The United Nations has had a troubled life so far. The international organisation of states was founded in 1945 as a method of facilitating cooperation between states and the advancement of international security and peace. Sixty years on the UN does not appear any closer to this goal than it did at its conception, and the United Nations has continued to become increasingly incapable of addressing modern conflicts. The post-Cold War time period has been notably difficult for the UN, with its reputation being tarnished by a number of failed peacekeeping missions. There are several reasons for this, including the UN’s inability to act as a military force; it’s bloated bureaucracy and the realist theories surrounding the relationship between states and NGOs.

When the United Nations was founded in 1945 following the end of World War II, it was expected to herald in a new age of peace in a world which had been rocked by two devastating international conflicts. The next forty years saw an international system that was dominated by the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. One of the biggest issues faced by the United Nations now, however, is that the nature of conflicts has changed drastically since the Cold War days. These so called “New Wars” are low-intensity conflicts that involve a vast range of transnational connections, non-governmental actors and new strategies of warfare (Mary Kaldor). The United Nations, founded in the age of state vs. state conventional warfare, is now faced with conflicts it was never designed to handle.

New Wars no longer revolve around the struggle to control territory, resources and the expansion of a state’s ideology, but the struggle to control the identity of the state and its people (Mary Kaldor). The United Nations is still positioned best for “Old Wars”, and struggles to solve conflicts that have their causes rooted in deeper grievances or issues than a simple land grab. One of the most critical issues in UN peacekeeping is that there are often no long-term solutions in place by the time the peacekeeping force arrives. The UN peacekeeping solutions are often “short-term Band-Aids on deep wounds that have been festering for generations” (Armstrong). By the time a peacekeeping force has had boots on the ground long enough to truly understand the issues involved, they are almost at the end of their operational deployment. This means that there is a failure for the UN peacekeeping forces on the ground to truly understand any of the issues at stake at any level.

It took the United Nations over thirty years of effort to even define what interstate aggression was, and even then the United Nations was sporadic at best when it came to condemning cases of aggression between states. It became accepted that the United Nations was least effective in disputes when the two belligerents were non-aligned states, where there was a high international acceptance of these conflicts to continue without external interference. Conversely, the United Nations is generally the most effective in cases where the belligerent were a Western state (The big exception being the United States) initiated a dispute with a non-aligned state. It would appear that the UN is highly selective of which cases it takes responsibility for. Some conflicts attract large amounts of attention while others are overlooked for various reasons, usually political.

In a world dominated by “New Wars”, there is another issue the United Nations faces in addressing these conflicts. This issue is the lack of hard military power within the UN. The UN lacks the offensive power and ability of most single sovereign states, and is therefore unsuited to providing a military solution when it comes to humanitarian solution. In New Wars, which are often inter-state and ignorant of typical political boundaries and considerations in fighting conflicts, the large and slow-moving bureaucracy of the United Nations can seriously struggle to keep up with a rapidly evolving conflict. Unlike what it had faced for most of its life, the UN now faced conflicts where there were “No fronts, no campaigns, no bases, no uniforms, no publically displayed honors, no points d’appui (starting point), and no respect for the territorial limits of the state” (Van Creveld, 1991).

During the Sierra Leone Civil War, failure on the UN’s part to act resulted in the Sierra Leonean government hiring a Private Military Company called Executive Outcomes to contain and prevent the human rights atrocities being committed by the RUF during the war. Despite it’s huge successes, Executive Outcomes was forced out of the country due to political pressure from the United Nations (A. J. Venter, War Dogs, Chapter 22: Sierra Leones Diamond War). It is worth noting that the largely successful Executive Outcomes was costing Sierra Leone (And by proxy, the International Monetary Fund) $1.8 million a month. By comparison, the failed UN Peacekeeping mission cost $51 million a month. When EO left the country, it left the largely untrained, unprepared and unwilling United Nations contingent in sole charge of the conflict. What followed was a brutal rout in which the RUF seized control of the country, humiliating the international community and the United Nations. It was not until the return of the private soldiers and the British military that the UN mission was fulfilled.

It has been noted that “Peacekeepers are traditionally too lightly armed to outfight the combined forces of every regional warring faction in the mission area. Consequently, they exercise no real coercive or punitive power” (Armstrong). This lack of capable organic military forces within the United Nations means that the UN must rely on limited sources and applications of power to achieve its aims. In order to influence Medium, Great and even Global Powers, the UN needs to hold considerable power in many different areas. With no compulsory military power, the UN struggles to force medium or great powers to act. It must rely on it’s powers or persuasion and diplomacy, or potentially it will need another Great or Global power to act on it’s behalf in order for threats or the use of force to be effective. The “Blue Helmet” of UN troops around the world is more known for it’s symbolic and diplomatic power, rather than their military prowess.

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