Dallaire: Peacekeeping has failed

[Edward Campbell]

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What I am currious to ask is this:

Chapter VII UN missions seem to be the missions with the least success rate. Bosnia, Rwanda and Somalia where all Ch. VII missions and we know how well they did. But that is not to totally discredit the UN because I know they have had success in other places like Congo (recently) Birundi, Cyprus etc...
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Some argue that Cyprus is a classic example of UN failure: 35+ years of allowing a political dispute to fester when a political solution is, and has been - for decades, within reach.  One might suggest that neither the Turk-Cyps nor Greek-Cyps want to make the messy but necessary compromises so they are only too happy to have the UN enforce the status quo.

How much real 'good' have the pioneer (1948) UN peacekeeping missions done?  Is the situation in Israel/Palestine (and neighbourhood) any better due to the UN's actions?  How about Kashmir, has the UN helped in any material, measurable way?

 

[a_majoor]

WRT Bosnia, and Yugoslavia in general, the UN eventually was shouldered aside by the United States and NATO, essentially out of frustration with the lack of progress the UN was making in ending the war. I would look on the final military intervention phase as "being the last battle by the UN", if memory serves correctly it was NATO and the US stepping up with air power to extract the UN forces from disaster. In any event, the military interventions in the 1995-95 period were explicitly credited to NATO and not the UN. (This is not to say UN troops were not being engaged and fighting, just that much of the fighting power was coming from another source).

The real clue to how and why things ended in Bosnia the way they did is the name of the treaty; the "Dayton Accord", as in Dayton, Ohio, USA. This should be no real surprise, only the United States has global military power projection, with the Anglosphere West having a secondary capability. Once the defence "D" was deployed to compell the end of fighting, the diplomacy "D" came into play and now the development "D" of the "Three D" program is at work (and has been for several years).

 

[3rd Horseman]

As a-majoor has said, that is the general view, it is not the reality IMHO and beneath Bosnia is a complicated web of activities that are the real war in Bosnia. I view NATO air power as purely a support element that was used to help shape the battle. Just another weapon in the plan, don't get me wrong a very good weapon but just a single element. The war could not have been won without them but it was in no way their victory. NATO and the US refused to send troops into Bosnia and Croatia but would provide air cover and CAS. They provided special operations teams to the UN but only a few, those teams operated as UN/NATO but were only made up of UN forces no US soldiers were in this unit. Task Force A and B were UN force member countries provided special operation units that provide extra fighting forces not because the UN forces could not do the job but because the UN at that point was falling appart along religious lines and aligning itself with different warring factions. This caused the UN to be unable to fight in a  battle with specific countries since some of the units would refuse or even turn their weapons on the other UN units in support of a faction. It was the Battle group and combat team attacks by UN forces with NATO air power in support coupled with other activities that drove the factions to the wars end.
It is to say the least a very complicated war.