June 16, 2003

The UN's Military

Incidents like this are just one of the reasons why the United Nations is incapable of acting to preserve the peace anywhere in the world.

In order for militaries to succeed, they need certain key qualities, including discipline and loyalty. It is discipline that gets soldiers to place their tender young bodies in harm's way, rather than doing the sensible thing and running for cover. And it is loyalty that motivates soldiers to rescue their comrades and go into harm's way on behalf of others. Those qualities do not exist in United Nations forces.

This isn't necessarily because the forces are bad (although UN troops are not generally drawn from the world's elite forces), but because they're drawn from disparate armies and nations. Why would a Frenchman risk himself and his men to rescue any soldiers other than French soldiers? Sure, they were putatively his allies, but there was little upside and much downside to supporting them. If the Frenchman (and I should note here that this would have been a probable outcome regardless of nationality. Being French almost certainly had nothing to do with this tragedy.) had chosen to risk his own men to save these foreign nationals, he might have succeeded. For which he would have received nothing. He might also have failed, and lost the lives of some of his French soldiers. Such a result might well have resulted in the French taking disciplinary action against their officer for risking French troops needlessly.

But wait, you say; he didn't risk them needlessly, they went to rescue fellow UN troops. But while it might be nice if nations thought that way, wishing won't make it so. As far as the French Army is concerned, their officer is French, but seconded to the UN. His primary concern has to be for France, not for the UN. Again, any army would react the same way. American soldiers serving under UN command would still be considered Americans first, and a commander who got Americans killed rescuing foreign soldiers could well find himself facing serious disciplinary action.

So UN troops are really just a fiction. What UN troops are is an amalgamation of multiple armies at one place at one time. They may work together when it's convenient, but their first priority isn't going to be to the UN or to each other. This is not a recipe for successful military operations. When a commander gives an order, he needs to know it will be obeyed, and UN commanders do not have that luxury. Therefore, depending on them to accomplish any mission that involves real risk is foolish.

Which is unfortunate, because it means that issues like the genocide in the Congo inevitably end up back on American soldiers, because UN intervention, while perhaps well-intentioned, is invariably futile.

Posted at 07:36 PM | Politics | TrackBack (0)