Friday, June 27 2003
FRONT
PAGE
U.S.
Looks at Organizing Global Peacekeeping Force
Units would operate outside
the purview of the U.N. and NATO. The idea is a turnaround for the
administration.
By
Esther Schrader, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is discussing
the possibility of the United States organizing a standing international
peacekeeping force that could be dispatched to trouble spots around the globe.
The force would operate outside the
auspices of the United Nations and NATO and would include thousands of
U.S. Army troops trained for, and permanently assigned to, peacekeeping work.
Such an undertaking would represent a
major reversal by the Bush administration, which came into office deeply
opposed to tying up U.S. military forces in international peacekeeping
operations.
The plan would probably be opposed by
the Army, which has resisted efforts to have its troops drawn into
peacekeeping duties.
There are other obstacles as well. Some analysts question how
many nations would sign up for such a force if it were under the control of
the United States, whose willingness to collaborate with other countries is
highly suspect in many parts of the world.
"It seems to me that they have
now decided that this is a great opportunity for multilateralism. Who
knows, maybe somebody will buy it," said retired Maj. Gen. William Nash,
who commanded a tank division in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and, later, NATO
peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
With more than half the Army's deployable troops now engaged in peacekeeping
and stabilization operations around the world, including Bosnia, Kosovo,
Afghanistan and especially Iraq, the Pentagon says its
purely military capabilities are stretched thin — a problem that is widely
acknowledged.
Senior Bush administration officials are coming to believe that the best
solution is to create a standing
constabulary force made up of troops from a range of countries — but led and
trained by the U.S.
It would be distinct from a proposed North Atlantic Treaty Organization
rapid-response force and apart from the U.N., which has provided peacekeeping
missions for decades.
"I am interested in the idea of our leading, or contributing to in some
way, a cadre of people in the world who would like to participate in
peacekeeping or peacemaking," Rumsfeld told a group of defense industry
leaders at a dinner in Washington last week.
"I think that it would be a good
thing if our country provided some leadership for training of other countries'
citizens who would like to participate in peacekeeping so that we have
a ready cadre of people who are trained and equipped and organized and have
communications that they can work with each other."
The Pentagon has been accused of being
unprepared for the postwar violence in Iraq, and Army officials have
complained that they are not trained to do the kind of police work that is
needed there.
"We're not terribly good at
peacekeeping, so I don't know why we would be training people to be
peacekeepers," said Charles Pena, director of defense policy studies at
the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
But a senior defense official said, "The way Secretary Rumsfeld
envisions it, anyone with concerns about U.S. peacekeeping should be assuaged,
because the whole idea is for us to do less, rather than more,
peacekeeping."
Though Rumsfeld has defended
the military's postwar performance, he acknowledged
to a questioner in the dinner audience that it would have been good to have
such a force set up before the war.
"It's something that is being discussed in a very serious way by some
very serious people right now," the defense official said, speaking on
condition of anonymity.
But the official said Rumsfeld had not
decided how many U.S. troops he would recommend allocating to such a
force. Nor has the overall size of such a force, or who
would pay for it, been addressed.
The idea has been broached with unidentified countries in Europe and Latin
America, officials said.
Other defense officials said the force would probably require about 10,000
U.S. troops.
The notion of creating U.S. military units permanently assigned to
peacekeeping was widely discussed at the Pentagon during the Clinton
administration, when U.S. forces found themselves increasingly involved in
nonmilitary missions in such places as Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo.
Upon taking office, President Bush
promised to pull U.S. peacekeepers out of the Balkans and to launch an
immediate review of troop commitments in dozens of countries, with an eye to
strictly limiting overseas deployments.
But since the Sept. 11 attacks, peacekeeping has come to be viewed by
Republicans as more relevant to national security. Indeed, as regards the
number of soldiers engaged in peacekeeping, it is the fastest-growing mission
of the U.S. military.
"We could take or leave peacekeeping operations in the 1990s — we left
Haiti, we left Somalia. The sense was that it might be regrettable in terms of
local conditions but not seen as a security threat to the U.S.," said
Andrew Krepinevich Jr., executive director of the Center for Strategic and
Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan defense think tank.
"Now failed states are seen as
potential breeding grounds for terrorists, and even though we have
sizable forces already engaged in peacekeeping operations, there may be more
to come."
Defense officials say Rumsfeld's proposal is consistent with the aim of
limiting U.S. overseas deployments.
Though it would professionalize a small number of American troops in
peacekeeping, it would aim to enlist other countries to contribute the vast
majority of troops to such a force, with the promise that they
would be trained and organized by the U.S.
The U.S. has about 5,500 peacekeeping troops in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia,
Croatia and the Sinai peninsula, in
addition to the 150,000-plus presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. None
of the troops are peacekeepers by vocation, and not all receive such training
before deploying.
Still, as envisioned, creating a standing international peacekeeping force
that is U.S.-led or -trained would
allow the Pentagon to exert considerably more control over peacekeeping
than in the past.
The U.N. has historically organized such missions. Though the U.S. foots 27%
of the bill for U.N. peacekeeping, it doesn't control the missions. It hasn't
provided significant forces since the 1993 mission in Somalia.
After the months of bitter division
over how to confront Iraq, many U.N. Security Council members aren't inclined
to help the United States keep the peace in that country, a U.N. official
said. Nor is Washington inclined to ask after having failed to win U.N.
backing for its plans — along with Britain and other members of a coalition
— to invade Iraq.
"No one is talking about U.N. peacekeepers" for Iraq, said a U.S.
diplomat.
At the Pentagon, defense officials said that although Rumsfeld
has broached his idea in meetings recently with senior Army officials, he has
not ordered a formal study or set a timetable for implementation.
But "it's really a timely
problem and, moving forward,
it's really important to ask, 'Is there a different way to configure this?'
" one official said. "Everybody sort of thinks there is."
Army leaders historically have been
skeptical of turning any of their professional fighters into professional
peacekeepers, and have publicly opposed such plans.
In recent years, the U.S. role in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Croatia has
become primarily the province of the
National Guard and the reserves.
"In their heart of hearts, they
feel very strongly that they don't want to be peacekeepers, and who can blame
them, because war fighting is what they do, and we need to be very careful
before we have them not doing that," said Nash, the retired general.
"Armies see themselves when they
get up in the morning as war fighters. When you get the Army doing lots of
other things, you have a bad army."
Said a current Army official: "Is there any unit of the U.S. Army that
wants to be 'Peacekeepers-R-Us?' Not exactly."
Times staff writer Maggie Farley at the United
Nations contributed to this report.
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