Memorandum by the United Nations Association
of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
THE DEFENCE WHITE PAPER
On 19 December, 2003 I wrote on behalf of the
United Nations Association of the United Kingdom to the Secretary
of State for Defence to express our concern that there was no
reference in his White Paper to the anticipated role of the United
Kingdom in supporting the peacekeeping operations of the United
Nations through the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO).
From Mr Hoon's letter[3]you
will see that he argued that we should not take the Defence White
Paper in isolation but should read it in parallel with the Foreign
and Commonwealth Office (FCO) White Paper, "UK International
Priorities: A Strategy For The ECO", and quoted certain
passages from it.
We have read the FCO White Paper very thoroughly
and are equally concerned that neither does this make any specific
mention of future UK policy towards and inputs into UN peacekeeping
operations.
There has, if the figures are studied, been
a clear diminution over the past several years in the number of
personnel—military, civilian police and other—being
offered by NATO member states to the United Nations. This is of
particular concern to many of us because there is little doubt
that NATO personnel are among the best trained in the world, have
more adequate resources available than anyone else and are alone
in having real logistical capacity to airlift personnel and supplies
to distant areas of operation. In the wake of the excellent Security
Council request of January, 1992 which led to the production in
its name of "An Agenda for Peace" and the more
recent Brahimi Report on strengthening UN peacekeeping
capacity and delivery we hoped that the response of the UK and
its NATO partners would have been to enhance rather than to diminish
their inputs.
We fully appreciate that the United Kingdom
has committed significant troop numbers to the NATO-commanded
International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan and, more
controversially, to the American-led coalition of the willing
in Iraq, making it relatively harder to be able to allocate personnel
and other resources to UN operations in other parts of the world.
Nevertheless, since we believe that the presence of NATO members'
personnel within UN Forces has invariably helped to raise the
overall caliber of those operations through their skills, discipline
and capacity, we always look to the member states of NATO to strive
to support UN operations and are keen to see the United Kingdom
play a leading role in doing so.
While we greatly respect and acknowledge the
key role played by the British contingent dispatched to Sierra
Leone, nevertheless we remain disappointed that they were not
placed within the UNAMSIL structure, where they could have, we
believe, achieved a great deal in helping to strengthen the caliber
of a large but not always effective international presence in
a dangerous and highly volatile situation. With British troops
not being committed to work within UN Forces, we believe that
Her Majesty's Government is failing to fulfill a major obligation
placed upon its shoulders through its permanent membership of
the UN Security Council. The United Kingdom does not, as former
Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary Douglas Hurd once put it, appear
to be "punching above its weight"; and that we regret.
The Defence White Paper speaks at some length
about the special role of NATO in the world and of the UK' s strategic
interest in remaining a strong ally of the United States and working
closely in partnership with it. This concerns us to the extent
that President George W Bush sees himself as a "war President"
and has several times gone on the record to say that the American
military have a role to play in major trouble spots around the
world in fighting wars rather than in peacekeeping and nationbuilding.
He has also promulgated the United States' right to take preemptive
action when US security is deemed to be under major threat. While
we firmly believe that the prevention of terrorist or other heinous
actions is an urgent necessity for all states, nevertheless we
do not support the right of the powerful to take such action either
unilaterally or with a group of partners without due international
authorization. Unless such authorization is forthcoming, we could
see the world backslide relatively swiftly towards the law of
the jungle, with powerful states taking the law into their own
hands illegitimately. We have no wish to see the United Kingdom
move down that blind and counter-productive alley.
Mr Hoon agreed with us—vide the
top of page 2 of his letter to me—"that the struggle
to defeat terrorism is not just a military matter". In
the Security Council debate on 12 September, 2001— the day
after the horrendous acts perpetrated in New York, Washington
and Pennsylvania by al Qaida activists— UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan spoke of the need to revisit the root causes of terrorism
and to seek to root them out before they took control of would-be
terrorists. It is encouraging to see that the Security Council
is now taking a much more holistic approach to real or threatened
breaches of international peace and security, including persistent
major human rights abuse, environmental degradation and other
causes. We see that the United Kingdom, with its long history
of international engagement and its membership of the United Nations,
the Commonwealth, the European Union, the Organization for Security
and Co-operation in Europe (which is recognized as the regional
security body for Europe under Chapter VIII of the United Nations
Charter), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development,
the Group of 8 and the Bretton Woods Institutions, has an unsurpassed
series of opportunities to support non-violent conflict prevention
processes and UN peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations.
We would thus like to propose to the Select
Committee on Defence that, in their consideration of current and
proposed UK strategy, they include a serious review of UN needs
and how best the United Kingdom can enhance its response and practical
inputs to them.
Malcolm Harper
Director
March 2004
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