Global Policy Forum

By James Robbins

NYPD's budget is 10 times bigger than for >UN peacekeeping... Photo credit: BBC News

I kept being confronted by these words this week, as I digested speech after speech urging the United Nations to do a better job of keeping peace around the world.

Courtesy. Professionalism. Respect. True, that doesn't sound like a bad first draft as a motto for UN blue-helmeted soldiers faced with the terrifying responsibility of trying to get between people intent on killing, and then stop them.

Of course, it's not a UN motto at all. The reason I've seen the words so often as 170 separate motorcades shuttle the presidents, prime ministers, sheikhs and kings around Manhattan between occasional sleep and very frequent speeches is because the words go everywhere with the leaders. There, below the banks of flashing lights on literally thousands of police patrol cars, is that motto, emblazoned on the sides of every vehicle. Courtesy. Professionalism. Respect. The mission statement of the New York Police Department.

The NYPD is not trying to keep the peace around the world, of course, just in New York city. Tough enough, but surely not so tough it justifies the Police Department having 10 times more money to spend each year than the United Nations is given to organise global peacekeeping. The police have a budget of about $2.5bn: more than the United Nations has available for all of its core functions.

Flashes of collecive guilt

So, it's been a week of words, fine words many of them, from the leaders of almost every nation on the planet competing for our attention. Reporters pass trestle tables at UN headquarters barely able to support the weight of words: texts of speeches vying for our attention. It's easy to trace the way evil in the world has outrun and often outperformed the United Nations in the past decade. In the speeches here, leaders just drop in the words Rwanda and Srebrenica to produce a little shudder, a flash of collective guilt even. Rwanda and Srebrenica are an appalling shorthand for genocide the world watched, and did not stop.

Kofi Annan, speaking to the Security Council, was blunt. The Secretary General told the small group of 15 leaders who wield the greatest power: "Many in the present generation are losing confidence in the ability of the United nations to make the difference between war and peace," and "only determined action, prompt, united and effective can restore the reputation of the United Nations as a credible force for peace and justice"

Moving beyond words

With that pretty merciless judgement, of course, Kofi Annan was trying to shock and even shame the leaders into action. This week at the UN has all been about moving beyond words. So, when President Clinton told the rest of the world in his last speech on the UN stage that countries must be ready to place themselves between the sides in civil wars, not just stand on the sidelines, many - not all - agreed with the sentiment but marvelled at the hypocrisy.

The United States wants others to take the life and death risks, not American soldiers, and Mr Clinton can't persuade Congress to pay the huge arrears it owes the UN to do its job.

But, for all that, the ground is shifting towards global support for stronger peacekeeping. You do get a clear sense of that from the range of speeches. More and more governments are persuaded the UN needs far greater support. In practical terms, that does mean committees and councils of the UN will work on specific plans in the coming months. It will mean big bureaucratic changes at UN headquarters - rival departments working much more closely, with more experts gathering intelligence to try to spot internal conflicts before they start.

War is now generally within states, not between them, driven by ethnic rivalries in the main, where one group tries to monopolise power and wealth, and impoverish, weaken or even destroy all other groups. Seeing the tell tale signs early on is vital: signs like the suppression of a broad press, and using the media to spread ethnic hatred. But if the UN can't stop that, and a crisis moves to conflict, atrocities against civilians then intervention has to be decisive. Next time, that means something better than a hotch-potch of battalions from a few countries prepared to contribute, with officers often at each others throats, who have never trained together leading undisciplined, ill equipped troops.

Concrete results

So the idea of a UN Military Training College to create teams of officers from different armies happy and trained to work together is gaining ground. Other, real changes are in the air. That doesn't mean the debate over sending in the UN is over. Far from it, amid all the words this week, China and Russia spelt out again their powerful opposition to most intervention, to anything which infringes the sovereignty of states.

But Russia is involved in peacekeeping, and does support it actively, as in Sierra Leone, when an elected government wants help. The test now will be of political will. What does this week's greater commitment to UN peacekeeping mean in practice?

There have been plenty of fine words: political leaders are good at those. They can lose a lot though, in translation - translation into tough action that is. That will be the real test of this millennium summit. Has it given such a strong sense of leadership and direction that the rhetoric will have results? Call me an optimist, but I think it has. Then again, I am a realist too, I hope. Change will be less fast, less far reaching, than the victims of too many increasingly savage civil wars urgently need it to be.