THE UNITED NATIONS, REGIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, AND PACIFIC SETTLEMENT: SUCCESS OR FAILURE?

How successful have all these efforts by agencies and agents of the United Nations been in helping to manage crises and resolve conflicts and disputes? To what extent, aside from purely tactical successes, has the organization been able to achieve its major purposes as stated in Article 1 of the United Nations Char­ter?—"To maintain international peace and security . . . and to bring about by peaceful means and in conformity with the principles of justice and interna­tional law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace."

In making an assessment, we should distinguish the tactical successes—

429 The Interaction of States: Conflict and Conflict Resolution

such as securing a cease-fire—and the long-range successes of attaining ultimate political objectives. For example, United Nations mediators have arranged cease­fire agreements in many crises, but the organization has failed in those same crises to bring about political settlements that were envisaged in broad resolu­tions passed by the consultative organs. Although the figures in Table 15-5 on the successes of mediation, fact-finding, interposition, and supervision are reasonably encouraging, they do not reveal much about the general effectiveness of the United Nations in fulfilling its main responsibilities in the field of interna­tional peace. A particular agency established by the consultative organs may have completed its task successfully without bringing about the long-range politi­cal objectives of the Security Council or General Assembly. All the reporting, bargaining, or supervisory activities of the organization have been aimed primarily at relieving or managing crises, not at resolving the underlying conflicts. To make some assessment of the overall effectiveness of the United Nations in maintaining peace and ensuring peaceful change, therefore, let us measure the actual out­comes of the crises, conflicts, and disputes it has handled against the long-range goals or the major outlines of settlement that were enunciated in the resolutions of the General Assembly or Security Council. In all thirty-two cases, these bodies passed resolutions that clearly stated the long-range political objec­tives to be achieved. In the Korean case, for instance, the stated objective was to bring about the peaceful reunification of the country. The organization played a role in bringing an armistice to the Korean War, but the objective of reunifica­tion has not been achieved. In other cases, on the other hand, the stated objective has been to promote the independence of colonial territories. By organizing plebiscites, helping to draft constitutions, and placing diplomatic pressures on metropolitan governments to relinquish control over their overseas territories, the United Nations has successfully assisted in achieving the long-range goals that were originally outlined.

In the thirty-two crises, conflicts, and disputes in our sample, the consul­tative organs listed in their major resolutions a total of fifty-four ultimate political objectives to be achieved through fact-finding, mediation, interposition, and supervisory activities. Looking at the ultimate outcome of the cases (and remem­bering that all cases where the consultative organs merely passed resolutions were excluded), we see that thirty-one of the objectives were eventually achieved; the United Nations failed to obtain the desired results, whether acceptance of some particular peace formula and political settlement, "peaceful change," or compromise outcome, in the other twenty-three objectives. In terms of its own goals, the United Nations thus succeeded in 57 percent of the cases where it has taken action beyond mere debate and passage of resolutions. The reader may judge whether this figure represents success or failure.

This figure can be broken down if we wish to judge what issues and conflicts the United Nations has been relatively most successful in resolving. The thirty-two conflicts and disputes in the sample can be reduced, on the basis of the parties involved, to three types: colonial, cold war, and non-cold

430 The Interaction of States: Conflict and Conflict Resolution

war.³⁴ Table 15-7 shows the rates of success and failure of the United Nations in dealing with these three types of conflict. As previously, our measure of success is the number of long-range political objectives, as stated in various resolutions of the consultative organs, that were ultimately achieved.

Even though the sample within each of the categories is small, the differ­ences in achieving stated objectives in the three types of conflicts and disputes are significant. Where the United Nations attempted to achieve compromise outcomes or formal settlements, it was very successful in colonial conflicts and least successful in cold-war conflicts. On the basis of such figures, one would predict that, as in the past, the United Nations will have a higher rate of success in situations where the major powers are not directly involved.³⁵

One final point needs to be stated about resolving conflicts through the United Nations, because it is not made apparent in any of the figures pre­sented so far. We have used throughout this chapter the terms "outcome" and

³⁴ The Congo problem could be listed in each of the categories, depending upon the stage of the conflict. For this analysis it is classified as a non-cold-war conflict.

³⁵ The figures reported in the preceding pages are strongly affected by the definitions of success and the methods used to determine success. Ernst Haas, in his Collective Security and the Future International System (Denver: University of Denver Monograph Series in World Affairs, Vol. V, No. 1, 1968), arrives at somewhat different conclusions because he defines the problem differently. The reader may wish to avoid any judgment about the effectiveness of the United Nations mechanisms for conflict resolution until he compares the figures cited above with those listed by Haas. Professor Haas took fifty-five "disputes," which were referred to the United Nations (forty-five cases) or to both the UN and regional organizations (ten cases). The following results emerge from his study

1. Hostilities occurred in thirty-two of the fifty-five disputes.

2. The hostilities were stopped "largely" as a result of action by international organization in ten of the thirty-two instances, or 31 percent.

3. Eighteen out of the fifty-five cases (33 percent) were resolved partly or wholly on the basis of UN resolutions.

4. Haas included in attempts at conflict resolution only those actions taken by the Security Council or General Assembly, or by organizations established by them. He did not count each attempt at conflict resolution by each organ in each dispute. Thus, if two bodies attempted mediation or conciliation in one case, it was counted only once. The case, rather than the attempt, is the baseline of the Haas study. Keeping these methods in mind, the rates of success are somewhat lower than those reported in Table 15-6. Procedures % Successful

Inquiry 43

Collective mediation 57

Single mediator 40

Cease-fire ordered 58

Truce supervisory organizations 56 Enforcement action 50

Police force 75

Secretary-General's "presence" 46 Committee of experts 0

5. Haas also measures the success of the United Nations in terms of the types of parties and issues involved. However, the measure is successful settlements as a proportion of the number of cases, not the number of objectives as a proportion of all the political objectives outlined in UN resolutions. He found that the UN was successful in 42 percent of the colonial conflicts (compared to 71 percent in this study), 26 percent of the cold-war cases (33 percent), and 29 percent of the "other" cases (compared to 56 percent in my non-cold-war category).

Table 15-7Objectives Achieved by the United Nations in Three Kinds of Conflicts and Disputes

"settlement," as though there were something final about the results achieved through United Nations actions. However, although this organization has been instrumental in bringing about formal settlements to colonial conflicts by helping the territories in question to achieve independence and establish viable govern­ments, in many other cases its efforts have at best merely put a lid on extensive violence, without really resolving the underlying issues. The agenda of the United Nations is still littered with situations, characterized as a threat to the peace, that have been impossible to resolve in terms of substantive settlements based on compromises over conflicting objectives. While the United Nations has under­taken peace supervisory functions in the Kashmir, Suez, Middle East and Cyprus areas, sanctions against Rhodesia, and many queries into apartheid policies in South Africa, it has not been able to achieve in these cases anything that could be called a settlement or compromise outcome, much less peaceful change. Violence in many crises has been reduced, if not completely controlled; the major powers have in some cases been excluded from unilateral interventions; and negotiations between the parties to conflicts have been undertaken occasion­ally; but no settlements have been achieved. These are "frozen" conflicts, little cold wars that will persist for many years. Some, presumably, will become "pas­sive settlements," rendered obsolete by the passage of time or new diplomatic circumstances. If the United Nations can help to maintain them in a cold state and prevent the intrusions of the major powers, it will, of course, have achieved significant gains, if not formal settlements. One general conclusion about the United Nations must therefore be that, except for easing the transition from colonialism (peaceful change), this organization has been effective primarily as an agent for controlling crises. It has a much less enviable record in actually resolving conflicts; and in cold-war issues, as Hammarskjold noted, the United Nations has been mostly ineffective.³⁶

Another conclusion derives from the record of accomplishments and failures in the United Nations since 1965. In fact, few conflicts have even been submitted to the organization since that time, and on those what have, action has been mostly ineffective. Members debated the Soviet invasion of Czechoslo-

³⁶ General Assembly, 15th Session, Official Records, Annual Report of the Work of the Organiza­tion, 16 June 1969-15 June 1960, Supplement No. 1 (A/4390 Add. 1), 1960. For further analysis of the UN and international conflict, see Mark W. Zacher, International Conflict and Collective Security, 1946-1977 (New York: Praeger, 1979).

432 The Interaction of States: Conflict and Conflict Resolution

vakia, the Indian intervention in Bangladesh in 1971, the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974; but the most they could accomplish was to pass cease-fire resolutions that were ignored or implemented only after a successful military outcome had already been assured. One lengthy mediation attempt in the Middle East on behalf of the United Nations, by Gunnar Jarring, came to no positive conclusion. And some important conflicts, such as the 1978 Ogaden war between Somalia and Ethiopia, were not even referred to the organization. Except for some minor disputes, the perennial issue of apartheid in South Africa, and South Africa's administration of Namibia, it ap­pears that the United Nations has become primarily a forum for discussion of global nonsecurity problems, such as resource development, and a place where the coalition of developing countries will seek to exert influence on the industrial countries to bring about a more equitable world trade system. The United Na­tions may become, then, more of an arena for conducting a general North-South conflict and dialogue than an institution where more traditional forms of international conflict will be handled.

These comments, however, ignore the records accomplished by regional organizations. In a recent study completed by Ernst Haas and his colleagues, some comparisons are made between the effectiveness of the United Nations and that of regional organizations.³⁷ Basing their study on all disputes and con­flicts—ninety-eight cases in the United Nations and forty-eight cases in regional organizations between 1945 and 1970—the authors show some significant differ­ences. For example, in general, the United Nations has dealt with more significant disputes and conflicts—that is, those representing a greater threat to peace or involving greater loss of life—than those dealt with by regional organizations. Eighty-five percent of the conflicts and disputes handled by regional organiza­tions such as the Organization of American States and the Organization of Afri­can Unity were rated as "insignificant" or of low intensity. The corresponding figure for the United Nations is 63 percent. Moreover, the higher the intensity of the conflict, the less the regional organizations seemed to be able to accom­plish in terms of helping to stop hostilities, isolating the conflicts, generally abating the levels of tension and hostile activities, or helping to bring about a final settlement. Even though the record of the United Nations is not strong in respect to all these tasks, it has, comparatively speaking, been more successful in bringing some sort of control to bear on high-intensity crises. Haas and his colleagues also found, as we might suspect, that the United Nations has a much better record in dealing with crises involving small and medium states than in the case of conflicts involving great powers. But this pattern does not hold

³⁷ Haas, Butterworth, and Nye, Conflict Management by International Organizations. Haas also presents interesting findings on the success rates of the UN and various regional organizations, identifying types of issues, power of the adversaries, and types of conflict-resolving activities. The number of cases is much larger than that presented in this chapter, since all issues on the international organizations' agendas were included, not only cases involving some form of action. Overall, the chances of an international organization's achieving a significant conflict-management success are about one out of four.

433 The Interaction of States: Conflict and Conflict Resolution

for regional organizations; they have had in many cases somewhat more influence on the major powers' conflict behavior than on that of some of the small states that were involved in the cases.

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