Transcript Late 20th Century Wars of Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Humanitarian Crisis Lsn 40

Late 20th Century Wars of
Ethnicity, Nationalism, and
Humanitarian Crisis
Lsn 40
ID & SIG
• Bosnia, “Chapter VI and a half,” Haiti,
Kosovo, nationbuilding, peacekeeping,
post Cold War environment, role of the
media, Rwanda, Somalia, United Nations
and peacekeeping
Agenda
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Changing World of the Post-Cold War
The United Nations
Role of the Media
Somalia
Rwanda
Haiti
Bosnia
Kosovo
Post-Cold War Environment
• Cold War threats were
potentially catastrophic but
they were also measurable
and somewhat predictable
• The bipolar structure and
the desire to avoid
superpower confrontation
had provided a certain
degree of order and
stability
• The post-Cold War period
was much more
ambiguous and uncertain
and many new threats
emerged
CIA Director James Woolsey
described the post-Cold War
environment by saying, “We have
slain a large dragon (the U.S.S.R.) —
but we now live in a jungle filled with a
bewildering variety of poisonous
snakes. In many ways, the dragon
was easier to keep track of.”
The United Nations
• The Cold War structure had kept in check ethnic
divisions in many countries and limited military
interventions
• The end of the Cold War changed all that
– UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
advocated the “legitimate involvement” of the UN in
“peace enforcement” and “peacemaking” operations
– President Clinton proclaimed a “National Security
Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement”
• After the Cold War, the United Nations went from
an average of three or four peacekeeping
operations a year to 13 in December 1992
UN Charter
• Chapter VI
– “Pacific Settlement of Disputes”
– Security Council can investigate any dispute, or any situation
which might lead to international friction or give rise to a dispute
– Council can recommend action but the recommendations are not
binding on its members
• Chapter VII
– Council is not limited to recommendations
– Can take action, including the use of armed force, to maintain or
restore international peace and security
• Peacekeeping operations often are called “Chapter VI
and a half”
Limitations of the UN
• No army of its own
– Reliant on ad hoc
contributions from its
members
• Can never divorce itself
from the political
agendas of its members
• Inadequately trained
staff of military
professionals and
managers
Influence of the Media
• Agenda setting
• Shaping public
opinion
• Policy-makers
Tiananmen
Square,
June 4, 1989
Agenda Setting
• “The mass media may not be successful in
telling people what to think, but the media
are stunningly successful in telling their
audience what to think about.”
• “If a tree falls in the woods and CNN
doesn’t cover it, did it really fall?”
– Bruce W. Jentleson, American Foreign
Policy: The Dynamics of Choice in the 21st
Century
Shaping Public Opinion
• “Framing”
– How the media casts an
issue affects the
sustentative judgments
people make about the
issue.
• “Priming”
– The priority the media
gives to an issue affects
the priority people give
to the issue.
Policy-makers
• Policy-makers
often ask
themselves “What
will the media
think?” as they
formulate a
course of action
• Political “spin”
becomes
extremely
important
Somalia
• Drought, famine, clan violence, corruption, and inefficient
government had created a humanitarian crisis in Somalia
in the 1990s.
• One of the main sources of power had been the control
of food supplies.
– Hijacked food was used to secure the loyalty of clan
leaders, and food was routinely exchanged with other
countries for weapons.
– In the early 1990’s up to 80% of internationally
provided food was stolen.
• Between 1991 and 1992 over 300,000 Somalis were
estimated to have died of starvation.
– UN relief efforts were unsuccessful, largely due to
looting.
• The U.N. asked its member nations for assistance.
Somalia
• “And it was pictures -- of
spectral women and withered
children -- that launched the
rescue mission in Somalia. It
may have been awkward to
have cameras meet the troops
when they landed, but wasn't it
also appropriate? In a sense it
was cameras that had sent
them there.”
– Time Magazine, Dec. 28, 1992
This picture of a Somalian
women who weighed just 46
pounds was an example of
an image that drew US
attention to the situation
Somalia
• Stark images from Somalia, transmitted to the world via
satellite, helped shape public opinion and pressured the
United Nations to take action
• Reporter Craig Hines wrote that President Bush told him
that as he and his wife, Barbara, watched television at
the White House and saw “those starving kids … in
quest of a little pitiful cup of rice,” he phoned Defense
Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin Powell,
Chairman of the JCoS: “Please come over to the White
House.” Bush recalled telling the military leaders: “I – we
– can’t watch this anymore. You’ve got to do something”
Somalia
• In December 1992, President George Bush proposed to
the U.N. that United States combat troops lead the
intervention force.
– The U.N. accepted this offer and 25,000 U.S. troops
were deployed to Somalia.
• The force had a mandate of protecting humanitarian
operations and creating a secure environment for eventual
political reconciliation.
– At the same time, it had the authority to use all
necessary means, including military force. Operation
Restore Hope was a US-led, UN-sanctioned operation
that included protection of humanitarian assistance and
other peace-enforcement operations.
Somalia
• Over an area of 21,000
square miles, soldiers
established security, built or
rebuilt roads, escorted
humanitarian relief convoys,
and confiscated weapons
• Due to these efforts,
humanitarian agencies
declared an end to the food
emergency, community
elders became empowered,
and marketplaces were
revitalized and functioning
Somalia
• In March 1993 the U.N. officially
took over the operation, naming
this mission UNOSOM II.
– The objective of this mission
was to promote “nation
building” within Somalia.
– One main target was to
disarm the Somali people.
• UNOSOM II stressed
restoring law and order,
improving the
infrastructure, and
assisting the people with
setting up a
representative
government.
Somalia
• This change of mission was a direct threat to
the power base of clan leader Mohammed
Farah Aidid
• On Oct 3, 1993 Task Force Ranger raided
the Olympic Hotel in Mogadishu to search for
Aidid.
• This led to a 17 hour battle in which 19 U.S.
soldiers were killed and 84 were wounded.
• Conservative estimates say more than 500
Somalians were killed and over 1,000
injured, but pictures of the body of a dead US
soldier being dragged through the streets
and the capture of a US helicopter pilot
caused a public outcry against the US policy
in Somalia
Somalia
• On Oct 7, President Clinton
announced the beginning of the
US withdrawal.
• Marks the beginning of a period
in which the US becomes very
“casualty adverse”
– High optempo use of the Army
lessens
– US did not intervene in a timely or
meaningful way in Rwanda
– Army not used in Kosovo
Somalia
• “We went into Somalia
because of horrible television
images; we will leave
Somalia because of horrible
television images.”
– Marianne Means
• “We had been drawn to this
place by television images;
now we were being repelled
by them. The President
immediately conducted a
policy review that resulted in
a plan for withdrawal over the
next six months.”
– Colin Powell
Sudan and Somalia
• “As the contrasting
responses to the
seemingly similar
Somalia and Sudan
cases suggest,
media coverage
can have a
significant impact.”
– Arnold Kanter,
Intervention
Decisionmaking in
the Bush
Administration
Refugees in Sudan
Rwanda
• Tension and violence
between the Hutu and
Titsi tribal groups in
Rwanda was
longstanding
– The Titsi had long
held power even
though the Hutu were
the majority
• In 1959, three years
before independence
from Belgium, the Hutus
overthrew the ruling
Tutsi king
Rwanda
• Over the next several years,
thousands of Tutsis were
killed, and some 150,000
driven into exile in
neighboring countries
– The children of these
exiles later formed a
rebel group, the
Rwandan Patriotic Front
(RPF), and began a civil
war in 1990
• The violence reached its
peak in April 1994 in the
genocide of roughly
800,000 Tutsis and
moderate Hutus
Deep gashes in the skulls of
victims of the Rwanda
genocide evidence the
violence of their deaths
Rwanda
• Outside powers such as the United Nations
urged peace, but coming on the heels of the
disaster in Somalia, there was no meaningful
intervention
• The world basically stood by until the bloodshed
finally ran its course
– “…The world must deeply repent this failure… Now
we know that what we did was not nearly enough--not
enough to save Rwanda from itself, not enough to
honor the ideals for which the United Nations exists.
We will not deny that, in their greatest hour of need,
the world failed the people of Rwanda ...” (UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, 1998)
Rwanda
• The Tutsi rebels ultimately
defeated the Hutu regime
and ended the killing in
July 1994
• Approximately 2 million
Hutu refugees, many
fearing retaliation, fled to
neighboring Burundi,
Tanzania, Uganda, and the
former Zaire
– Many perpetrators of the
genocide secretly
blended into the refugee
camps and escaped
justice
Rwandan children in the
refugee camp at Ndosha,
Zaire
Bosnia
• During the Cold War,
Yugoslavia was a
multi-ethnic state
successfully held
together by
communist
totalitarianism
• When the strong
communist leader
Josip Broz Tito died in
1980, ethnic divisions
became more open
Bosnia
• Yugoslavian republics began
to seek independence
– Slovenia, Croatia, and
Macedonia broke away in
1991
– When Bosnia-Herzegovina
declared its independence in
1992, an ethnic civil war
ensued
– Bosnian Serbs, with external
support from Serbia, initiated
an “ethnic cleansing”
campaign against Bosnian
Muslims
Unearthed mass grave
containing the bodies of
some of the 7,000 Bosnian
Muslim men and boys
murdered when Serbs
overran the UN “safe area” of
Srebrenica
Bosnia
• United Nations
peacekeepers entered
Bosnia in 1992 but were
extremely ineffective
• The United States was
very reluctant to commit
ground troops to what
promised to be a messy
and long-term situation
– The US did begin air and
naval patrols in 1993
The Serbs took UN
peacekeepers hostage and
chained them to potential
target areas to prevent
airstrikes
Bosnia
• Finally in 1995 President
Clinton responded to
mounting European
pressure and, the US
and NATO conducted air
strikes against the Serbs
and forced them to the
bargaining table
• The Dayton Peace
Accords of November
1995 ended the fighting
and authorized a NATO
peacekeeping force of
over 60,000 troops
Serbian President Slobodan
Milosevic, left, Bosnian President
Alija Izetbegovic, center, and
Croatian President Franjo Tudjman,
right, initial the DPA at WrightPatterson Air Force Base in Ohio
Bosnia
• The US participated in
IFOR (Implementation
Force) and SFOR
(Stabilization Force) until
2004 when NATO passed
the mission off to the
European Union’s EUFOR
• The military tasks
associated with the DPA
were completed within a
year
– Still SFOR was necessary as
a security presence while
civilian implementation took
place
Haiti
• A 1991 military coup in
Haiti ousted the
democratically elected
president Jean-Bertrand
Aristide
• UN embargoes and other
sanctions against the
military government failed
to bring about a return to
the legitimately elected
government
Haiti
• Thousands of Haitians
fled to the US in fragile
boats
• In 1994, President
Clinton ordered a
5,000- man force to
occupy Haiti in
Operation Uphold
Democracy
Haiti
• A last minute diplomatic
effort led by former President
Jimmy Carter and including
Senator Sam Nunn and
former Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell
was in Haiti on Sept 18 when
elements of the 82nd Airborne
were broadcast on TV
departing Fort Bragg, NC
• The synergy of this
diplomatic-military effort
motivated the junta to agree
to a peaceful solution
Haiti
• Upon landing, the
American force met
almost no opposition and
Aristide was returned to
power in October
• Token American and
international forces
remained in Haiti through
1998 maintaining order
and conducting nation
building operations
Haiti
• In 2004 an armed rebellion forced the
departure of Aristide and violence and
technical delays postponed democratic
elections until 2006
• Haiti continues to be beset by a host of
problems including being the poorest
country in the Western Hemisphere
– 80% of the population lives under the poverty
line and 54% in abject poverty
Kosovo
• Ethnic Albanians
comprised about 14% of
Serbia’s population
– Most of the Albanians
lived in the province of
Kosovo
• Throughout the 1990s,
Serbian military and
police forces battled the
Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA or UCK)
• By 1998, the Serbs had
embarked on a
campaign to
systematically cleanse
Kosovo of its ethnic
Albanian population
Camp Stenkovich II in
Macedonia held approximately
20,000 refugees.
Kosovo
• Diplomatic efforts centering around talks at
Rambouillet, France broke down thanks to Serb
intransigence
• On March 24, 1999, NATO initiated Operation Allied
Force in order to
– Stop the Serb offensive in Kosovo,
– Force a withdrawal of Serb troops from Kosovo,
– Allow democratic self-government in Kosovo,
– Allow a NATO-led international peacekeeping force
into Kosovo, and
– Allow the safe and peaceful return of Kosovar
Albanian refugees.
Kosovo
• Still the West was
unwilling to commit
ground troops and
Operation Allied Force
was entirely an air
campaign
– An Army aviation task force
was positioned in Albania
but not used because of
numerous difficulties
– In one sense the KLA
served as allied the ground
force
F-16s at Aviano Air
Base, Italy preparing to
launch in support of
Operation Allied Force
Kosovo
• On June 9, 1999, Serbia
agreed to a Military
Technical Agreement
that ended the 11-week
war
• On June 12, KFOR
entered Kosovo under
the authority of UN
Security Resolution
1244
• Ironically, upon entering
Kosovo, one of KFOR’s
main duties was
protecting the Serb
minority
Kosovo
• Kosovo remains a difficult international problem
– In 2008 Kosovo unilaterally declared its
independence
• On February 12, 2002 former Serbian President
Milosevic went on trial at the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
(ICTY) in The Hague.
– He died in 2006 before a verdict was reached
Kosovo
• From an international law
perspective, OAF got
mixed reviews
– It violated traditional
principles of
nonintervention and
nonaggression
– It could set a precedent for
using military force for
humanitarian reasons
– It represented the use of
force by a regional
organization (NATO)
without UN Security
Council authorization
The Legitimacy of Intervention
• “Is there some threshold
at which human rights
violations become
unacceptable and a
state’s sovereignty no
longer precludes
intervention? Is it the
500th slain ethnic citizen
or the next refugee after
10,000 have been forced
to leave home that
triggers intervention or
makes it legitimate?”
– Robert Tomes
Holocaust victims in a mass grave
Track Record of International
Efforts
• The United Nations Charter proclaims one of the UN’s
principle purposes as being “to maintain international
peace and security”
• Sometimes the UN effectively intervened in these crises,
sometimes it didn’t
– Same for the United States
• The US found that its status as world economic and
military superpower would not necessarily equate to
unchallenged world leadership
– In the post-Cold War period the US would meet a host
of new challenges within the UN and from nongovernmental organizations as well as from new
enemies
Next
• Final Exam