Just War, Clausewitz and Sarajevo

Abstract

1. From Peacekeeping to Intervention United Nations peacekeeping operations in the late 1980s and early 1990s registered several successes, which bred the belief that the UN offered, if not a new world order, a new capacity to deal with disorder. UN intervention started to be seen as a solution for increasingly complex and violent problems. Peacekeeping was no longer an adequate term. The rubric was expanded, not least by the Secretary-General (Boutros-Ghali, 1992). The argument was that if there were no peace to keep, the UN would have to make peace and enforce it. 'Blue Helmets' would intervene with armed force for humanitarian reasons. Thus, humanitarian intervention became the term for a range of military operations from pure peacekeeping to robust policing, air strikes, major ground war and long-term military occupation. However, the case for intervention is more difficult than its keenest advocates concede. The tasks are complex, demanding and dangerous. In Europe and North America, the most heated debate on intervention has concerned ex-Yugoslavia. It has been shallow and confusing. The advocates of the stronger versions of intervention (air-strikes and up) have ignored the political complexities, the dangers and operational military realities. Most sceptics have made a limited, opportunist and pragmatic case dominated by short-term self-interest. Alternatives to largescale military action have been at best ill-defined. Neither group has clearly specified its goals. Crowl's (1982) strategic catechism' forms a useful check list for gauging the quality of the debate. It demands answers to the following questions: * What is the objective? Even after UN forces in Sarajevo began enforcing the February 1994 ceasefire, no political objective worthy of the name had been established. * Does the strategy fit the objective? Not if there is no objective. * What are the limits of military power? No case for intervention has acknowledged the limits. By contrast, the sceptics see nothing but limits. * What are the alternatives? The advocates' failure to consider alternatives is partially excused by the sceptics' failure to present them. * How strong is the home front? The durability of domestic political support for intervention is another question the advocates have not discussed. If multilateral military intervention is to be a prominent international response to conflict, we need a better way to debate it than the current pattern of selective indignation and evasive pragmatism.