Global Policy Forum

By Jim Hoagland

The small but brutal wars of Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have brought the United Nations to a moment of truth. The choice that looms is captured in a few candid phrases by Kofi Annan, the unconventionally direct UN secretary-general.

''We have in the past prepared for peacekeeping operations with a best- case scenario: The parties sign an agreement, we assume they will honor it, so we send in lightly armed forces to help them,'' Mr. Annan said in his soft but steely voice the other afternoon.

But recent events, led by the capture of some 500 UN peacekeepers (now released) by Sierra Leone's rebels and the collapse of peace efforts in the Congo, have persuaded him that ''the time has come for us to base our planning on worst-case scenarios: to be surprised by cooperation, if we get it. And to go in prepared for all eventualities, including full combat, if we don't.''

This would be a major philosophical turn for a political body built on good intentions, not on coercive power. But Mr. Annan says the UN peacekeeper will become an endangered species if the transformation does not come.

The most important member nations have shown themselves unwilling to provide troops, money or timely logistical help for more assertive UN peacekeeping, even as many of them step up their criticisms of the world body's effectiveness.

The failures in Africa stand in particularly stark contrast to the rhetoric of President Bill Clinton, who proclaimed an ''African Renaissance'' during his trip through the continent in 1998 and plans a triumphal visit to Nigeria at the end of August - even as Africa's conflicts rage on out of control.

Fighting between Uganda and Rwanda, and a string of broken promises to the United Nations by President Laurent Kabila of the Congo, have sabotaged the long-promised deployment of a UN force in the Congo. Mr. Annan, who avoids attacking member governments in public, is scathing about Mr. Kabila's treachery, and pessimistic about the Congo's prospects, in private conversations.

Mr. Annan's ideas on limiting UN peacekeeping operations to situations where he can field troops that are sufficiently armed and trained to dominate the field militarily parallel in some ways U.S. conditions for intervening with overwhelming force or not at all that grew out of Vietnam and Somalia.

''If we don't want to do it properly, should we do it at all? That is what the Security Council members must now ask themselves,'' Mr. Annan told me. The time has passed when the 15 council members can provide themselves with ''an alibi'' by passing peacekeeping resolutions that cannot be implemented. ''Some of them vote for and then refuse to contribute troops to a force,'' Mr. Annan said.

If raising the force-level threshold means fewer UN peacekeeping operations, as it inevitably will in present circumstances, that at least clarifies things, the secretary-general says.

He made these same points in private to the Security Council's 15 ambassadors at a weekend retreat he organized in June.

The 14 current UN peacekeeping operations account for more than a quarter of all such actions undertaken by the world body since 1948.

Lightly armed peacekeeping was to be the norm, and the more muscular operations known as peace enforcement the exception. But the destructive power of modern weapons available to any rogue force is turning those priorities upside down. Good intentions and promises count for little against an AK-47 or a Stinger surface-to-air missile.

Washington, Moscow and most European capitals have shied away from broader involvement in the Third World as the complexities and ferocity of its conflicts have intensified. Irked by recent criticism from the Organization of African Unity for its controversial role in the Rwanda crisis of the mid- 1990s, France is reportedly refusing to join new multinational operations in Africa.

And when Mr. Annan broached the subject of moving a U.S. aircraft carrier toward Sierra Leone during the hostage crisis there, he met delay and obfuscation from Washington. (Britain's prompt response set the stage for the hostage rescue.) George W. Bush's attacks on U.S. involvement abroad seem to have made the Clinton administration even more timid as the campaign season heats up.

Mr. Annan is telling the powers that it is time to put up or shut up: International peacekeeping is on the way to the bone yard of history unless new focus and new resources are invested. Which choice would Mr. Bush make? And Al Gore? These are questions worth getting answered in this campaign.