NATO's Role in Peace Operations: Reexamining the Treaty after Bosnia and Kosovo

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NATO's Role in Peace Operations: Reexamining the Treaty after Bosnia and Kosovo

MILITARY LAW REVIEW

Volume 160 June 1999

NATO'S ROLE IN PEACE OPERATIONS: REEXAMINING THE TREATY AFTER BOSNIA AND KOSOVO

MAJOR J.D. GODWIN1

I. Introduction

The North Atlantic Treaty2 contains no provisions that allow its members to participate in peace operations3 under Chapter VIII of the United Nations (UN) Charter.4 Nevertheless, in 1993, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began flying missions over Bosnia5 to protect UN

peacekeeping forces and to monitor the so-called safe havens declared by

the Security Council.6 At the same time, NATO naval forces were the primary component enforcing the UN arms embargo imposed on the warring factions within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.7 By December 1995, mediators negotiated an unlikely cease-fire and an unprecedented agreement to hand off UN peacekeeping duties to a multinational force under NATO's command and control.8

The Bosnia mission was the first of its kind by NATO. As events in Kosovo have demonstrated, however, it is not its last.9 The end of the Cold War significantly reduced the chances of super-power confrontation; however, lower nuclear tension frequently masks increased regional violence grounded in historical ethnic, cultural, and religious differences.10 The

conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo are prime examples, but there are many others simmering within Europe and on its periphery. An incomplete list of recent examples includes near civil war in Albania,11 continuing friction between Greece and Turkey,12 and religious and political violence in Algeria.13 Meanwhile, the UN is spread thin attending to disturbances around the globe.14

For a variety of reasons, the UN will not be able to keep pace with the growing cycle of violence. Political disagreements have disrupted the

Security Council almost from the beginning.15 "Peacekeeping was discovered like penicillin . . . [by accident],"16 because super-power competition during the Cold War blocked the Security Council from effectively performing its intended peace-enforcement role.17 Many heralded the end of the Cold War as the renaissance of collective security.18 Conflicts such as those in Rwanda, Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo seem to demonstrate that these predictions were unfounded. For example, off and on since the Gulf War, Security Council members have been at loggerheads over measures against Iraq. Their political differences often encourage Saddam Hussein to defy the UN.19

Financial and technical shortcomings also limit the UN's ability to respond effectively. As its peacekeeping activities expanded, the UN's peacekeeping budget increased almost fifteen times.20 The Secretary General sharply criticized the member states in his Supplement to An Agenda for Peace, released in early 1995, for their failure to provide funding for UN peace operations.21 He warned that many operations could not be pur-

sued or, if pursued, could not be performed "to the standard expected."22

Nevertheless, some major contributors, including the United States, continually refuse to pay their assessments.23

Command and control of forces engaged in UN peace operations are a continual source of friction between the Security Council and the troop-contributing nations. The Secretary General contends operational and strategic control of the forces belongs to the UN alone.24 This position is unacceptable to many nations, especially the United States.25

To survive the systemic problems, the UN has increasingly turned to regional organizations for help. This is a marked evolution for the UN. The drafters of the UN Charter very nearly did not recognize the rights of regional organizations. Chapter VIII and the self-defense measures of Article 51 were included only after the Latin American states insisted.26

European members who feared a re-emergent Germany joined them.27

After the Charter's ratification, the role of regional organizations was ill defined and often distrusted, as in the intervention of the Organization of American States in the Dominican Republic.28 Recent developments in Liberia, Bosnia, and...

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