'Stephen Leacock Moment', which would be the act of riding madly in all directions at the same time.

The reform process itself is part of a continuum. Since the end of the Cold War, three major reform processes in the UN, addressing different areas of reform, have been carried out. In 1997 the leadership structures underwent change. From 2002 onwards rationalization of rules and frameworks has taken place, with changes in budgeting and staff etc. All of these have had a major impact on peacekeeping operations.

The Brahimi report identified a new set of dilemmas being faced by peacekeeping operations. The UN Secretary General's speech leading to the setting up of the High Level Panel was an indicator of the fact that the future of the UN is at stake.

Presently, there is an ongoing academic discussion about 'Nation Building Operations'. A study undertaken by the Rand Corporation compares eight 'Nation Building Operations' being carried out by the US and eight UN Operations. It came to the conclusion that the UN Missions were generally 'undermanned' and 'under forced'. On the other hand, the U.S. was going in with larger forces and equipment, and using 'overwhelming force'. As per their assessment the success rate of the U.S. missions was 50 percent, while the overall success of the UN missions was higher, with seven, out of the eight missions identified, succeeding. It was felt that in terms of the overall stabilization of countries post conflict; the UN had a better record.

There are a number of lessons to be learnt from this and an understanding of how peacekeeping actually operates comes about. The discussion in the UN High-Level Panel have gone beyond peacekeeping operations and have suggested a Peace Building Commission.

In today's world there are newer threats emerging and there is an inter-connectedness of threats. A number of non-state actors are also posing security threats. There is also the question of 'responsibility to protect' and proactive actions being undertaken, along with an acceptance of the changing nature of sovereignty. In the face of persistent violation of human rights, the international community cannot merely stand by the wayside.

In terms of peacekeeping operations today, we are witnessing a much broader approach, going across the entire spectrum, in terms of not just the military option of bringing about security, but also to maintaining law and order and finally stabilization. This, therefore, brings the entire peacekeeping operations beyond the focus of just military forces to include civilian forces, judicial officers and rule of law mechanisms. Therefore in course of reform of the UN and these operations, one is seeing a much greater emphasis being laid on the role of the Rule of Law Office, which works at creating a sort of a country specific approach, by keeping in mind cultural specificities of the rule of law in that region, in order to be able to implement it. Where this cannot be done there is an attempt to create a whole new framework of rule of law.

The need for greater sensitivity in peace building operations has been recognised. The thrust now is towards creating 'best practices' in this field through a continuous process of examining previous experiences and working with regional organizations as well as with the Rule of Law and Police Organisations at the Secretariat. As result one is now seeing less dogmatic approaches towards peacekeeping. There has also been an exponential growth in terms of the peacekeeping commitments of the UN.

While one is looking at this broad ranged approach towards peace-keeping, one has to keep in mind certain political developments concerning the entire reform process of the United Nations, as a result of which there is now a certain amount of tightness in the managerial process along with there being greater budgetary constraints. The recent scandals have resulted in greater scrutiny of the UN operations by the media and general managerial scrutiny within the organisation. The department of Peacekeeping is one of the departments which has come under a great deal of scrutiny and criticism with regard to its procurement patterns, the contacts with national governments, the scheduling pattern etc. With all this excessive emphasis on 'managerial minutiae' there is a tendency to overlook the fact that peacekeeping essentially involves a certain element of unpredictability, inevitably leading to certain amount of 'redundancy' or 'wastage' and thus certain allowances should be made in this regard, though, in the current circumstances, these allowances do not seem to be forthcoming.

As far as the reform process is concerned one finds what Prof Thakur has referred to as the 'soft bigotry of low expectations', which is basically setting up lower goals for reform on the basis of what one considers to be 'realistic'. In the process he feels you do not deal with major elements of the reform process which you feel must happen. It is the difference between what you can 'reach' and what you can 'grasp'. Here I would like to make a nuanced difference as I feel one cannot call it 'bigotry' because basically it is a question of how you can realistically work within the framework of a multi-national organization. Within the national framework itself, the very concept of joint-operations within different arms of the armed forces is difficult, thus when one is thinking in terms of peacekeeping operations where different armies have to work together, with a certain level of unity expected, the coordination and the cultural understanding required is of a different order of magnitude. One tends to under-estimate the extent to which this harmonisation has been achieved in UN Peacekeeping Operations.

One conclusion one can arrive at is that the success of a Peacekeeping operation, apart from depending upon clear directions from the Security Council, is essentially determined by the leadership of the operations, i.e. the leadership at the top provided by the force commander and the way in which the instructions from the top are implemented. From this point of view I wish to state that India's record in this regard is exemplary. We have just provided the force Commander in Sudan and the very fact that one of the largest UN operations is been headed by an Indian is a tribute to the proficiency of our armed forces to stand the test of this kind of a multi-national scrutiny. Ours is a professional force capable of building and working to the ideals of the UN Peacekeeping, which is of course, one of the focal-points of the assessment of the effectiveness of any multi-lateral approach and most certainly the approach of the UN.

Prof. Ramesh Thakur

Amb Nambiar was talking about the Rand Corporations study of the differences between the US and the UN 'nation-building' exploits, and I would like to point out that a part of the problem in the American approach lies in the American attitude that peace keeping is not for real soldiers.

The point with regard to the 'soft bigotry of low expectations' is a very important one and in this regard I would like to say that I work in the UN and I believe very strongly in the organisation and as a consequence I will not accept the UN being 'second best'. The UN has been around for 60 years and I believe the world is a better and safer place for most people because the UN exists and because of what it does. In addition to the Rand Corporation study I would like to refer you to the Human Security Report, which makes the point that over the past decade there has been a forty percent reduction in the number of armed conflicts through out the world. There has also been a decline in the number of people being killed overall in armed conflicts, as well as the number of people being killed, on an average, within each conflict and that the UN deserves a lot of credit for this. In this context peacekeeping has been one of the most visible symbols of the UN contribution.

As has been mentioned, the concept of peacekeeping is relatively new. The term does not occur in the UN Charter. The Charter formula is three-fold, the first one being 'pacific settlement' in Chapter VI, the second being 'collective enforcement' Chapter VII and the recourse to the International Court of Justice being the last. Peacekeeping falls in the grey zone between 'pacific settlement' and 'collective enforcement'. As a result, classical peacekeeping could never really keep the peace. Despite that, even classical peacekeeping stabilised the situation in large parts of the world, which is the reason why some of those operations are still around, which is something we tend to forget. Any time there is a real effort to terminate such an operation, the people in the region clamour for these forces to remain as they feel that a withdrawal would result in the return of volatility to the region. So these forces are there both as symbols of the continuing interest and engagement of the international community and because they perform certain functions that are appreciated and considered invaluable.

The Rand Corporation study is very interesting because the Corporation is considered to be very close to the US military and the conclusions of the study are very dramatic. It says that you can have alternative peacekeeping operations by regional organizations. If they are NATO or European, they are more competent but more costly. If they are of any other regional organization they might be cheaper but are totally inefficient.

After the Cold War ended there was multiplication in the number of UN missions and a change in the nature of these missions. The range of powers required for these missions expanded exponentially. The UN learnt a lot from these missions as it went along. One of the interesting points the Rand Study makes is that when Kofi Annan was made Secretary General from the post of Under Secretary for Peacekeeping, he brought most of his key advisers with him to the headquarters. This offset the tendency for institutional discontinuity, which is the norm for US operations.

The significant cost of this great number of operations being carried out in a short period of time is that in some important respects each new operation ends up in some unique environment and consequently the pre-deployment negotiations prove to be very complex.

The pre-deployment discussions between the Secretary General and the US President, a few days ago, underline the fact that under the existing situation, the authority to deploy an international force legitimately belongs only to the UN but the capacity to do so is concentrated with the United States and therefore there is a need for understanding, common perception and a partnership between the 'pole of authority' and the 'pole of power'. If they separate both suffer.

Even though the US has power, India in terms of deployment has the largest numbers of soldiers in different places overseas at the same time. India has both a proud as well as a distinguished record of contribution to UN Peacekeeping. On the other hand Japan is a relatively new entrant in the field of Peacekeeping, but it is an extremely important player in the UN system and Japan has been India's partner in the past two to three years in their bid for permanent membership of the UN Security Council. There is a 'military complimentarily' in relation to what India and Japan can bring to bear as their respective contributions to Peacekeeping operations and therefore there is a great prospect for exchange of dialogues and perspectives and for learning from each other. Therefore, in the seminar last year we found a refreshing willingness to learn from each other through dialogue.

Peacekeeping is a major challenge today and will continue to be one. Due to the fact that there is so much peace to keep the resources are being stretched thinner, but if we want to escape from the trap of 'soft bigotry of lowered expectations', we need to promote dialogue between the best of the past and the best of the present and the future.

Amb Eric Gonzalves

With regard to the point about the continuity which Kofi Annan brought about, I would like to say that this is something which has been deliberately sabotaged by the permanent members of the United Nations, as they would like to be in control. We need to come up with some way of giving up our dependence on the great powers for the logistical support for these peacekeeping operations. This capacity should not be seen as in opposition to the US but as a sort of supplementary resource.

One of the advantages that India had when it went into the earlier peacekeeping operations before the cold war was that these were coherent operations, with most of the financial burden being borne by us, but now there is too much time being wasted in taking these actions. Some thought has to be given as to how we should structure this in the future.

In the meantime, the western Countries, through the NATO have sought to create a sort of an alternative to the UN in peacekeeping operations. The Asian Countries should also contemplate having a similar 'Asian system' in place.

Amb Vijay Nambiar

With regard to the dependence on the Western Powers for troops I would like to say that the problem now is conversely that of getting them to contribute some troops for these missions. We have to make the permanent member of the Security Council more interested in operations in areas with basic problems.

Maj Gen Dipankar Banerjee

In context of the discussion, we have with us General VK Jetley, who is one of the contributors to this book and is one of India's most distinguished force commanders in one of the largest and most challenging UN peacekeeping operations to date. He was the UN Force Comander in Sierra Leone. We would be delighted to hear your experiences at first hand. I would also commend you to read his chapter in the Book.

General V K Jetley

I have been fortunate to have served in operations for the UN twice in my career. Once as a young officer in 1988-90, I was part of an observer group called the United Nations Iran Iraq Military Observer Group (UNIIMOG), which was trying to bring about peace between Iran and Iraq. It was a very successful operation. I got to see the UN working at the grassroots level, but I did not really understand how the UN worked until I was given the opportunity to serve in Sierra Leone in 1998-99.

The UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) was to work in conjunction with the Economic Community Military Observer Group (a force already in place belonging to the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS), gradually replacing them. We had to set up six DDR Camps (Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration into the mainstream) and assist the government of Sierra Leone. We were permitted to use force, when use of force was required. However ECOWAS Observer Group, due to its own compulsions, withdrew earlier than expected, creating vacuum where UNAMSIL was forced to move in. While we were setting up the sixth DDR Camp, we were attacked by the rebels, which was a unique case of the UN being attacked. A number of UN soldiers were taken prisoners and a number were killed. There were even cases of harsh treatment of the UN prisoners. These factors are unfortunately not known in the headquarters. As a General in Sierra Leone I could see the difference between what was happening at the ground-level and what was being perceived at the headquarters.

I would like to reaffirm the point made by the other speakers as to the need to reform the UN. One of the areas for reform in the peacekeeping missions revolves around reintegration of people, for which financial help is required and there is generally a great delay in providing this assistance. The result is that the situation again de-stabilises.

There is a great deal of discussion about the Peace Building Commission and I think it is a great idea, but there is problem in its composition, with there being no representation of the weaker developing nations, who are the ones embroiled in conflict.

If there is going to be a reorganization in the UN, there has to be a rethinking on the part of countries like ours, which is the largest contributor to these missions, as to how we deal with these issues of concern.

Discussion
Question: Could you shed more light on the relationship between the UN and the regional organizations with regard to peacekeeping? How do we manage the relationship between these two entities, with particular emphasis on the question of resources and capabilities?

Response: The need for regional approaches is increasingly being recognised, but in this regard as well, the level of dependence on them needs to be worked out and the politics will have to be understood. In Africa, by and large, there has been a good record of regional responses. The relevant factor is the strength of the regional organization itself, which determines the response it can make. Disjunctive responses by the regional organizations and the UN lead to further problems. The high-level panel did endorse investigating possible partnerships between the UN and regional organizations. The question is as to how do we work out a setup which does not trivialise peacekeeping and yet overcomes this peacekeeping 'apartheid'.

Question: Was there any attempt by the Western powers to override the authority of the commanding officers of these UN peacekeeping forces? Did the U.S. interests in the oil in African nations every feature as a factor in the decisions made by the peacekeeping forces?

Response: You cannot get any decision in the UN system that is not based on vested interests. The question is how you reconcile this with certain ideals.

Question: The anomaly of the permanent members of the Security Council not making adequate troop contributions to peacekeeping operations needs to be further discussed.

Response: Increasingly now the troop contributing countries are from the developing world and sometimes the troop commanders are from the Western World. There is a growing recognition that this sort of a system has to be ended.  It would be slightly unfair to the Western countries to say that they have not been interested in contributing to these missions, as they have made significant contributions to missions in Europe.

Question: I have a few observations to make about UN peacekeeping missions. First of all the decisions as to whether troops are to be deployed is greatly delayed by the Security Council. A standing force in place is the solution for this delay in action. Next, while taking a decision, usually the Security Council opts for measures under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, while Chapter VII measures are required. Another point being that the budget for these missions is initially approved for a limited period of six months, as a result the number of troops and equipment that can be deployed gets restricted and there is a loss of flexibility. There is also the aspect of micro-management by the Western countries of their troops, thus undermining the authority of the commanding officers and leading to a lack of unity of command.

Response: The idea of the Standing Force has been discussed for decades but due to the investments it entails in troops, training, and equipment etc., the resulting politics makes it almost impossible to implement this scheme. The same fact about politics preventing implementation can be made about the rest of your recommendations and politics is what the UN is also all about in the end. On the point of the Standing Force, this suggestion was brought up before the UN Panel, and the situation is that either you have a Standing Force consisting of troops mainly belonging to the permanent members of the Security Council, which you would clearly not accept or you do not have a Standing Force at all. The real question is not of the number of forces but as to who will actually control such a force.

Final Remarks: Amb Eric Gonzalves

I think we have looked at the fact that there aren't any immediate solutions, but I still feel that if you have contingency arrangements in place for peacekeeping then the over-dependence on the Western Countries would decrease. Also I feel that all of us go into a mission on the assumption that the UN or the permanent members of the Security Council are going to finance it, thus we are also partly to blame for this psychological dependence on the Western powers. In Asia, India and Japan, in possible conjunction with the Chinese, should be willing to be take the lead in providing some sort of an alternative in this regard.