Peace by other means: using rewards in UN efforts to end conflicts.

• Author: Amley, Edward A., Jr.

At the international level and in a variety of domestic contexts, institutions and processes such as judicial mechanisms, elections, and legislatures that are designed to manage conflict have either never existed or fallen apart. Thus, the United Nations continues to face a variant of the following scenario: Electronic media outlets have begun to broadcast reports of civil strife and mass violence in a given state. How should the UN diplomats who meet to discuss the crisis respond? They might impose economic sanctions on the parties to the potentially-destabilizing conflict. Or, should the UN Secretary-General appoint a special representative? This agent could then attempt to broker a settlement through mediation. Finally, the Security Council might use military muscle to generate a resolution to the crisis.

During the past decade, numerous observers have taken note of the UN's enlarged role in managing both domestic and international conflicts.(1) Part II of this Article surveys the strategies that it has employed to bring disputes to an end. This discussion is intertwined with an attempt to identify the strengths and limits of these conventional conflict-resolution approaches.

Unlike military force or diplomatic persuasion, positive inducements have not gained widespread currency in international affairs. Accounting for the failure of rewards to become entrenched in world politics is the concern of Part III. It also attempts to isolate such measures from other attempts to influence international actors.

Part IV identifies and discusses considerations that may drive UN positive inducement strategies. If international organizations recommend rewarding a party instead of relying upon military force, in which kinds of conflicts are such measures likely to be most effective? What form might these gestures take? At what point in the conflict-resolution process should they be utilized? Finally, how would the UN need to change institutionally to harness the full promise of reward-based strategies? In confronting these questions, this Part of the Article concludes that multiple considerations will drive the decision to influence disputants through positive inducements.

II. UN CONFLICT-SUPPRESSION STRATEGIES: THE CURRENT STATE OF PLAY

The UN's current activism in the area of dispute-resolution represents a clear break from the past. Before the end of the Cold War, the superpowers monopolized this activity. They attempted to ensure global stability by brokering settlements to local and regional contests.(2) During this period, the UN sometimes played a peripheral role in the resolution of conflicts, usually by coordinating deployments of small, lightly-armed peace-keeping(3) forces that carried out tasks like ceasefire monitoring.

Since ,1989, the international community has handed the UN an expanding conflict-resolution brief. First, states have called upon the UN to preside over the settlement of various violent manifestations of the Cold War that the superpowers had not been able to resolve by 1989.(4) The UN has also begun to respond to the strife that has become a fixture of the current landscape in many areas of the world.(5) To settle conflicts, the UN has relied upon various options.

1. Mediation

   In some situations, the UN has played the role of diplomatic troubleshooter or mediator.(6) The considerable legitimacy and credibility the UN commands justifies these mediation efforts.(7) Usually, UN mediation initiatives take the form of attempts by a representative of the Secretary-General to open lines of communication between adversaries. This individual also facilitates negotiations and dialogue and persuades the disputants to settle their differences.(8)

   In the course of mediation efforts, the UN has encountered several problems. First, the parties may simply refuse to enter into discussion. Alternatively, they could deal in bad faith while hoping that the political-military tide on the ground will turn or run more strongly in their favor.(9) Even subtle shifts in the balance of power between two parties may allow recalcitrant actors to negotiate from a position of strength.

   Second, the fact that the UN is an international organization hamstrings its ability to engage in diplomatic mediation efforts. According to Saadia Touval, the necessity that UN initiatives enjoy the continuing support of its members, especially those that hold permanent seats on the Security Council, "saps the United Nations of necessary dynamism and flexibility in pursuing mediation. Once the United Nations agrees on a mediating proposal or framework, it cannot easily be modified in response to changing circumstances."(10) Moreover, the effectiveness of UN mediation may be undermined by individual states that could conceivably withdraw their support from international peace efforts. For example, the United States reversed its stance on the plan formulated by Cyrus Vance and David Owen in the course of a joint UN-European Union effort to broker a political settlement in Bosnia-Herzegovina.(11)

2. Punitive Measures

   The use of negative incentives, or sticks, as some commentators may have mislabeled such inducements,(12) has figured into UN efforts to end conflicts. The Security Council has authorized economic sanctions, threats to use military force, or its actual employment. Sometimes, it has combined these measures with purely diplomatic mediation efforts.

   Sanctions regimes played roles in the international community's response to such events as the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the 1991 coup in Haiti that overthrew the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the civil strife in the former Yugoslavia. Imposed by the UN pursuant to Article 41 of its Charter, sanctions may represent a way to force recalcitrant actors in these conflicts to change their ways while minimizing military force.(13) The sanctions applied to Iraq before the Persian Gulf War, however, were not given sufficient time to work.(14) Also, the package currently in force has not induced Baghdad to comply with numerous Security Council decisions made in the wake of the Iraqi military defeat in 1991.(15) In contrast, sanctions may function as part of the explanation for the Haitian junta's decision to go into exile and for Serbia's move to distance itself from the Bosnian Serbs in 1994.(16)

   Like sanctions, military force has become an increasingly common UN strategy during the post-Cold War era. Before the Persian Gulf War and in Haiti, the UN authorized ad-hoc coalitions of states to use military force pursuant to Chapter VII of the UN Charter.(17) In the wake of the breakdown of civil order in Somalia, the Unified Task Force (UNITAF) tried a similar approach.(18) However, decisionmakers did not target military force at any one actor in this anarchy-plagued region. Similarly, the UN integrated threats of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) air strikes in Bosnia-Herzegovina to gain leverage over the disputants in this conflict after an attempt managed directly by the UN to bring peace to this country faltered.(19) Finally, following the establishment of the Second United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM II), troops engaged in combat against parties that were seen as hostile to the settlement process.(20)

   The UN's use of punitive measures has attracted controversy and encountered problems. Generally, this strategy opens the UN up to charges of partiality. As Henry Wiseman has argued, "the necessity for [UN] `impartiality' in word and deed continues to be imperative. Yet, this will be all the more difficult to ensure in multifaceted civil conflicts."(21) Meanwhile, a problem specific to nonviolent economic sanctions is the potentially significant amount of time that must elapse before they are likely to be effective. There are also the difficulties and expense of mounting efforts to enforce them. Although the UN has successfully sanctioned states involved in conflict that pitted them against much of the rest of the international community, their effective use in internal contexts seems less assured.(22) Sanctions also can cause a

   tremendous amount of collateral damage to innocent bystanders. They can impoverish private citizens in the target area and bankrupt countries and firms that maintain trading relationships with the targets. Sanctions, moreover, may cultivate the growth of a siege mentality among members of the state or community at which they are directed.(23) Finally, some commentators have questioned the legality of economic sanctions.(24)

   Employing military force presents the UN with numerous challenges. In some situtations, it has attempted to "subcontract" military responsibilities out to a regional organization or to an ad-hoc coalition of states. This has proven to be operationally effective.(25) For example, the alliance that took part in Desert Storm successfully repelled Iraqi aggression against Kuwait. In other contexts, international military efforts have achieved more modest objectives. These include the American-dominated military involvement in Haiti, the UNITAF period of the international community's efforts in Somalia, and the operations carried out by the NATO Implementation Force and Stabilization Force.

   The danger of allowing non-UN military forces to manage conflicts should be apparent. The subcontracting entity may overstep its mandate. However, if the UN vigorously monitors the activities of the subcontractor, this may be unlikely to happen. In a situation where serious differences of opinion regarding the role of the outside military force exist, the UN could withdraw its endorsement of the venture.

   Second, it may be that the great powers will use subcontracting as a way to regain or maintain hegemony in their traditional spheres of influence, and to legitimize it as well. US troops played a pivotal role in the peace operation in Haiti. Russian troops loomed large in the UN venture undertaken in Georgia, which has...