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Security Council Reform 1 Compressed

The document discusses how the permanent membership of certain countries on the UN Security Council supports imperialism and allows those countries to engage in wars of aggression without accountability. It also argues that the existing structures mean no effective conflict resolution can occur and that the UNSC must reform or risk a collapse in its legitimacy.

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Security Council Reform 1 Compressed

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PRO

Imperialism
Permanent Security Council membership supports imperialism

[Yes, the source on this is The Sturg. So far, this is the only card that I could find that says permanent
membership should be abolished.

The Sturg, 2-22, 24, Eliminate The Permanent Membership of the UN Security Council, Eliminate The
Permanent Membership of the UN Security Council, https://medium.com/digital-global-
traveler/eliminate-the-permanent-membership-of-the-un-security-council-8d8b1d2c45d7

The UN Security Council has five permanent members who have ultimate veto power on any
resolution that the UN puts forward . These countries: the United States, United Kingdom, France,
China, and Russia. Well, I think you can see where I may be going with this article. The latter has just decided to take unilateral action
against another country and invaded Ukraine yesterday. They planned a full-scale attack on many important regions
and cities, including the capital city of Kyiv. There are already massive casualties on both sides. The
problem is, Russia, being a permanent member of the security council, would’ve and permanently has
veto power for any resolution brought forward by the Security Council. The invasion was happening in
real-time as the Security Council was meeting to make a resolution against this very action. It’s not
just Russia though. China is on this list too . They have their own unique problems. China has been criticized and been accused
of many human rights violations. They have also taken aggressive positions against other countries in the
region, including many bordering countries over land disputes, and of course, there’s the matter of
Taiwan, which I won’t get too detailed about since it boasts a long, complicated history. I’ve definitely
mentioned two of the countries and briefly touched on why it’s problematic for them to have massive power in an organization dedicated to
world peace created after the last great world war. The original intention of the UN Security Council and having permanent members was to
maintain world peace and offer stability. What this has turned into is a complicated global political game that has allowed the five permanent
members to get away with murder, essentially. I don’t even have to mention the fact that the three other great powers contained within the
permanent members have been major world players in meddling in other countries' affairs and or colonialism. I find it interesting that the
Yes, even the
remaining three permanent members in the membership that still own various overseas territories and dependencies.
United States has a number of overseas territories such as Guam, American Samoa, Mariana Islands,
Puerto Rico, etc. The sun never sets on the British Empire, right? Well, this is less true today but there
are still a large number of territories still claimed by Great Britain as well, same with France. French
Guiana in South America is still a French colony and is actually technically part of the European Union.
The point is that the UN Security Council allowed these major powers to justify their own imperialism
and exercise of power. Russia is exercising its major global power now. I’m not excusing, by any stretch, what Russia is doing at all, but
they’re essentially allowed to and the rest of the world can just watch and now stay out of the conflict for the most part. It’s still possible that
the very thing that was designed to keep peace around the world by design will end up being the very thing that starts the next major world
war. The permanent membership of the Security Council is no longer needed. If there are no countries
who can hold veto power over the rest of the world in making resolutions, then countries will be more
motivated to work together to solve conflicts and hold major global powers accountable when they
clearly overstep their boundaries. Eliminating the veto power of these five countries will essentially
balance the global scale. It will send a message to the rest of the world that aggressive action against
other countries is something the rest of the world won’t tolerate. I hope that the world realizes this
soon and hope that there is a feasible way to dissolve an originally good-intentioned plan for world
peace so that we can maintain some semblance of it.
War
Permanent members engaged in wars of aggression

Sithembile Mbete is director of programs at Futurelect, a Johannesburg-based nongovernmental

A serious discussion about reforming the UN Security Council is long overdue. The structure of the
Security Council—with five permanent members (P5) who wield veto power and ten nonpermanent
elected members serving two-year terms—is anachronistic, reflecting the configuration of global power
at the end of World War II. Rather than act as guardians of peace, the P5 have often contributed to
violence. Russia, most egregiously, is embroiled in a war with Ukraine that many fear could trigger a
third world war. Other permanent members have also been implicated in major conflicts on the
Security Council’s agenda, including the United Kingdom’s support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen,
France’s interventions in the Sahel, China’s support for Myanmar’s military junta, and the United
States’ (as well as Russia’s) ongoing involvement in Syria.
Conflict Resolution
Existing structures mean no conflict resolution

Dayal, 3-1, 23, Anjali Dayal is a senior scholar in residence at the U.S. Institute of Peace and an associate
professor of international politics at Fordham University., The U.N. Security Council Was Designed for
Deadlock — Can it Change? https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/03/un-security-council-was-
designed-deadlock-can-it-change

By design, the UNSC cannot address some of the biggest issues of war and peace in the world: it
cannot act to address, mitigate or stop human suffering in conflict when one of its permanent
members is a party to the conflict. It was explicitly built to be unfair, giving the victors of the World
War II an outsized role in international peace and security, marginalizing whole regions and continents
— particularly former colonies that gained independence after 1945 — and it was explicitly structured
to be easily deadlocked, with any of the P5 able to unilaterally grind its work to a halt.
Security Council Credibility & Peacekeeping Links
UN Legitimacy Links
UNSC must reform or it will collapse

Ian Martin, 2-26, 24, Ian Martin has been a special representative of the UN secretary-general,
secretary-general of Amnesty International and executive director of Security Council Report., PassBlue,
The Key to Security Council Reform Is Fewer Permanent Members, Not More, The Key to Security
Council Reform Is Fewer Permanent Members, Not More - PassBlue,
https://www.passblue.com/2024/02/26/the-key-to-security-council-reform-is-fewer-permanent-
members-not-more/

As the United Nations approaches its Summit of the Future in September, the anger of under-
represented regions is compelling stronger statements of commitment to reforming the Security
Council. Secretary-General António Guterres warns that “the alternative to reform is further
fragmentation — it’s reform or rupture.”

Pressure for reform now

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, its permanent seat at the U.N. Security Council (UNSC)
quickly snarled the prospects of multilateral action. Eighty-one of the U.N.’s 193 member-states
cosponsored a resolution denouncing the invasion — a clear violation of the core principles of the U.N.
Charter and international law — and Russia, exercising its privileges as a permanent member,
immediately and unilaterally vetoed it. The year since Russia’s invasion has only strengthened an
already-widespread consensus on how broken the UNSC is, with subsequent calls for change
gathering real momentum.

Lack of reform causing an existential crisis

Michael Kelly, law student, 2020, ichael J. Kelly, United Nations Security Council Permanent Membership
and the Veto Problem, 52 Case W. Res. J. Int'l L. 101 (2020) , Available at:
https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/jil/vol52/iss1/8, United Nations Security Council Permanent
Membership and the Veto Problem, United Nations Security Council Permanent Membership and the
Veto Problem (case.edu)

Indeed, many in the international community believe that reform of the permanent membership is
needed so badly that it has risen to the level being a near-existential matter.11 Jordanian prince and
former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein’s view is emblematic of that
widely-shared perspective: al-Hussein decried the sense among some at the United Nations that the
“pentarchy” of Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States “is running too much of the
business.” He was alluding to the countries’ ability to veto resolutions in cases like alleged injustices in
Syria’s war or by Israeli forces against Palestinians. “When they cooperate things can move; when they
don’t everything becomes stuck and the organization in general becomes so marginal to the
resolution of these sorts of horrific conflicts that we see,” Zeid said. “That has to change: In the end
the organization can collapse at great cost to the international community. There is a sense that the
permanent five have created a logjam by dint of their proclivity to use the veto, and the paralysis — less
so the U.K. and France — but of course, the U.S., Russia and China quite frequently”. . . .12

Security Council has no credibility now

Stewart Patrick, June 28, 2023, Stewart Patrick is senior fellow and director of the Global Order and
Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His primary areas of research
focus are the shifting foundations of world order, the future of American internationalism, and the
requirements for effective multilateral cooperation on transnational challenges.,
https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/06/28/un-security-council-reform-what-world-thinks-pub-90032,
Compounding these frustrations about membership, each of the P5 countries retains a veto
permitting it to unilaterally block Security Council resolutions inimical to its national interests (as
Russia has done with respect to Ukraine). The result is frequent council paralysis, exacerbated by
deepening geopolitical rivalry between Western democracies and authoritarian China and Russia. To a
growing proportion of the world’s governments and citizens, the council today is both feckless and
unjust, dominated by irresponsible and unrepresentative powers inclined to abuse their position rather
than safeguard the peace. Restoring the council’s effectiveness and legitimacy, critics contend,
requires updating its anachronistic composition and unfair decisionmaking rules to better reflect
ongoing shifts in global power and emerging centers of moral authority.

No reform kills credibility

Yet, pressure for Security Council expansion and veto reform will surely grow as the distribution of
power and the nature of security threats shift ever further from what they were in 1945. Absent
structural changes, the council’s performance and legitimacy will inevitably suffer. Given these stakes,
the world requires fresh thinking on reform pathways that will help the council meet the moment.

Credibility will continue to decline

A deteriorating status quo is the most likely outcome. International institutions are notoriously
impervious to fundamental change. Once established, they create entrenched interests committed to
the status quo. Accordingly, transformational change in world politics is most likely in the aftermath of
catastrophes, when a major crisis wipes the slate clean, weakens attachment to existing
arrangements, and encourages actors to consider novel norms, rules, and frameworks. It is no
coincidence that the Security Council (and the UN itself) emerged after the bloodiest war in world
history. The relevant question today is whether the war in Ukraine is a sufficient geopolitical shock to
bring about another moment of creation. Most contributors to this compendium believe it is not.
Rather, they anticipate that the status quo will persist, at the cost of declining council performance and
legitimacy.

Need to keep the Security Council and reform it

The stakes for council reform are high. For all its shortcomings, the Security Council remains, as Zhang
writes, “an indispensable stabilizing force” and a “cornerstone of the international order.” There is
simply nothing on the horizon to replace it. Failure to update its composition and rules, however,
could imperil these enduring strengths. Disenchanted aspirants to permanent membership could
resort to international civil disobedience, reducing their financial and diplomatic support for the UN,
pursuing their security objectives in alternative venues, and broadly undermining the council’s
centrality to international peace. Such disillusionment is likely to be especially acute in India—an
emerging diplomatic, economic, military, and technological powerhouse that is also now the world’s
most-populous nation.

Collapse of credulity means non-compliance

Stewart Patrick, June 28, 2023, Stewart Patrick is senior fellow and director of the Global Order and
Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His primary areas of research
focus are the shifting foundations of world order, the future of American internationalism, and the
requirements for effective multilateral cooperation on transnational challenges.,
https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/06/28/un-security-council-reform-what-world-thinks-pub-90032,
More generally, perceptions among the broader UN membership of the council’s growing illegitimacy
could intensify noncompliance with its resolutions, including those pertaining to arms control and
sanctions. Letting the council go the way of the bygone League of Nations would be unacceptable.
“Without the Security Council,” Anjali Dayal writes, “even nominal fidelity to norms of peaceful
conflict management, individual rights, and the protection of civilians could fall away.” The world of
the twenty-first century desperately needs a healthy multilateral body that is grounded in
international law and capable of advancing global peace. Achieving that result requires adapting the
council we have inherited to the new global realities we face.

UNSC must adopt to the modern world and increase representation in order to boost
its legitimacy

United Nations, November 20, 2018, https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/ga12091.doc.htm Member

States Call for Removing Veto Power, Expanding Security Council to Include New Permanent Seats, as
General Assembly Debates Reform Plans for 15-Member Organ

She expressed gratitude to the co-facilitators of negotiations and said Member States are united in their
conviction to reform the Council. “At least 80 world leaders emphasized this need,” she said, referring
to discussions during the Assembly’s general debate. The Council must adapt to new political
realities, with increased representation boosting its legitimacy and the implementation of its
decisions while strengthening the concept of multilateralism. [She= MARÍA FERNANDA ESPINOSA
GARCÉS (Ecuador), President of the General Assembly] She said that as Assembly President, she
commits her full support to Council reform, a process that must be driven by Member States. “We must
seriously stick to a framework for dialogue,” she noted, encouraging Member States to explore
pragmatic approaches to advance progress. The issue is complex and closely intertwined with efforts
to ensure international peace and security. As such, Member States must do everything possible to
answer calls for greater transparency, she said, reiterating her support for the shared aspiration to
increase the Council’s accountability. The common African position has garnered substantial support
from Member States, he continued, reiterating a need to “redress the historical injustice of not being
represented in the permanent category”. However, divergence in the positions of Member States and
interest groups on reform models continue to challenge progress on building consensus on all five
clusters of the intergovernmental negotiations. “We have a unique opportunity to keep the
international system on the track of dynamic and effective democratic multilateralism,” he said. Africa
will continue to advocate for meaningful reform that will make the Security Council more responsive to
present and emerging challenges.

Reforms critical to the credibility of the UN

United Nations, November 20, 2018, https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/ga12091.doc.htm Member
States Call for Removing Veto Power, Expanding Security Council to Include New Permanent Seats, as
General Assembly Debates Reform Plans for 15-Member Organ

TALAL RASHID N. M. AL-KHALIFA (Qatar), associating himself with the Arab Group, said increasing
international challenges in peace and security continue to compel Member States to propose reforms
to improve the Council. Such reforms remain vital to the overall credibility of the United Nations.
Ensuring success of the reform process requires Member States’ recognition of the interrelation
between the clusters under discussion. Qatar will continue to support comprehensive reform that
renders the Council more inclusive and effective. “We must grant small and medium‑ sized countries
more opportunity,” he said, adding that such an initiative should also go hand‑ in‑ hand with improving
the Council’s working methods. Restricting the use of the veto has been proven to stop and reduce
heinous crimes.

Without reform the UNSC will lose credibility

United Nations, November 20, 2018, https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/ga12091.doc.htm Member

States Call for Removing Veto Power, Expanding Security Council to Include New Permanent Seats, as
General Assembly Debates Reform Plans for 15-Member Organ

EDUARD FESKO (Ukraine) said that while Member States agree that the Council is in dire need of serious
reform, consensus on the matter ends there. While the Council’s working methods have improved and
its activities have become more transparent, the deficiencies in its design, composition and
decision‑ making processes remain largely unaddressed. In its current form, the Council is ill‑ suited to
effectively address twenty‑ first century challenges. Yet, Member States are stuck in a perpetual cycle
repeating well‑ known positions on Council reform year after year, unable to make any tangible
progress. While the United Nations procrastinates on Council reform, people are dying because the
organ is simply incapable of helping them. Without genuine reform, the Council will also lose its
relevance and standing in the wider international context. As the Assembly embarks on a new round
of consultations through intergovernmental negotiations, his delegation is open to all progressive
options and new approaches to Council reform, in particular those aimed at streamlining the negotiation
process and making it more pragmatic and result‑ oriented. More specifically, he called for an
additional seat to be allocated to the Group of Eastern European States in the category of elected
members, and expressed support for all initiatives aimed at limiting the veto right of permanent Council
members.

Reform key to the continue credibility of the Council

United Nations, November 20, 2018, https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/ga12091.doc.htm Member

States Call for Removing Veto Power, Expanding Security Council to Include New Permanent Seats, as
General Assembly Debates Reform Plans for 15-Member Organ

MATHIAS LICHARZ (Germany), associating himself with the Group of Four, said that intergovernmental
negotiations appear to be less and less the right forum to achieve progress on this important issue.
Member States cannot allow the majority of Member States who want to make progress to be held
hostage by a small number of nations who refuse to move from a circular discussion to a linear
negotiation process. “If we do not succeed in reforming the Security Council, the Security Council will
lose even more of its already dented credibility and will be overshadowed by other global
decision‑ making bodies or worse: unilateral decision‑ making alone,” he warned. If Member States
do not change it, the Council will become irrelevant.
War Risks High

Global security risks are high

VERA BERGENGRUENMARCH 11, 2024, Time, U.S. Intel Chiefs Warn of Threats To “Increasingly Fragile
World Order”, https://time.com/6899803/global-threats-report-hearing/

U.S. intelligence leaders warned Monday that the country faces an "increasingly fragile world order" as
it navigates a range of global threats exacerbated by adversaries' use of emerging technologies like AI. "The threat of malig n actors exploiting
these tools and technology to undercut U.S. interests and democracy is particularly potent as voters go to the polls in more than 60 elections
around the globe this year," Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the Senate Intelligence Committee at its ann ual hearing on the
top threats to the nation. U.S. intelligence agencies are focused on China's efforts to manipulate the 2024
presidential election and the potential for bad actors to use AI tools to create and amplify
disinformation campaigns. The U.S. is facing "an ambitious but anxious China, a confrontational Russia, some regional powers such
as Iran, and more capable non-state actors [who] are challenging longstanding rules of the international system as well as U.S. primacy within
it," the intelligence community said in its new 40-page unclassified report on worldwide threats. The hearing represents an annual opportunity
for lawmakers to publicly question the country’s top intelligence chiefs. In addition to Haines, CIA Director William Burns, FBI Director
Christopher Wray, State Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research Brett Holmgren, National Security Agency Director Gen.
Timothy Haugh, and the head of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen Jeffrey Kruse, appeared before the Senate panel. Here are
some of the threats covered in the hearing and report. Intelligence officials assess that China "may attempt to influence the U.S. elections in
2024 at some level because of its desire to sideline critics of China and magnify US societal divisions," according to the report. Under President
Xi Jinping, "Chinese leaders believe it is essential to project power globally in order to be able to resist U.S. pressure," Haines said. But she also
noted that Xi's focus on boosting China’s economy may temper any election interference, which would jeopardize the relationship with the U.S.
and potentially damage China’s ability to attract foreign investment. TikTok under fire Lawmakers from both parties raised co ncerns about the
popular social-media app, which is mentioned briefly in the intelligence report. "It uses the data of Americans to basically read your mind a nd
predict what videos you want to see," Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said. "The problem is the algorithm that powers it is
controlled by a company in China that must do whatever the Chinese Communist Party tells them to do." In the report, U.S. spy chiefs note that
China is “demonstrating a higher degree of sophistication in its influence activity, including experimenting with generative Al.” TikTok accounts
run by a Chinese propaganda arm reportedly targeted both Democrat and Republican candidates from during the 2022 U.S. midterm elections.
There is bipartisan agreement that the video-sharing app, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, poses a national security threat. A
bill that would require the company to divest from the massively popular platform, which has about 170 million U.S. users, or face a ban is
expected to come to a vote in the House of Representatives this week. It would require ByteDance to sell TikTok within six months or be
banned from Apple, Google, and other U.S. app stores and web-hosting services. The measure was sponsored by Republicans, but has
significant bipartisan supportCK. President Joe Biden, whose campaign recently created its own TIkTok account, has told reporters: “If they pass
it, I’ll sign it." "High" risk of escalation in the Middle East The war in
Gaza and the resulting humanitarian crisis has
galvanized Arab countries in the region, where there is rising "public sentiment against Israel and the
United States for the death and destruction," U.S. intelligence officials say in their report. "While it is too early to tell, it is
likely that the Gaza conflict will have a generational impact on terrorism," Haines told lawmakers at the hearing,
which was repeatedly interrupted by anti-war protestors. Inspired by Hamas, terrorist groups including al Qaeda and ISIS have directed
supporters to conduct attacks against Israeli and American interests as the war drags on, Haines said. Read More: Inside the Israel-Hamas
Information War. While the report states that the U.S. intelligence community assesses that “Iranian leaders did not orchestr ate nor had
foreknowledge” of Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on Israel, attacks by
Iranian-backed groups are threatening to destabilize
Lebanon, Iraq, the Gulf, and the Red Sea. "The risk of escalation into direct interstate conflict,
intended or otherwise, remains high," the intelligence report says. U.S. support for Ukraine is critical As the war in
Ukraine enters its third year, U.S. intelligence chiefs emphasized the importance of continued U.S. military support. "The Ukrainians are not
running out of courage and tenacity, they're running out of ammunition,” Burns told lawmakers. “And we're running out of time to help them."
If the U.S. is seen as walking away from support for Ukraine, “not only is that going to feed doubts amongst our allies and partners in the Indo-
Pacific, it's going to stoke the ambition of Chinese leadership,” the U.S. spy chief said. Intelligence leaders
noted the challenge
posed by Russia's strengthening ties with China, Iran, and North Korea, which they said was bolstering
its defense production and economy. "Putin's strategic goals remain unchanged," Haines told the Senate panel.
"He continues to see NATO enlargement and Western support for Ukraine as reinforcing his long-held belief that the United States and Europe
seek to restrict Russian power and undermine him." Read More: Russia’s ‘Space-Based Weapon’ Raises Fresh Fears About an Old Threat
Intelligence chiefs also warned that Moscow could "put at risk long-standing global norms in the use of asymmetric or strategically destabilizing
weapons, including in space and in the cyber domain." Last month, the White House said that Russia was pursuing a "space-based" anti-satellite
capability that poses a serious national security concern.
Reform Key to Peacekeeping
Reform in peacekeeping support needed to sustain the system

Press Trust India, October 5, 2017, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-seeks-greater-role-

for-troop-contributing-countries-in-un-peacekeeping-decision-making/article19801241.ece ndia seeks
greater role for troop-contributing countries in UN peacekeeping decision making

India is one of the largest contributors of troops and police to UN peacekeeping missions. India has
sought enhanced role for troops contributing countries in the decision-making process of UN
peacekeeping missions. The Military Adviser at India’s UN Mission, Colonel Sandeep Kapoor said the
current system of excluding the troop and police-contributing countries (T/PCCs) from the process of
framing the mandates is not sustainable. “The UN Security Council needs to revisit the way mandates
are designed,” Colonel Kapoor said. India is one of the largest contributors of troops and police to UN
peacekeeping missions. In his address to the UN Security Council Working Group on Peacekeeping
Reform, Colonel Kapoor said, “It is a great irony that troops contributing countries which provide their
troops to execute the mandates and the troops on ground who lay down their lives to fulfil these
mandates have no say in the process of formulation of the mandate.” “The current approach is not
sustainable,” Colonel Kapoor said in his remarks on Tuesday. “It is hence an inescapable requirement to
incorporate the T/PCCs in the decision making and mandate formulation from the very onset, ” the
Indian official said. They also need to ensure more effective triangular cooperation between the T/PCCs,
Secretariat and Security Council on important policy and doctrinal issues being formulated in the field of
peacekeeping, he said. Noting that today’s peacekeeping operations pose complex challenges, Colonel
Kapoor said that non-state actors have become the major players in many of these conflicts. Today’s
peacekeeping requires a political consensus among Security Council members, Troop Contributors and
Secretariat on the cost, limits and dangers of operations in high-risk environments, he said.

Peacekeeping promotes sexual violence

Azad Esa, August 9, 2017, Do UN Peacekeeprs do more harm than good?
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/07/peacekeepers-harm-good-
170730091925152.html

UN peacekeepers are sent to some of the most war-ravaged countries on Earth, ostensibly to help them
transition to peace. But some stand accused of committing crimes against the very people they are
supposed to protect. According to a recent investigation by the Associated Press (AP), between 2004
and 2016, the United Nations received almost 2,000 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse against
its peacekeepers. The UN says it has a zero tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse, but
survivors, activists, lawyers and human rights organisations say such crimes have been allowed to
continue with impunity.
Peacekeeping Bad (Sexual Violence) Answers

War leads to sexual violence. As long as we win that offensive peacekeeping solves
conflict, there will be a reduction in sexual violence

Sexual violence is directed mainly, though by no means exclusively, against women and girls. Men and boys are also exposed to
rape and other forms of sexual violence during and in the aftermath of armed conflict, as an instrument of terror and
collective punishment, during detention and interrogation, as an expression of ethnic hatred and humiliation, and to
emasculate and shatter leadership structures. Though data is limited, UNFPA reports that 80% of the 5,000 male inmates held
at a concentration camp in Sarajevo Canton reported being raped. Sexual violence is not specific to any group, culture or
continent. In varying forms and degrees, it spans all of history and all geography. Accordingly, the present inventory covers
conflicts in the Balkans, Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Middle East—though recent years have seen the African continent
disproportionately affected by a wave of internal conflicts in which sexual violence has been a feature of the fighting.

Peacekeeping needed to protect women from sexual violence

Dabhade, 2017 Manish S. Dabhade is an Assistant Professor of Diplomacy and Disarmament in the
School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Convener of the Indian
Diplomacy Research Group. His teaching and research interests include diplomacy history, theory and
practice, with a special reference to India, https://www.orfonline.org/research/india-pursuit-united-
nations-security-council-reforms/ India’s pursuit of United Nations Security Council reforms

In conclusion, and most significantly, Indian hopes significantly rest on an acknowledgement by the UN
itself of the need to expand the UNSC. In an interview to The Guardian (2015), former UN Secretary-
General Kofi Annan said that the Security Council must either reform or risk becoming increasingly
irrelevant: “If we don’t change the council, we risk a situation where the primacy of the council may be
challenged by some of the new emerging countries.”

The US will have to spend a lot of diplomatic capital to make it happen

Elizabeth Roche, 4-25, 15, https://www.livemint.com/Politics/55TQivqJ9GpZO6NVFqhzpK/Narendra-

Modi-drums-up-support-for-permanent-seat-in-UN-Secu.html Narendra Modi drums up support for
permanent seat in UN Security Council

Mansingh says India’s prospects of gaining a permanent UNSC seat will depend largely on the US,
which has voiced its support, but not lobbied with countries like it did in the run-up to the removal of
the 34-year-old embargo on India accessing nuclear technology and equipment from the international
market in 2008. “The US had at that point done all the heavy lifting and the embargoes were removed.
The US had... made it America’s case, but that is missing at this point," he said.

Joining the UNSC means India (and Brazil) will no longer support the disenfranchised

Oliver Steunkel, 2010, https://ri.fgv.br/sites/default/files/publicacoes/10d7bc9faa.pdf Leading the

disenfranchised or joining th establishment? India, Brazil, and the UN Security Council, Oliver Stuenkel is
an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo. He holds
a Master in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he was a
McClo Scholar, and a PhD in political science from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. His
research focuses on risin powers; speci" cally on Brazil’s and India’s foreign policy and on their impact on
global governance.
4. Conclusion: Leading the disenfranchised or joining the establishment? Brazil’s and India’s bid for
institutionalized big-power status is contrasted by their traditional membership of and loyalty to the
G77, where leadership becomes ever more di) cult for increasingly pragmatic governments in Brasília
and New Delhi.97 As part of the G77 and as an observer of the Non-Aligned Movement, Brazil has
historically sought to promote a more prominent role for the UN General Assembly (GA) by envisioning
greater GA involvement on questions regarding military intervention, for example.98 Critics have
pointed out that Brazil’s attempt to enter the UN Security Council as a permanent member is not
entirely about democratizing the UN, but rather about creating an “expanded oligarchy”, as a former
Brazilian diplomat has called it. While Security Council Reform is also one India’s major argument is that
its inclusion would increase the UNSC’s legitimacy by making it more representative of UN membership.
In 2004, India argued that it deserved the seat because it had the world’s second largest population and
was the third largest contributor of troops to UN peacekeeping missions 60 C I
M of the Non-Aligned Movements goals,99 Brazil does not have all the developing countries’
support in this project, and it has been at times criticized for seeking permanent UN Security Council
membership, which would make it part of the “global elite.”100 While India has a rich history of
confronting established countries, Mohan argues that India “woke up” and now rejects “third
worldish” modes of thinking.10 Brazil’s and India’s behaviour towards the UN General Assembly
contrasts their e# orts towards UNSC reform, and an instructive example about their strong ambivalence
about their own place. It has also o+ en voted in a bloc with other G77 members, o+ en against the
United States, France and Great Britain. For example, it has supported a condemnation of the United
States’ economic embargo against Cuba. Furthermore, it abstained from the UN Security Council
resolutions with on arms embargos to Yugoslavia once ethnic cleansing had begun, on intervention in
Haiti a+ er the coup, and on peacekeeping operations in Rwanda and Somalia.102 In this respect Brazil
continues to side with development countries, and it remains a country with a strongly Westphalian
outlook. While it regards interference approved by the UN Security Council as legitimate, it traditionally
has been reluctant to vote for any type of measures that violate a country’s sovereignty. * e Brazilian
government is therefore highly critical of the concept of “R2P” (Responsibility to Protect), which it
believes can be easily misused as a pretext for aggressive military intervention Despite Brazil’s
leadership role in the G77 and its ability to in" uence other members,103 Brazil has quietly departed
from the G77’s more radical calls for “total democracy” which includes proposals to limit the UNSC’s
freedom through the General Assembly—this position very much re" ects Brazil’s expectation to form
part of the Council at some point in the future.104 Despite continuous rhetorical support for reform,
Brazil has not assumed leadership in reviving ECOSOC105, indicating that it does not regard this as a
priority. India’s strategy is comparable. For years, India’s representatives have called for a revitalization
of the UN General Assembly, seeking to strengthen the system. In April 2010, for example, Hardeep Puri,
Permanent Representative of India to the U.N., said that “the General Assembly should take the lead in
setting the global agenda and restoring the centrality of the United Nations in formulating multilateral
approaches to resolving transnational issues.”106 In a similar fashion, Indian representatives usually
argue that the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which, despite its pre-eminence in the charter,
has proved too weak to provide coherence to the work of the specialized agencies,107 should be at the
heart of international e# orts of development. * ere is a fundamental agreement with the UNGA’s
principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures. India’s foreign policy is still in" uenced by its
ties to the NonAligned Movement and the G77.108 However, similar to Brazil, India’s alignment with
the dispossessed is increasingly at odds with its e# orts to join the “club of the powerful”. Aside from a
stronger role for the United Nations General Assembly, India has traditionally argued for UN Security
Council Reform – in accordance with the 1992 Accra Declaration of the Non-Aligned Movement.109
India’s position has thus been traditionally part of the Non-Alignment Movement, although the NAM
never reached the cohesion of a power bloc. Furthermore, India has diverged increasingly to the
pragmatist side. India, a co-founder of the NAM in 1955, has always pledged adherence to the
movement, and Indian political leaders continue to mention it frequently.110 However, there has been
growing internal criticism of India’s NAM stance,111 and India’s foreign policy over the past decade
indicates that it at times diverges from its traditional, multilateralist strategy- for example when it
signed a bilateral nuclear deal with the United States.112 A former Indian diplomat argued that India
exerts considerable in" uence over both the G77 and NAM, a leadership position India will attempt to
hold on to as long as possible. He admits, however, that India’s economic development may make
India’s adherence to both clubs increasingly untenable.113 In a similar fashion, Nayar and Paul argue
that “emotionally though not formally, India has (..) already le+ (…) the Non-Aligned Movement.”114
Raja Mohan adds that “by the late 1990s, [India] was compelled to look for ways to ease out of the
political straightjacket the NAM had become on its external relations.”115
Answers to: Peacekeeping Fails
Best studies prove UN peacekeeping missions stop violence – their authors are
wrong

Roland Paris, University Research Chair in International Security and Governance at the University
of OĴawa], 2004, Peacekeeping Works BeĴer Than You May Think”. Political Violence at a Glance,
2014. hĴp://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2014/08/12/peacekeeping- works-beĴer-than-you-may-
think/

Does peacekeeping work? Janice Stein (University of Toronto) and I had a lively exchange on this
subject on the CBC radio program “The House” last weekend. Have a listen. In the interview, I said
that more than two dozen major peace operations have been deployed over the past 25 years in
countries emerging from civil wars, and that although some have been terrible failures (e.g.,
Rwanda 1994), their overall record has been reasonably good at preventing a recurrence of
fighting. Prof. Stein was uncon- vinced. Some studies, she said, “show that the majority [of peace
operations] are failures and that there is a return to violence after 5 to 7 years. So I think the
record is the reverse.” So, which is it? Does peacekeeping generally help to prevent a return to vio-
lence, or does it generally fail to do so? The answer to this question maĴers – quite a lot, actually. If
peacekeeping is ineffective and if outsiders can do liĴle to help post-conflict societies transition
towards a more stable peace, as Prof. Stein suggests, then Western policymakers and other leaders
would be foolish to consider contributing to, or even supporting, such efforts. If, on the other hand,
peacekeeping has a reasonably positive record, it would seem foolish for the same policymakers not
to support these efforts. Prof. Stein is a fine scholar and fluent analyst of international affairs, but
she’s not cor- rect about the peacekeeping record. Michael Doyle (Columbia University) and
Nicholas Sambanis (Yale University) demonstrated in 2000 that the presence of a large
peacekeeping operation in a country emerging from civil war significantly reduced the chances
of that society slipping back into violence. They reached this conclusion by analyzing post-
conflict countries that had, and had not, received peace missions, and by holding other factors
constant, including the intensity of the preceding war, the type of conflict, etc. Their finding has
been replicated, modified, and reconfirmed many times in the ensuing decade-and-a-half and is
now widely accepted among international security scholars. One recent survey of this literature
put it simply: “there is considerable evidence that [United Nations peacekeeping operations] are
effective in maintaining peace.” In fact, most debates on this subject are now focusing not on
whether peacekeeping reduces the risk of renewed fighting, but on how much it does so. Of course,
this does not mean that every peacekeeping mission has succeeded or will succeed; rather, it
indicates that “on average” peacekeeping works to reduce the risk of renewed conflict. It is a
statistical relationship – and a very strong one, as other contributors to this literature, including
Paul Collier (University of Oxford) and Page Fortna (Columbia University and contributor to this
blog), have demonstrated. This finding may seem counter-intuitive at first, given lingering images
of failed peacekeeping efforts in Rwanda and Somalia, for example. But it begins to make sense if
you consider how many countries have navigated the war-to-peace transition with the assistance of
international peacekeepers – including El Salvador, Nicaragua, Namibia, Mozambique, Sierra
Leone, Cambodia, East Timor, Bosnia and Kosovo. Perhaps these cases have fallen from public
view precisely because they are no longer at war. “Still no return to massive bloodshed in Bosnia”
is very important news to the inhabitants of that country, but don’t count on seeing this headline
in tomorrow’s paper. If it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead. Nevertheless, the evidence is clear: on
balance, peacekeeping works reasonably well at preventing conflicts from reigniting. I’ve included
a list of studies at the end of this post in case you wish to read further, but I’ll leave the last word
to Steven Pinker of Harvard University, who, in the video clip below, sums up the findings of this
scholarship more eloquently than I can. In response to the question of whether peacekeeping
works, Pinker says: The answer from the statistical studies is: absolutely, they work massively. A
country is much less likely to fall back in civil war if they’ve got armed peacekeepers. And the beĴer
financed and armed the peacekeeping force, the more effective they are… The United Nations does
a number of things badly, but it does a number of things well, and one of them is peacekeeping –
on average, not 100 percent of the time. The headlines would never tell you that. Only a statistical
study would.
Regional Diversity Advantage
Regional Diversity Advantage Links

The Council needs to expand to provide more regional diversity

On the question of regional representation, India has forcefully argued for an equitable geographical
representation and the urgent need for mitigating the non-representation and under-representation of
some regions in both the permanent and the non-permanent categories. Making the case, India has
pointed to the increase in the number of states to 193 at present from 51 when the UN was founded,
and the un-tenability of whole continents not being represented at all in the permanent category. The
Council in its existence of 70 years also does not represent the geo-political and economic realities. The
Security Council, for India, needs to reflect contemporary realities and provide adequate representation
to all regions of the world. India sees the growing clamor for regional representation as “a cry of
frustration and dissatisfaction with the state of affairs.” The demand for regional representation has
been made on multiple grounds including historical injustice, entire regions not equitably represented
or even unrepresented in a key category, and hope of moving beyond the nation state as the primary
actor on international affairs. In Indian eyes, it is an “anachronistic” situation that the UN has three of
the five permanent members from one region alone while the regions of Africa, Latin America, three-
fourths of Asia including the Arab states, the entire Central and Eastern Europe, the Caribbean states
and the Small Island developing states remain excluded from the functioning of the Security Council. On
the role of regional groupings in the selection of new members, India favored the current practice, viz.,
each regional grouping would endorse its candidate, to be followed by the need to contest an election
on the floor of the General Assembly for occupying a seat at the Security Council.

With the exception of Africa, there are no regional agreements

Acknowledging the various existing perspectives on the issue of regional representation that vary from
one region to another, India has welcomed the approach of regions like Africa that have asked as a
collective to be treated as a unique case. But these should be seen as supplemental in nature and do not
replace the Charter requirements of all Member States voting to elect a permanent member for an
equitable regional representation. While India accepts the inter-linkage drawn by the African states
between the issue of categories and regional representation, India opposes such linkages. (Joint G4
Statement by Brazil, Germany, India and Japan, April 2017) Realising that such a unanimity in the Asian
region does not and will not come about, India has stated that though it respects the unanimous desires
of a region like Africa, it cannot be replicated elsewhere where such desires do not exist.

Massive UN intervention in Africa without representation

Sithembile Mbete is director of programs at Futurelect, a Johannesburg-based nongovernmental

Although African conflicts take up over 50 percent of council meetings and 70 percent of its resolutions,
no African country has a permanent seat—only three nonpermanent seats that rotate among the
continent’s subregional blocs. Many African leaders see this as a “historical injustice” and have argued
that the council must be reformed to better represent the world’s population and reflect contemporary
geopolitical realities.

Can’t solve climate change and poverty without equal representation for everyone

Sithembile Mbete is director of programs at Futurelect, a Johannesburg-based nongovernmental

organization that seeks to empower a new generation of ethical government and political leaders in
Africa, 2023, June 28, 2023, UN Security Council Reform: What the World Thinks,
https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/06/28/un-security-council-reform-what-world-thinks-pub-
90032#intro
Second, the nature of global threats and the definition of international security have changed
dramatically since 1945. The Security Council must be adapted to respond to new and evolving
challenges like climate change, novel pandemics, and global terrorism. Such threats can only be
resolved, African leaders argue, by an institution that represents the interests and perspectives of all of
humanity. African states have long lobbied the council to include development and poverty reduction,
as well as controlling the flow of small arms, as essential strategies for conflict prevention, rather than
focusing on only traditional big power priorities like peacekeeping and nuclear nonproliferation. During
its presidency of the Security Council in February 2023, for example, Mozambique convened an open
debate on “Peace and Security in Africa: The Impact of Development Policies in the Implementation of
the Silencing the Guns Initiative.” The aim of the event was “to facilitate a deeper understanding of the
contribution that socio-economic factors can make in promoting social cohesion, peace, and stability, or,
conversely, in triggering conflict, including the resurgence of unconstitutional change of governments in
Africa and beyond.”
CON
Politics Links
Political opposition to UN reform’

Second is the problem of amendment. No structural reform can be implemented without opening the
Charter to amendment16 – a prospect fraught with dangers, not the least of which includes a very long
line of proposed amendments17 to almost every aspect of the United Nations in addition to potentially
contentious legislative battles in the parliamentary assemblies of member states. Amending the UN
Charter is an onerous process, requiring not only approval of two-thirds of the UNGA, but also
ratification of the relevant domestic legislation by two-thirds of UN member states (including all of the
P5). . . . Amending the charter faces a multitude of obstacles, not least within the U.S. Congress. Any UN
Charter amendment would require bipartisan backing on Capitol Hill. At present, support in Congress for
the United Nations is irresolute . .

Congress would have to approve it

The obstacles to council reform are daunting. They include the high procedural hurdles to amending the
UN Charter; divergent member state positions on the acceptable size and terms of any enlargement;
disagreement over current veto provisions and their potential extension to any new permanent
members; and gnawing uncertainties over whether any plausible enlargement—even if it made the
council more representative—would improve its functioning. Any change to the council’s composition or
voting rules would require the approval of two-thirds of UN members—including each of the P5—
accompanied by relevant domestic legislation. Given intensifying geopolitical rivalry and deepening
political polarization in many countries, prospects for updating the council appear slim.

. .18
Reform Kills the Security Council
Attempts at reform kill the Security Council

Everyone from U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, to the Biden administration, to voices from the
Global South have called for fundamental, formal revisions to the UNSC’s membership and powers, with
ideas ranging from expanded permanent membership to finding ways to strip the P5 of their veto. Some
have even invoked Article 109, the formal procedure for rewriting the Charter via a general conference
that the Charter itself lays out. But in an era of waning multilateralism, efforts to revise the U.N. Charter
are more likely to kill most existing structures of multilateral cooperation than to produce a more just
institution. As Natalie Samarasinghe wrote this fall, “there is little chance of a successor organization
rising from the current geopolitical ashes.”

UNSC works now to resolve non-member conflict

Although gridlock at the UNSC draws the most headlines and external attention, the bulk of the UNSC’s
work is on wars and crises where no permanent member has a primary national interest in the outcome
of the conflict. Here, the P5 have an incentive to keep the focus of international decision-making within
UNSC chambers. The status and rank that a permanent seat on the UNSC provides can incentivize the P5
to continue to work with one another on some issues even when their foreign policy goals and interests
are wildly divergent. This willingness is a space for diplomatic action by other concerned states.

The status quo does provide some conflict resolution

The presidency rotates monthly in alphabetical order, giving each member state, permanent and
elected, an opportunity to structure and steer the form and content of the UNSC’s work. As Susan Allen
and Amy Yuen argue, members use their time in the presidency to advance their own international
policy agendas while focusing on issues they care about where the preferences of permanent members
overlap enough to reach an agreement. If we follow their line of argument to its logical conclusions,
then creative diplomacy and behind-the-scenes bargaining from committed actors can shift the
preferences of the P5, albeit within limits; can change and help set the preferences of the delegation
setting the agenda; and can raise the public accountability costs of actions within the UNSC.

The UNSC is also a body that proposes, frames and advances new norms and ideas about war and peace
— and in recent decades, E10 members have used their presidencies to put new kinds of issues onto the
UNSC’s agenda, expanding the council’s conception of security itself. On topics like the responsibility to
protect, the protection of civilians in conflict, women, peace, and security; youth, peace, and security;
and climate and security, advocacy and agenda-setting from the E10 alongside key alliances with the P5
have added novel, transformative dimensions of human security to the UNSC’s work and focus, albeit
with varying degrees of success. At its foundation, the UNSC had a narrow, state-centric vision of
international peace and security, but today’s daily discussions reveal how much has changed in the
intervening years, as member states have expanded its deliberations on war and peace to include the
fates and rights of people within states.

The UN is stronger because of Security Council weakness

Security Council gridlock has reinvigorated the UN General Assembly. A striking repercussion of the war
in Ukraine has been the General Assembly’s resurgent determination to hold P5 nations accountable
and expand its own role in international security. Frustrated by Russia’s ability to block Security Council
action, other council members resurrected the so-called Uniting for Peace resolution, first employed
during the Korean War, to request an emergency assembly session. On March 2, 2022, the assembly
overwhelmingly approved its own resolution deploring the Russian invasion, demanding Russia’s
immediate withdrawal, and reaffirming Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. More pointedly,
on April 26, 2022, the body passed another resolution requiring a special assembly debate within ten
days of any use of the veto, including justification from the permanent member that wielded it. As Joel
Ng notes, such bottom-up activism could place pressure on permanent members not to use their veto
irresponsibly, lest they risk diplomatic isolation.

There is some reform now

Stewart Patrick, June 28, 2023, Stewart Patrick is senior fellow and director of the Global Order and
Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His primary areas of research
focus are the shifting foundations of world order, the future of American internationalism, and the
requirements for effective multilateral cooperation on transnational challenges.,
https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/06/28/un-security-council-reform-what-world-thinks-pub-90032,
The most successful reforms to date have addressed the council’s working methods. Given the obstacles
to altering the council’s membership and decisionmaking rules via a UN Charter amendment, reform
efforts have focused primarily on making the body’s informal working methods more inclusive and
transparent. This has included urging permanent members to collaborate with elected ones in hosting
meetings and drafting resolutions; encouraging elected members from the same region to caucus
together to push regional priorities; broadening the range of thematic issues (such as humanitarian and
human security topics) that the council addresses; and expanding the council’s interaction with regional
and subregional organizations, as well as with civil society actors.
China Opposition
China opposes any attempt to remove the veto

This can be maddening for anyone who cares about the international rule of law. As Mukherjee writes,
the war in Ukraine “shows the natural limits of a system of collective security in which great power
privilege can trump sovereign equality.” As a corrective, Zelenskyy has proposed convening a global
conference in Kyiv to negotiate sweeping UN reforms. While his instinct is admirable, neither the United
States nor China will endorse a collective security system without the veto. A more realistic prospect is
to try to limit its actual use. France and the United Kingdom, for instance, have not cast a veto since the
end of the Cold War. Since 2015, Paris has also proposed that the P5 not employ the veto in situations of
mass atrocities.
Gridlock Advantage Answers
Gridlock won’t continue; informal mechanisms solve

Both the form and the content of the UNSC’s work have evolved over time through informal practices
and concerted effort from the U.N.’s other member states. We should therefore anticipate that these
members will be at the forefront of finding creative procedural and substantive ways to confront P5
gridlock.

A full-scale revision of the U.N. Charter is distant, and gridlock is likely to continue at the UNSC,
particularly when a member of the P5 is committed to either breaking the terms of the U.N. Charter, or
protecting another country doing so. No widespread consensus among other states can change how
easily a P5 member can turn the UNSC away from action.

Still, these historical changes in the UNSC — a formal expansion in elected membership, coalition
building at the UNSC, shifting ownership over UNSC resolutions and new agendas via the UNSC
presidency — point to one set of levers for people concerned with multilateral action even amid
fractures among the P5. Taken alongside other tools, like actions through the U.N. General Assembly or
the U.N. Secretariat, these changes in practice offer action points even when global institutions seem
hopelessly unfit to address the conflicts before them, helping transform the UNSC’s work on
international peace and security even when the P5 refuse to cede meaningful power to the rest of the
world.
More Peacekeeping Fails
Security Council Won’t Stop War

Many reasons UN Security missions fail

Council on Foreign Relations, 2018, September 24, The UN Security Council,

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/un-security-council

The United Nations also suffered humiliating defeats in the Balkans, where peacekeepers were used
as human shields in the siege of Sarajevo and failed to protect civilians in the designated safe area of
Srebrenica from massacre. Experts say these missions were undermined by both logistical and political
problems, including muddled mandates, inadequate resources, and the parochial interests of major
powers.
Peacekeeping Increases Conflict
Peacekeeping is bad because it gives armies time to rebuild, increasing killing. Instead,
Luttwak argues, conflicts should be allowed to burn out.
Edward Luttwak, 1999, Foreign Affairs, July/August, “Give War a Chance,”
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/55210/edward-n-luttwak/give-war-a-chance DOA: 12-9-14

PREMATURE PEACEMAKING

An unpleasant truth often overlooked is that although war is a great evil, it does have a great virtue: it can
resolve political conflicts and lead to peace. This can happen when all belligerents become exhausted or when
one wins decisively. Either way the key is that the fighting must continue until a resolution is reached. War brings
peace only after passing a culminating phase of violence. Hopes of military success must fade for
accommodation to become more attractive than further combat. Since the establishment of the United Nations and
the enshrinement of great-power politics in its Security Council, however, wars among lesser powers have rarely
been allowed to run their natural course. Instead, they have typically been interrupted early on, before they
could burn themselves out and establish the preconditions for a lasting settlement. Cease-fires and armistices
have frequently been imposed under the aegis of the Security Council in order to halt fighting. NATO's
intervention in the Kosovo crisis follows this pattern. But a cease-fire tends to arrest war-induced exhaustion
and lets belligerents reconstitute and rearm their forces. It intensifies and prolongs the struggle once the cease-
fire ends -- and it does usually end. This was true of the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-49, which might have come to
closure in a matter of weeks if two cease-fires ordained by the Security Council had not let the combatants
recuperate. It has recently been true in the Balkans. Imposed cease-fires frequently interrupted the fighting
between Serbs and Croats in Krajina, between the forces of the rump Yugoslav federation and the Croat
army, and between the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in Bosnia. Each time, the opponents used the pause to
recruit, train, and equip additional forces for further combat, prolonging the war and widening the scope of
its killing and destruction. Imposed armistices, meanwhile -- again, unless followed by negotiated peace accords --
artificially freeze conflict and perpetuate a state of war indefinitely by shielding the weaker side from the
consequences of refusing to make concessions for peace.

In a world where these conflicts had the potential to escalate to a Russia-US war, this made sense. But
currently there is no justification for it.

Edward Luttwak, 1999, Foreign Affairs, July/August, “Give War a Chance,”

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/55210/edward-n-luttwak/give-war-a-chance DOA: 12-9-14

The Cold War provided compelling justification for such behavior by the two superpowers, which
sometimes collaborated in coercing less-powerful belligerents to avoid being drawn into their
conflicts and clashing directly. Although imposed cease-fires ultimately did increase the total quantity
of warfare among the lesser powers, and armistices did perpetuate states of war, both outcomes
were clearly lesser evils (from a global point of view) than the possibility of nuclear war. But today,
neither Americans nor Russians are inclined to intervene competitively in the wars of lesser powers, so
the unfortunate consequences of interrupting war persist while no greater danger is averted. It might be
best for all parties to let minor wars burn themselves out.

Intervention that takes sides and guarantees a victor (R2P) is better

Edward Luttwak, 1999, Foreign Affairs, July/August, “Give War a Chance,”
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/55210/edward-n-luttwak/give-war-a-chance DOA: 12-9-14
Today cease-fires and armistices are imposed on lesser powers by multilateral agreement -- not to
avoid great-power competition but for essentially disinterested and indeed frivolous motives, such as
television audiences' revulsion at harrowing scenes of war. But this, perversely, can systematically
prevent the transformation of war into peace. The Dayton accords are typical of the genre: they have
condemned Bosnia to remain divided into three rival armed camps, with combat suspended
momentarily but a state of hostility prolonged indefinitely. Since no side is threatened by defeat and
loss, none has a sufficient incentive to negotiate a lasting settlement; because no path to peace is
even visible, the dominant priority is to prepare for future war rather than to reconstruct devastated
economies and ravaged societies. Uninterrupted war would certainly have caused further suffering
and led to an unjust outcome from one perspective or another, but it would also have led to a more
stable situation that would have let the postwar era truly begin. Peace takes hold only when war is
truly over.

Helping stronger powers defeat the weak enhances the peacemaking potential of war
Edward Luttwak, 1999, Foreign Affairs, July/August, “Give War a Chance,”
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/55210/edward-n-luttwak/give-war-a-chance DOA: 12-9-14

A variety of multilateral organizations now make it their business to intervene in other peoples' wars.
The defining characteristic of these entities is that they insert themselves in war situations while
refusing to engage in combat. In the long run this only adds to the damage. If the United Nations
helped the strong defeat the weak faster and more decisively, it would actually enhance the
peacemaking potential of war. But the first priority of U.N. peacekeeping contingents is to avoid
casualties among their own personnel. Unit commanders therefore habitually appease the locally
stronger force, accepting its dictates and tolerating its abuses. This appeasement is not strategically
purposeful, as siding with the stronger power overall would be; rather, it merely reflects the
determination of each U.N. unit to avoid confrontation. The final result is to prevent the emergence of
a coherent outcome, which requires an imbalance of strength sufficient to end the fighting.

So this is actually a kritik of current, non-offensive peacekeeping operations. And those operations fail
to prevent atrocities.

Edward Luttwak, 1999, Foreign Affairs, July/August, “Give War a Chance,”

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/55210/edward-n-luttwak/give-war-a-chance DOA: 12-9-14

Peacekeepers chary of violence are also unable to effectively protect civilians who are caught up in the
fighting or deliberately attacked. At best, U.N. peacekeeping forces have been passive spectators to
outrages and massacres, as in Bosnia and Rwanda; at worst, they collaborate with it, as Dutch U.N.
troops did in the fall of Srebenica by helping the Bosnian Serbs separate the men of military age from
the rest of the population. The very presence of U.N. forces, meanwhile, inhibits the normal remedy of
endangered civilians, which is to escape from the combat zone. Deluded into thinking that they will be
protected, civilians in danger remain in place until it is too late to flee. During the 1992-94 siege of
Sarajevo, appeasement interacted with the pretense of protection in an especially perverse manner:
U.N. personnel inspected outgoing flights to prevent the escape of Sarajevo civilians in obedience to a
cease-fire agreement negotiated with the locally dominant Bosnian Serbs -- who habitually violated
that deal. The more sensible, realistic response to a raging war would have been for the Muslims to
either flee the city or drive the Serbs out.
Peacekeeping Fails

Attitude of peacekeepers means they cannot protect peace

Institute for democracy & Justice in Haiti, 2017, https://www.ijdh.org/2017/08/topics/law-justice/need-

a-title/ An Evaluation of the Causes and Results of U.N. Peacekeeper Actions

Inside 'Peaceland' In her 2015 book, Peaceland, Severine Autesserre, a professor of political science at
Barnard College of Columbia University in the US, writes about a "community of interveners for whom
peace is either the primary objective (like peacekeepers) or part of a broader set of goals (such as
diplomats or development workers)" who often exist in a parallel world to the people they are meant to
serve. She argues that the way in which this community lives, talks and collaborates with locals
reinforces "a pervasive power disparity between the interveners and their intended beneficiaries". The
"peacekeeping economy" - in which millions of dollars arrive, circulate between external actors and
rarely reach or benefit the local community - emboldens a sense of impunity and superiority among
this community of interveners, says Marsha Henry, an associate professor at the London School of
Economics' Gender Institute in the UK, pointing to how peacekeepers and the aid community often
live privileged, if precarious, lives in an economy that caters more to their needs than to the
development goals of the country they are in. "You have immunity and privilege, and you fly business
class, and you have privileges that you never had before, and quickly people begin to internalise this
idea that the world is 'us' and 'them'," explains Paula Donovan, from Aids Free World, a US-based
NGO that exposes injustice, abuse and inequality. Kelly-Jo Bluen, a former project leader for
international justice at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in South Africa, argues that
peacekeepers often parachute in with little regard for the local population and with the notion that
they are saviours. "The focus becomes one of violence 'out there' as opposed to the economies of
violence and acts of sexual violence fostered and perpetrated by peacekeepers," she explains.
Interaction with the local population is often discouraged. But Henry argues that there should be more,
not less, of it. When interaction does happen, it is often in the form of peacekeepers parading in their
armoured vehicles and blue helmets, something she says furthers the "dehumanisation of the host
population". One peacekeeper in the Central African Republic, who did not want to give his name as he
was not authorised to talk to the media, told Al Jazeera, that his battalion had been instructed not to
talk to or engage with the local population. "It just creates the possibilities for the wrong things to
happen … the next thing you know, we are accused of something," he says.

Peacekeeping operations authorized by the Security Council fail and result in sexual
violence

Brett Schaefer, Senior Fellow in Regulatory Affairs, Heritage Foundation, August 3, 2016, United
Nations Peacekeeping Flaws and Abuses: The U.S. Must Demand Reform
However, with a number of troubling situations, many of them in Africa, receiving increasing attention
from the media, the Security Council has found itself under pressure to respond and “do something”
even when the circumstances do not match those where U.N. peacekeeping operations have had the
most success. The Security Council has responded by establishing additional peacekeeping operations
with unprecedented pace, scope, and ambition. As summarized in the 2015 U.N.-commissioned High-
Level Independent Panel on United Nations Peace Operations: Today, many contemporary United
Nations missions are struggling in more complex political contexts and difficult operating
environments. A decade ago, many peace operations were deployed following the end of hostilities
and the signing of a comprehensive peace agreement. Today, a growing number of missions operate
in remote and austere environments where no political agreement exists, or where efforts to
establish or re-establish one have faltered. They face ongoing hostilities and parties who are unwilling
to negotiate or otherwise undermine the presence of a mission by condoning or inflicting restrictions
on its ability to operate…. Expectations have only grown, particularly with respect to the capacity of
United Nations missions to protect civilians across vast areas of operations. Although United Nations
peace operations have at times responded with conviction to prevent such threats from materializing or
worsening, and to provide safety to civilians, at other times they have failed to show sufficient resolve
and action in the face of threats to civilians. In addition to the political, operational and security
challenges confronting its missions, the cases of sexual exploitation and abuse committed by some
United Nations personnel, despite new conduct and discipline systems and a zero-tolerance policy,
continue to cause great harm to victims as well as to the enterprise of United Nations peace
operations and the United Nations itself.

Peacekeeping fails

Brett Schaefer, Senior Fellow in Regulatory Affairs, Heritage Foundation, August 3, 2016, United
Nations Peacekeeping Flaws and Abuses: The U.S. Must Demand Reform

As noted above, the more recent operations have often involved mandates that go beyond traditional
peacekeeping in scope, purpose, and responsibilities. These missions have often focused on quelling civil
wars, reflecting a change in the nature of conflict from interstate conflict between nations to intrastate
conflict within nations. Increasing demands have revealed ongoing, serious flaws and problems.
Deficient Oversight. Over the years, numerous reports, audits, and investigations have revealed
mismanagement, fraud, and procurement corruption in U.N. peacekeeping. For instance, in a 2007 U.N.
Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) report, an examination of $1.4 billion of peacekeeping
contracts turned up “significant” corruption schemes that tainted $619 million (over 40 percent) of the
contracts.[20] An audit of the U.N. mission in Sudan revealed tens of millions of dollars lost to
mismanagement and waste and exposed substantial indications of fraud and corruption.[21] According
to then-head of OIOS Inga-Britt Ahlenius in 2008, “We can say that we found mismanagement and fraud
and corruption to an extent we didn’t really expect.”[22] Although recent reports are scarce,
indications of mismanagement and corruption have reached the public. Among these is a leaked
internal memorandum from 2015 on widespread fraud on meal and hotel invoices by U.N.
peacekeepers in the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO).[23] A
2016 news story reports that U.N. peacekeepers in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon
(UNIFIL) are under investigation for illegally reselling food.[24] Other news stories concern possible
corruption in U.N. air charters in favor of Russian contractors,[25] allegations of selling U.N.
peacekeeping jobs in Haiti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo,[26] and assertions by
independent watchdogs, such as Transparency International, that the U.N. has failed to prioritize
fighting corruption in peacekeeping operations.[27] The relative scarcity of corruption and
mismanagement in peacekeeping should not necessarily be interpreted as an indication of progress. On
the contrary, the most likely cause is OIOS disinterest in pursuing investigations or failure to publicly
release such reports. According to former OIOS investigator Peter Gallo: OIOS was established by the
General Assembly, specifically to be independent. The UN is manifestly unable to police itself, because it
is clear that the independence that OIOS once had has been compromised. OIOS has repeatedly been
found to be factional, it is riddled with corruption and self interest and is effectively controlled by the
same senior management that it is supposed to investigate for wrongdoing. Beholden to senior
management for political patronage and other favours, OIOS management has been able to select which
reports should be investigated and which should be referred to another department (and conveniently
lost or buried). Potentially embarrassing cases have been closed in the face of evidence of fraud, sexual
abuse or other misconduct. There is is [sic] a toxic working environment; some investigators have been
harassed, experienced retaliation and encouraged to resign while serious misconduct complaints against
some others have been ignored. [28] As detailed in his testimony, Gallo believes that U.N. actions and
practices impede efforts to address sexual exploitation and abuse.

One of the methods by which the number of Sexual Exploitation & Abuse cases in the missions has been
kept artificially low involves these reports being filtered by the local Conduct & Discipline Team. The
Conduct & Discipline function in the U.N. has no investigative authority. Their role is basically to act as a
postbox and pass these reports on to OIOS for investigation. Their function is prevention; raising
awareness of such ‘soft’ issues as codes of conduct. As such, Conduct & Discipline Teams have an
incentive to minimise the number of misconduct reports that are deemed ‘credible’. What often
happens in practice is that these ‘assessment’ [sic] simply identify witnesses, who can then be
discredited, bribed or intimidated. If the matter is subsequently investigated, by the time investigators
arrive; material witnesses have often been paid off, retracted their allegations or otherwise
disappeared. [29] Worse, Gallo details how the U.N. knew about abuses by French peacekeepers in the
Central African Republic, but failed to take action that could have resulted in timely investigation and
deterred subsequent abuse. The failings of OIOS and the U.N. Conduct and Discipline Unit are serious
and indicate that the issue should remain a primary focus of reform for the U.S.
Unintended Consequences. Ten months after the 2010 earthquake, Haiti was ravaged by cholera for the
first time in over a century. Over 9,000 Haitians have died, and more than 800,000 more have been
sickened from cholera. Infections first occurred in the vicinity of an outpost of U.N. peacekeepers from
Nepal, where cholera was widespread, and quickly spread across Haiti. A U.N. investigation concluded
that the cholera cases involved a single strain of the disease, indicating a single source, and that the
strain was closely related to strains contemporaneously circulating in South Asia. Subsequent studies
and reports, including one by the scientists that originally conducted the U.N. investigation, confirmed
these conclusions and identified the Nepalese peacekeepers as almost certainly the source of the
cholera outbreak.[30] Because of the broad immunities and privileges enjoyed by the U.N., efforts to sue
the organization have been unsuccessful to date. The U.N. has repeatedly refused to admit
responsibility.[31] However, a leaked internal U.N. report indicates that negligence and sanitation
problems continued well after the initial cholera outbreak. According to a summary of the report, “a
month after the cholera outbreak, more than one in 10 of the UN camps were still disposing of
sewage—known as ‘black water’—‘directly into local environment.’ In addition, more than seven in 10
of the camps disposed of their ‘grey water’—that is water from showers and kitchens—into the ‘local
environment.’”[32]

According to the leaked report, these sanitation failures could have been fixed for $3.15 million. The
current estimate of the cost to eradicate cholera from Haiti is more than $2 billion. There is no evidence
that any U.N. official has faced any consequences for the failures in Haiti. As noted by former U.N.
Assistant Secretary-General for Field Support Anthony Banbury, “In the past six years, I am not aware of
a single international field staff member’s being fired, or even sanctioned, for poor performance.”[33]
Stasis and Ineffectiveness. The unfortunate reality is that after billions of dollars in international
assistance and decades of U.N. peacekeeping efforts, many long-standing peacekeeping operations have
not demonstrably facilitated the resolution of the conflicts or situations that they were originally
deployed to address or remain in place for transparently political reasons. Specifically: The United
Nations Truce Supervision Organization has been operational since 1948. UNTSO was established to
“monitor ceasefires, supervise armistice agreements, prevent isolated incidents from escalating and
assist other United Nations peacekeeping operations in the region.”[34] UNTSO did not prevent war in
1956, 1967, or 1973. Nor has it paved the way toward normalized relations between Israel and its Arab
neighbors. On the contrary, the political situation remains as tense as it was seven decades ago.

The United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan has been operational since 1949.
UNMOGIP is tasked with supervising the cease-fire between India and Pakistan in the State of Jammu
and Kashmir and reports to the Secretary-General. Hostilities resumed in 1971 and resulted in another
cease-fire and the signing of the Simla Agreement (also known as the Line of Control agreement) in
1972.[35] India believes that UNMOGIP’s mandate should have ended with the signing of the Line of
Control agreement and restricts the activities of U.N. observers on the Indian side of the borders.[36]
Despite the dispute between India and Pakistan over UNMOGIP, and virtually no change in the situation
since 1972, the mission continues. The United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) has
been operational since 1964. The purpose of the mission is to “prevent a recurrence of fighting” and
“contribute to the maintenance and restoration of law and order and a return to normal
conditions.”[37] Hostilities in 1974 resulted in a new cease-fire and UNFICYP was charged with
monitoring that agreement and patrolling a buffer zone between opposing forces. Despite ongoing
efforts by the U.N., little progress has been made toward a permanent settlement of the dispute. The
United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) has been operational since 1974. UNDOF is
charged with monitoring the cease-fire between Syria and Israel and the disengagement of their forces.
Assaults on and kidnapping of UNDOF troops led some troop-contributing countries to remove their
troops, and the U.N. to withdraw UNDOF peacekeepers to camps and outposts in Israel. The U.N.
announced earlier this year that it intends to return UNDOF forces to outposts in Syria, but their
freedom of movement will likely be constrained by the ongoing conflict and instability in Syria.[38] There
has been no progress toward a comprehensive settlement between Syria and Israel.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has been operational since 1978. The mission was
established to confirm withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon and to restore the authority of the
Lebanese government to the border area. Later, the mandate was expanded to monitoring the cessation
of hostilities, supporting Lebanese armed forces in deploying to the south of Lebanon, and “taking steps
towards the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani river of an area free of any armed
personnel, assets and weapons, other than those of the Government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL deployed
in this area.”[39] The 2006 and 2008 conflicts between Israel and Lebanon were in part a result of the
UNIFIL’s failure to enforce its disarmament mandate. Experts estimate that, since 2006, “Hezbollah has
massively expanded the size and range of its rocket and missile inventory.”[40] Prospects for renewed
conflict are far higher than resolution of the sources of conflict. The United Nations Mission for the
Referendum in Western Sahara has been operational since 1991. MINURSO was mandated to monitor
the cease-fire, support related objectives, such as the exchange of prisoners, and pave the way toward a
referendum.[41] Twenty-five years after MINURSO was established, the political settlement remains
distant and may be in retreat following statements by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon referring to the
Moroccan presence in Western Sahara as an “occupation,” which led Morocco to expel dozens of
MINURSO staff.[42] The United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo has been operational
since 1999. In the words of the U.S. mission to the United Nations, “UNMIK’s mandate has largely been
accomplished. The only reason we continue to meet with this regularity has nothing to do with the
security situation in Kosovo—it has to do with politics. So let’s be clear: now is the time to seriously
reduce the United Nations mission’s footprint. We have some very talented staff in UNMIK whose skills
are desperately needed in other missions. There is no need for all of them to remain in Kosovo.”[43]
Indeed, UNMIK should be sharply downsized and terminated in the near term to apply resources to
more critical matters.

In sum, the circumstances surrounding most of these situations remain virtually identical to what they
were when these peacekeeping operations were established or they drag on after they should have
been ended for political reasons. There is an argument to be made that stasis is a positive outcome:
After all, most of the situations are not deteriorating. But after two, three, four, five, or six decades of
stasis, it is beyond time to re-examine these missions to determine if they can resolve their respective
situations. Peacekeeping should not be a permanent operation, but a temporary endeavor focused on
addressing critical problems, bolstering domestic capacity (not substituting for it), and exiting as soon as
practical to allow finite resources to be shifted to more urgent or emerging crises. Quagmire. The nature
of the largest peacekeeping operations, such as those in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and
Sudan, arguably goes against the strengths of U.N. peacekeeping. As summarized by one academic: UN
peacekeeping operations are ill-suited to operations requiring the use of offensive force: they lack the
personnel, the equipment, and the effective leadership required. Moreover, the tradition that
peacekeeping operations may only operate with the consent and cooperation of the government of the
host state means that it is extremely difficult for a militarized peacekeeping force to be even-handed in
its resort to force: if it were to use force against the host state—even if the government of the host state
was acting contrary to the interests of its civilian population—it would lose that government’s good will
and its continued operation in the state would be extremely difficult. [44] Nonetheless, the U.N. Security
Council often overrides experience and caution and approves missions even though that may violate the
central lesson learned in the 1990s: “[T]he United Nations does not wage war.”[45] But the mere
presence of a U.N. operation does not guarantee success. On the contrary, it can lead to quagmire. As
noted by Banbury: Peacekeeping forces often lumber along for years without clear goals or exit plans,
crowding out governments, diverting attention from deeper socioeconomic problems and costing
billions of dollars. My first peacekeeping mission was in Cambodia in 1992. We left after less than two
years. Now it’s a rare exception when a mission lasts fewer than 10. Look at Haiti: There has been no
armed conflict for more than a decade, and yet a United Nations force of more than 4,500 remains.
Meanwhile, we are failing at what should be our most important task: assisting in the creation of stable,
democratic institutions. Elections have been postponed amid allegations of fraud, and the interim prime
minister has said that “the country is facing serious social and economic difficulties.” The military
deployment makes no contribution at all to solving these problems. Our most grievous blunder is in
Mali. In early 2013, the United Nations decided to send 10,000 soldiers and police officers to Mali in
response to a terrorist takeover of parts of the north. Inexplicably, we sent a force that was unprepared
for counterterrorism and explicitly told not to engage in it. More than 80 percent of the force’s
resources are spent on logistics and self-protection. Already 56 people in the United Nations contingent
have been killed, and more are certain to die. The United Nations in Mali is day by day marching deeper
into its first quagmire. [46] Worse than becoming bogged down in a quagmire, peacekeeping can link
the U.N. to the fortunes of abusive regimes. As noted by Richard Gowan: Some of the largest and
highest-profile UN missions, including those in South Sudan and Darfur, are trapped in quagmires of
endemic violence and dysfunctional politics. UN contingents are often under-equipped and under-
motivated, reducing their tactical impact. Yet the UN’s greatest strategic weakness in these cases is that
it has become entangled in fractious and arguably unethical relationships with national leaders who,
driven by greed or fear, have little real interest in stable, open and inclusive political systems…. At what
point do efforts to maintain relations with abusive leaders and regimes become morally and politically
unsustainable? Does such collaboration contribute to protecting civilians over the long term, or does it
simply allow abusive rulers to fortify their positions?... While it may be hard to imagine pulling
peacekeepers out of countries where civilians remain at risk, there have to be moral limits to the sort of
regimes that peacekeepers are asked to fight and die for. The longer the UN continues to prop up
leaders and governments that treat the organization with contempt, the more that contempt will be
deserved.

Indeed, the presence of the largest U.N. peacekeeping operation, the United Nations Organization
Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), and its partnership with the
government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo becomes increasingly complicated as President
Joseph Kabila punishes journalists, political opponents, and civil society in a bid to retain power despite
constitutional provisions that restrict him to two terms.[48] Failing to Protect Civilians. U.N.
peacekeeping debacles in the 1990s led to a re-evaluation of U.N. peacekeeping. However, as troubling
situations have arisen in recent years, many of them in Africa, the Security Council has found itself under
pressure to respond even when the circumstances may not be ripe for a political solution, or even where
conflict is ongoing and there is no peace to keep. Approving an operation in these instances, however,
does not magically make U.N. peacekeepers more capable of acting with force to prevent violence, or
more willing to do so. As noted by the High-Level Independent Panel on United Nations Peace
Operations, “More than 98 per cent of military and police personnel deployed in United Nations
peacekeeping missions today have a mandate to protect civilians, as part of integrated mission-wide
efforts.”[49] But the panel also notes that “growth in concepts, standards, advocacy and specialized
personnel has yet to transform reality on the ground, where it matters.”[ 50] That is an understatement.
A 2014 study of eight of the nine U.N. peacekeeping operations with a mandate to protect civilians
found that of 570 reported instances of violence, peacekeepers “did not report responding to 406 (80
per cent) of incidents where civilians were attacked.”[51] This also assumes that those reports are
accurate or complete. Whistleblower Aicha Elbasri, who served as spokesperson for the African Union–
United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) between August 2012 and April 2013, provided leaked
documentation to Foreign Policy magazine that showed, in a series of articles, that the mission was
deliberately underreporting and concealing attacks by Sudanese forces on civilians and U.N.
peacekeepers.[52] Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. By far the most horrible of the problems facing U.N.
peacekeeping is the frequency of sexual exploitation and abuse committed by troops and civilian
personnel participating in those operations. This is not a new problem. There have been numerous
reports of U.N. personnel committing serious crimes and sexual misconduct, from rape to the forced
prostitution of women, young girls, and young boys. In recent years, U.N. personnel have been accused
of sexual exploitation and abuse in Bosnia, Burundi, Cambodia, Congo, the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, Guinea, Haiti, Kosovo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Sudan. The U.S. and other member states
successfully pressured the U.N. to adopt stricter requirements for peacekeeping troops and their
contributing countries, and Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon have repeatedly
announced their commitment to a “zero-tolerance policy” on sexual exploitation and abuse and have
commissioned and conducted numerous reports on the matter.[53] Conduct and Discipline Teams
charged with strengthening accountability and upholding the highest standards of conduct in
peacekeeping missions are now present in nearly all U.N. peacekeeping and political missions, and
troops are required to undergo briefing and training on behavior and conduct.[54] Statistics on the
United Nations Conduct and Discipline Unit website have chronicled a decline in allegations of sexual
exploitation and abuse over the past decade.[55] Recent leaked reports, however, belie these statistics
and indicate that the problem is as bad as, if not worse than, it has ever been. A U.N.-commissioned
experts’ report from November 2013, which was never released, was leaked last year.[56] The report
directly challenges U.N. claims on sexual exploitation and abuse: “The UN does not know how serious
the problem of SEA [sexual exploitation and abuse] is because the official numbers mask what appears
to be significant amounts of underreporting of SEA” due to poor record keeping, fear of retribution, a
culture of silence, and a sense of futility due to “the rarity of remedial outcomes including rarity of
victim assistance.”

“Overall, there was noted a culture of enforcement avoidance, with managers feeling powerless to
enforce anti-SEA rules, a culture of silence around reporting and discussing cases, and a culture of
extreme caution with respect to the rights of the accused, and little accorded to the rights of the
victim.” “This impunity has been debilitating for the many UN personnel who believe in, adhere to, and
try to promote the zero tolerance policy, and creates unremediated harm to its victims.” Last year,
another report, based on an investigation by UNICEF and the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner on
Human Rights into allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct involving young boys in the Central
African Republic between December 2013 and June 2014, was leaked. The confidential investigation
reportedly provided strong evidence of repeated rape and sexual abuse by French, Chadian, and
Equatorial Guinean peacekeepers present in the country before the United Nations Multidimensional
Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) was stood up.[57] The
reluctance of the U.N. to pursue the matter is deeply troubling. As stated by Paula Donovan, co-director
of the advocacy group AIDS-Free World, who received the leaked report: The regular sex abuse by
peacekeeping personnel uncovered here and the United Nations’ appalling disregard for victims are
stomach-turning, but the awful truth is that this isn’t uncommon. The UN’s instinctive response to
sexual violence in its ranks—ignore, deny, cover up, dissemble—must be subjected to a truly
independent commission of inquiry with total access, top to bottom, and full subpoena power. [58]
This conclusion was echoed by a U.N.-established independent review that concluded: These repeated
failures [by the U.N. and its senior officials] to respond to the Allegations are, in the Panel’s view,
indicative of a broader problem of fragmentation of responsibility within the Organization, in which UN
staff too often assumed that some other UN agency would take responsibility to address the violations.
The end result was a gross institutional failure to respond to the Allegations in a meaningful way. [59]
The review proposed a number of reforms in training, procedures for reporting and investigating sexual
exploitation and abuse, and securing commitments by troop-contributing countries to try to minimize
repetition of this problem. The Secretary-General endorsed the measures recommended by the review
in a February report that also, for the first time, provided details on sexual exploitation and abuse by
peacekeeping missions, specifically named the nationality of those accused, and provided the current
status of investigations. This transparency is a vast improvement. Similarly, the steps announced in the
report should help in preventing sexual exploitation and abuse and addressing them in a timely manner
if they occur. As illustrated by the numerous announcements of reforms and zero tolerance in the past,
however, the U.N.’s problem has never been an inability to announce its commitment to stopping sexual
exploitation and abuse; it has been a deplorable inability to follow through. With this in mind, it is worth
noting that a great many of the reforms involve requesting member states, particularly troop-
contributing countries, to commit to and implement various measures, such as stronger investigatory
procedures.[60] This formulation is echoed in Security Council Resolution 2272 on measures to address
sexual exploitation and abuse by U.N. peacekeepers, which similarly urges, welcomes, and encourages
efforts by member states to take steps recommended by the Secretary-General.[61] Whether these
reforms will be implemented or delayed indefinitely in bureaucratic deliberations and efforts to achieve
consensus support in the General Assembly is yet to be determined. There have been some positive
signs, including the decision to send home troop contingents from the Democratic Republic of the Congo
and Burundi, and to confine troops from Burundi and Gabon to barracks after they were found to be
involved in sexual exploitation and abuse.[62] But new allegations of serious sexual exploitation and
abuse by U.N. peacekeepers clearly indicate that much remains to be done.[63] Indeed, the U.N.
recently confirmed receiving 44 new sexual-abuse allegations involving more than 40 minors in 2016—
nearly half the total number of sexual-abuse allegations reported in 2015.[64]
General Turn Evidence

Turn – Peacekeepers engage in violence and rape

SANAM NARAGHI ANDERLINI is the Co-founder and Executive Director of the International Civil Society
Action Network (ICAN). June 9k 2017, Foreign Affairs, UN Peacekeepers' Sexual Assault Problem,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2017-06-09/un-peacekeepers-sexual-assault-problem

When I started working in peacebuilding over 20 years ago, the United Nations was coming under fire
because multinational forces working as peacekeepers in Cambodia had sexually abused women and
girls and spread HIV/AIDS and other diseases among local populations. In the many years since, UN
peacekeepers have been accused of doing the same in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti,
Liberia, and beyond. In 2014, peacekeepers from France and Georgia were implicated in incidents of
sexual violence against young children in the Central African Republic. In 2016, following
investigations, the UN reported 41 cases of abuse involving peacekeepers from Burundi and Gabon,
including eight paternity cases and six filed on behalf of minors. This violence does not happen only
when national forces are deployed as UN peacekeepers. In May 2017, the New York Times reported
that similar accusations had been made against the Ugandan People’s Defence Force. Having been
deployed to one of the world’s most remote areas in the Central African Republic to capture the
remnants of the Lord’s Resistance Army—a violent extremist group known for terrorizing communities
and for their horrific abduction, rape, and abuse of boys and girls in Northern Uganda—UPDF soldiers
instead were themselves implicated in raping and sexually exploiting young girls. Where poverty is rife,
the promise of a bar of soap and some food was often enough to entice a teenager, let alone promises
of marriage and security. But the ending is always the same. Some girls become pregnant, others may
be diseased, but the soldiers disappear, and the authorities typically deny, obfuscate, or promise
investigations that ultimately lead nowhere. Over the years, one UN secretary general after another has
responded with outrage. The Security Council and member states have also proverbially pounded the
table in anger. Yet too often that ire is directed at the whistleblowers rather than the perpetrators.
Denials come fast and furious from many quarters. In the case of Somalia just a few years ago, it was a
virtual open secret among many in the international community that African Union Mission in Somalia
forces were prostituting Somali girls and young women. Human Rights Watch shed light on countless
cases of rape, forced prostitution, and exploitation—meaning that many local Somali women were
enticed with a promise of food or water. The report further notes that women and girls were passing
through “official and guarded gates.”a Yet the reports rarely if ever made it to the Security Council. And
the girls and women who name their male accusers are too often ignored or discredited. In the case of
Haiti, local women have given up on reporting cases. As Femi Oke, a reporter for Fault Lines, said, “The
UN claims the number of assaults has gone down, but after almost two decades of impunity, these
women told us they just saw no point in reporting the crimes.” These soldiers violate every ethical and
moral code. Their actions denigrate the countries they represent, the uniforms they wear, and the
institutions they represent. The men who serve to protect civilians under the UN flag but then abuse
them are the greatest threat to the credibility of the United Nations. The world’s most powerful states
cannot continue to hide behind tired arguments about their commitment to so-called zero tolerance of
sexual exploitation and abuse if they do little to penalize violators or even fund investigations properly.
As the Associated Press reported in early 2017, over the past 12 years, there have been nearly 2,000
formal allegations of sexual exploitation and assault by peacekeepers and other UN civilian personnel
globally. Over 300 involved children, yet only a fraction of the perpetrators has been imprisoned.
STALLED PROGRESS AT THE UN? It is not true that this problem is intractable. Since the first cases of
peacekeeper abuse and so-called UN babies came to light in the 1990s, a global movement of women’s
rights and peace activists has persistently articulated clear and practical solutions to the problem. In
October 2000, with strategy and sheer determination, the global Women Building Peace campaign took
the issues directly to the Security Council and secured Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security.
This, along with seven subsequent resolutions, provides a comprehensive roadmap for addressing
glaring gaps when it comes to women in all aspects of peacemaking. Regarding peacekeeping in
particular, the resolutions demand gendered training for peacekeepers, including on the protection,
rights, and needs of women in the communities they serve. They call on member states to provide
awareness on HIV/AIDS and ensure that their forces who serve under the UN’s flag are aware of the
UN’s zero tolerance policies on sexual exploitation and abuse and to fund such educational efforts.
There is also a demand to increase the number of women in their peacekeeping forces. Since 2000,
despite the expansion of the Women, Peace, and Security policy agenda, compliance with the
resolutions has been ad hoc at best. Each UN secretary general has tackled the issues and demanded
better behavior from member states, but their calls have fallen short. In part, this is because the
resolutions in this agenda fall under Chapter Six of the UN Charter: member states are obligated to act,
but they face no penalties for non-compliance.

Turn – Child rape

Andrew MacLeo, Visiting Professor, Public Policy, King's College London, July 6, 2017,
https://theconversation.com/the-un-has-a-problem-its-not-just-gender-violence-its-child-rape-78429,
The UN has a problem: it’s not just gender violence, it’s child rape

If a United Nations official in New York raped an American child, there would be hell to pay. Similarly, if
a UN official in Geneva raped a Swiss child, there would be an outcry. So why is it that when a United
Nations official or peacekeeper rapes an African child, the organisation fails to ensure that perpetrators
are prosecuted? This a question that the world body has been avoiding for years. Only recently its top
officials acknowledged that the UN has a very serious sexual violence problem. Earlier this year UN
Secretary General Antonio Guterres confirmed that UN peacekeepers and civilian staff perpetrated 145
cases of sexual exploitation and abuse involving 311 victims in 2016 alone. That is more than two victims
for each case on average. Many of the victims, by the UN’s own admission, are children. And while the
numbers are huge they are likely to be the tip of the iceberg because they only represent the crimes
that have been reported. More than that, these numbers are only representative of sexual crimes
committed within the organisation’s peacekeeping forces. The problem is so bad that the UN keeps an
updated list of accusations againt peacekeepers on a website. So far this year 32 reported cases of
sexual violence have been made against peacekeeping staff. Long-standing affair The 2016-2017 figures
are only a small portion of the sex and child rape crimes committed by UN staff and peacekeepers over
at least the last 20 years. The figures don’t include the UN sex scandals in the Bosnian War dramatised
in the 2010 film Whistleblower nor the long running “food for sex” scandals of the early 2000s. These
involved UN peacekeepers withholding food from refugees and displaced families until they agreed to
the soldiers access to their children for sex. A 2006 Save the Children report found “abuse at all age
levels from 8 to 18”. Victims older than 12 years of age were identified as being “regularly involved in
selling sex”. The report went on to say that among the children interviewed “all of the respondents
clearly stated that they felt that the scale of the problem affected over half of the girls in their
locations”. This is a longstanding problem that dates back to the war in Bosnia. According to the Code
Blue Campaign, a campaign set up by Aids Free World to respond to the growing UN sexual abuse
scandal, the Berbérati battalion of Congolese peacekeepers in the Central African Republic were the
subject of serious concerns over a period of two years 2014 to 2016. According to Code Blue, in June
2016 UN investigators knew that a group of children was living inside the army base, making them
easy prey for a battalion that had been accused of multiple counts of child rape. To put “multiple” into
statistical context let’s use the UK as a point of reference. In the UK only one in seven rapes are
reported. If one assumes that the same number of rapes are reported at the UN, then the 311 cases
reported in 2016 would represent over 2100 victims in a single year. That is a figure that should be hard
to ignore. Yet the UN continues to use legal and sovereign immunity claims to prevent the prosecution
of offenders. This immunity rests on challengeable legal foundations and can be waived by the UN. But
the world body chooses not to waive immunity, instead using this legal fiction to protect child rapists.
Not a single one of the accusations the UN lists on its website, and specifically those that involve the
rape of children, has been prosecuted. For at least 20 years the leadership of the UN has known about
this sexual violence problem and for years it has failed to act. Indeed, former Secretary General Kofi
Annan listed his failure to address the problem decisively as one of his regrets. His successor Ban Ki
Moon has also acknowledged that not enough has been done. Current Secretary General Guterres has
proposed a four-part strategy to deal with the problem. This entails putting the rights and dignity of
victims at the forefront of the UN’s efforts, working relentlessly to end impunity for those guilty of
sexual abuse and exploitation, building a civil society network to support UN efforts, and raising
worldwide awareness of the problem. Releasing the 2016 UN annual review Guterres said, I fully
recognise that no magic wand exists to end the problem of sexual exploitation and abuse. Nevertheless,
I believe that we can dramatically improve how the United Nations addresses this scourge. Many people
in power have known for decades of the sexual abuse by the UN and for some reason it continues. It is
one of the reasons I quit the UN in 2009 calling out the abuse in my 2013 book “A Life Half Lived”. Three
years later, is the world just beginning to see the scale and scope of the problem? Are we today with the
UN precisely where we were with the Catholic Church in the 1980s? If we are, then as a global
community, we need to do better than just “dramatically improve”. This scourge must be stopped now.
Children in conflict zones need our help.J
Peacekeeping Sexual Abuse Widespread
Sexual violence

Institute for democracy & Justice in Haiti, 2017, https://www.ijdh.org/2017/08/topics/law-justice/need-

a-title/ An Evaluation of the Causes and Results of U.N. Peacekeeper Actions
In the International Organization journal article Peacekeeping, Compliance with International Norms,
and Transactional Sex in Monrovia, published in late 2016, researchers found that more than 50
percent of women surveyed in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, had engaged in transactional sex. "A
large majority - 75 percent - with UN peacekeeping," the report found. Widely touted as the first
quantitative study of the association between a UN peacekeeping operation and transactional sex, the
report stated: "Transactional sex with UN personnel is a ubiquitous life experience among young
women in Monrovia." "The actions of UN peacekeepers are undermining the UN's broader peace-
building goals in Liberia," it continued. "When UNMIL (UN Mission in Liberia) withdraws, it will leave
behind a distorted economy in which more than half Monrovia's young women will have been making
their livelihoods by selling sex." [Illustration by Jawahir Al-Naimi/ Al Jazeera ] When several international
aid agencies raised the alarm over abusive behaviour by UN peacekeepers in Cambodia between 1991
and 1993, including them visiting brothels where some of the prostitutes were underage, Yasushi
Akashi, the then head of the UN mission to Cambodia (UNTAC), responded, "boys will be boys".
Reflecting on Akashi's comments, Sandra Whitworth, a professor of political science at York University in
Toronto, Canada and author of Men, Militarism and UN Peacekeeping: A Gendered Analysis, writes that
bringing peace to Cambodia "was accompanied [by] the deployment of soldiers who assumed that their
prerogatives as militarised men included access to prostitutes, as well as a freedom to pursue, harass,
and assault local women". What constitutes exploitation and what abuse? The UN discourages sexual
relations between peacekeepers and the local community, arguing that it fosters unequal relations.
While peacekeepers can be fired or repatriated for breaking UN code by engaging in sexual relations,
including paying for sex (defined as exploitation by the UN) with a member of the local community,
they can escape prosecution if the UN rules that it is not abuse (such as rape), or if prostitution is not
illegal in the country. [But] prostitution, or what some term sex work, is rarely, if ever, the first choice of
those who are hungry and/or have families to support. It is almost always a last resort and peacekeepers
must reflect on their positions of power and privilege. Gill Mathurin, Aids Free World It is up to the UN
to decide whether the peacekeeper's behaviour is deemed exploitation or abuse. Olivier Salgado, the
spokesperson for the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, explains the distinction between the
two. "Sexual exploitation incorporates an inherently unequal power dynamic. Sexual abuse is a physical
act committed whether by force or under unequal or coercive conditions. Both sexual exploitation and
sexual abuse, however, violate the fundamental values of the United Nations and its standards of
conduct." "It is also important to note," he adds, "that in some instances, sexual exploitation may lead
to sexual abuse and should, therefore, be given the utmost attention." 'Consensual' sex and unequal
power dynamics When in 2003, the then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan introduced a zero tolerance
policy on sexual abuse and exploitation, he also "discouraged" peacekeepers from engaging in sexual
relations with beneficiaries of assistance "since they are based on inherently unequal power dynamics,
[and] undermine the credibility and integrity of the work of the United Nations". But academics and
researchers disagree over the effectiveness of this approach. The pressure on peacekeepers to remain
celibate for long missions is "unreasonable", says Henry. "Many just don't see paying someone for sex as
a major infraction … if they cover it up, it is because they know the UN doesn't like it," she adds. Paul
Higate, a lecturer at the school of sociology, politics and international studies at the University of Bristol
in the UK, agrees that it is counterproductive to regulate or prohibit sexual relations between
consenting adults. But Gill Mathurin, communications director of Aids Free World, on the other hand,
argues that it is "not possible for there to be consensual sex between UN peacekeepers and the people
they are sent to serve". Higate believes there needs to be greater clarity over how sexual relations are
understood in the context of the power dynamics between peacekeepers and the host population. "The
situation of adults involved in survival prostitution should not be equated with the rape of a child," he
says. "[But] prostitution, or what some term sex work, is rarely, if ever, the first choice of those who are
hungry and/or have families to support. It is almost always a last resort and peacekeepers must reflect
on their positions of power and privilege."

Sexual abuse and exploitation common in peacekeeping operations

In March 2013, the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) released its latest annual report, in
which it revealed that sexual exploitation and abuse remains a significant problem in peacekeeping missions.
The reported number of fresh allegations has dropped from the peak seen in the early 2000s, which is a positive
indication that preventive measures are slowly working.7 However, the figures still remain unacceptably high even
without taking underreporting into account. 8 In 2012, sixty fresh allegations were reported in ten field missions.
Significantly, the rate of related criminal prosecutions remains negligible.

AMISOM mission problems likely widespread

Human Rights Watch, September 25, 2014, Statement Regarding the Recent Report on Sexual
Exploitation and Abuse by ANISOM Peacekeepers, http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/09/25/statement-
regarding-recent-report-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse-amisom-peacekeepers DOA: 1-3-15

Human Rights Watch interviewed 21 women and girls who experienced sexual exploitation and other
abuses, despite the research challenges described above and in the methodology section of the report.
These research constraints make it difficult to precisely ascertain the scale or prevalence of sexual
abuse. Human Rights Watch is concerned that the scale of the problem is under-reported and
significantly larger than the 21 cases documented. The report highlights the evidence that supports this
concern. For example, the survivors interviewed described seeing other women and girls in similar
circumstances on the AMISOM bases over prolonged periods. Some said they had been recruited
directly from their displacement camps by women and girls already engaged in sex for money on the
AMISOM base camp. In addition, the tactics used to lure women documented in the report, such as the
reliance on Somali translators and intermediaries, the recruitment of women and girls from the
hospitals, women entering through guarded gates of the camps, and sexual intercourse between Somali
women and soldiers occurring in AMISOM housing, is suggestive of a broader problem of abuses and
that they were not random or isolated incidents.

Sexual abuse by peacekeepers is common

Carimah Townes, September 23, 2014, Think Progress, Report: Peacekeepers Sexually Exploited and
Abused Women and Girls in Somalia, http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/09/08/3564325/women-
and-girls-sexually-exploited-abused-by-peacekeepers/

Multiple women and girls were sexually abused and exploited by United Nations-backed troops
with the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), according to a new Human Rights Watch
report issued Monday morning. HRW found 21 cases of “sexual exploitation and abuse” by AMISOM
soldiers between 2013 and 2014 alone, including instances of gang rape. Most acts of sexual violence
occurred when women and girls sought out “medicine or humanitarian services” at an AMISOM base in
Mogadishu staffed by soldiers from Burundi. In many instances, soldiers offered food or money to make
sexual encounters appear transactional, and all of the attacks happened when Somali intermediaries,
acting as interpreters, brought girls to base camps or camp hospitals for soldiers stationed there. In
January 2014, Ayanna S., a displaced person, went to the Burundian X-Control base on a Monday to get
medicine for her sick baby. A Somali interpreter working at the base told her to come back alone without
her baby. When she returned the next day that the outpatient clinic was opened to the public, the same
Somali man called her and three other young women over to a fenced area next to some sandbags. There,
six uniformed Burundian men were waiting. Ayanna S. said the soldiers held them at gunpoint,
dragged them into a bunker area, and threatened them. The Burundian soldiers then beat and
raped the women, badly injuring one. AMISOM first began its mission in Somalia in 2007, when the
African Union Peace and Security Council sent a peacekeeping force consisting of troops from Uganda,
Burundi, Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Djibouti, and Sierra Leone. Its presence has grown
tremendously over the past seven years as its role has shifted from helping push back against a group
known as the Islamic Courts Union, which controlled parts of the country, to countering the threat from
al-Shabaab. The terrorist group, which has declared its allegiance to al-Qaeda, has waned and ebbed in
the amount of territory it controls, but continues to launch attacks into neighboring Kenya, as well as
detonating suicide bombs and coordinating assaults against Somali government institutions and civilians.
No Criminal Prosecution of Peacekeeping Sexual Abuse
Allegations do not result in criminal prosecution

Carla Ferstman, 2013, Ferstman is director of REDRESS, a London-based human rights organization
that helps torture survivors obtain justice and reparation, and was a Jennings Randolph senior fellow at
USIP (2012–13). She previously served as REDRESS’s legal director and as the executive legal adviser
of the Commission for Real Property Claims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a mass claims body established
under the Dayton Peace Agreement, Criminalizing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Peacekeepers,
http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/SR335-
Criminalizing%20Sexual%20Exploitation%20and%20Abuse%20by%20Peacekeepers.pdf DOA: 1-3-15
The difficulties in investigating sexual violence allegations are well documented. Indeed, experience
from international criminal tribunals and courts underscores the fact that unless both a well-defined
operational strategy and investigators specially trained in the investigation of such crimes are in
place, evidence of a sufficiently high quality is unlikely to be available. The stigma, fear, trauma,
and isolation engendered by such crimes require special investigation strategies. This need is
especially pronounced when both the suspects and the investigators are foreign. Nonetheless, the
challenges to properly and adequately investigate sexual exploitation and abuse cases will exist
regardless of the perpetrators and the nationality of the investigators. These challenges, coupled
with the general lack of interest in rigorous investigation, make it unsurprising that many of the
allegations are not known to have resulted in criminal prosecutions.

Peacekeepers who engage in sexual exploitation are not subject to prosecution

Carla Ferstman, 2013, Ferstman is director of REDRESS, a London-based human rights organization
that helps torture survivors obtain justice and reparation, and was a Jennings Randolph senior fellow at
USIP (2012–13). She previously served as REDRESS’s legal director and as the executive legal adviser
of the Commission for Real Property Claims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a mass claims body established
under the Dayton Peace Agreement, Criminalizing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Peacekeepers,
http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/SR335-
Criminalizing%20Sexual%20Exploitation%20and%20Abuse%20by%20Peacekeepers.pdf DOA: 1-3-15
Despite peacekeepers’ enormous contributions to and sacrifices for the cause of peace and security, they
have increasingly been associated with sexual exploitation and abuse of the vulnerable populations they
are mandated to protect. Tragically, they benefit from neartotal impunity. It is a reality that the presence
of peacekeepers in countries with precarious legal and social structures can foster sexual
exploitation and abuse. In countries as diverse as Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia,
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), East Timor, Eritrea, Kosovo, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra
Leone, and Somalia, numerous examples of rape, pedophilia, prostitution, and other forms of sexual
exploitation and abuse have come to light in recent decades.1 The effect of such abuses is stark. Not only
is it a direct one for the most vulnerable segments of society, its ramifications for the reputation of
peacekeeping initiatives and the UN generally are also extremely wide, potentially impeding the
organization from successfully carrying out other aspects of its mission.2

Peacekeepers not held accountable for sexual abuse

Peacekeepers are mandated to protect civilian populations and indeed to prevent the heinous acts of mass
sexual violence that have become synonymous with many modern-day conflicts. This responsibility is the
ethos of their mission.3 In June 2013, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution on women, peace,
and security in which it requests “the Secretary- General to continue and strengthen efforts to implement
the policy of zero tolerance on sexual exploitation and abuse by UN personnel and urges concerned
Member States to ensure full accountability, including prosecutions, in cases of such conduct involving
their nationals.” This resolution is preceded by numerous others making nearly identical requests.
Seminal reports by experts have been commissioned and revised memorandums that afford the UN
much stronger powers of oversight have been signed, yet years after a series of comprehensive
strategies were recommended in 2006, little appears to have changed: accountability remains the
exception to the rule, new abuses continue to be reported, and the business of sexual exploitation
and abuse in peacekeeping continues. The inevitable result of complacency and unimplemented
strategies is impunity among peacekeepers.

Peacekeepers who engage in sexual abuse are not punished

Given the UN’s lack of competence over disciplinary and criminal matters, and the absence of an
appropriate international criminal tribunal to prosecute crimes associated with sexual exploitation
and abuse, focus has turned to national investigations and prosecutions, which is appropriate.5
Both would normally be undertaken by the troop-contributing countries. In light of the limited success
with such prosecutions to date, however, a number of expert studies have also recommended, somewhat
controversially, that greater attention should be paid to the possibility for the host state—the state
emerging from conflict where the peacekeepers are stationed and where the crimes are understood to have
taken place—and possibly other states as well to carry out complementary investigations and
prosecutions. This report canvasses what has been proposed and what steps have been taken and argues
that, despite the progress, much more needs to be done if accountability is to be assured. The barriers to
investigations and prosecutions are known; the options to remedy them have been meticulously set
out in a series of reports. Nevertheless, significant gaps remain. The failure to routinely prosecute
and punish abusers undermines other laudable prevention efforts and makes a mockery of the
victims and all that they have endured. Addressing the criminal law barriers is thus a necessary
component of any strategy to eradicate sexual exploitation and abuse in peacekeeping missions. It
remains a pressing concern.
Rape Impact

Rape has devastating psychological and long-term consequences. It is a form of

biological warfare

Rape is not acceptable, even in the face of war

Straton, Portland State University 1989 Address to Manhattan, Kansas May 27, 1989 “How to Form a Men Against
Rape Group” http://www.europrofem.org/02.info/22contri/2.04.en/4en.viol/29en_vio.htm (

It is time to shred the myth that rape will be with us forever, that the best we can do is to teach women to
protect themselves with outdoor lighting, locks, or martial arts. This attitude is an abdication of
responsibility from those able to respond and an acceptance of rape by those who profess to abhor rape. I
declare to you that there is no acceptable level of death, no acceptable level of humiliation, and no
acceptable level of degradation in a culture that calls itself civilized. How can a country that holds justice
high, a country dedicated to freedom, accept the level of fear that women live with daily? We’ve got to
stop rape, and we can stop it. For too long we have lived in denial. I can no longer deny the reality that
every rape is a violation of my humanity. I can no longer deny that my silence implies my consent. I can
no longer deny my sisters their freedom. What man can look his daughter in the eye and try to explain
that "we live in the land of the free, but you must not go out at night?" Which of you can look your kid
sister in the eye and tell her you love her and yet do nothing while she and one in three of her girl friends
will be raped by the age of eighteen; raped by their relatives and peers? How long are men going to allow
our 96 year old grandmothers and 3 month old daughters to be sexually assaulted, before we get off our
butts and do something? I am sick to death of hearing men say that because they would never rape, rape
is not their problem. Well who’s problem is it then? Obviously women who survive an assault experience
a "problem" �" a "problem" that will transform their lives for years to come. But what about the father
who is ready to kill because his daughter has been raped? Is he experiencing "a problem?" And why
doesn’t he generalize his feelings about his daughter to every woman on the planet? What about the
husband of a woman who has been raped whose marriage dissolves within 2 years in 2 of 3 cases? Is he
experiencing a problem? What about the college senior whose partner lives with fear of rape or memories
of rape? Is he experiencing "a problem?" What do men say? "Oh I’m sympathetic, but I really don’t have
the time right now." Rest assured that unless you make the time right now, your problem of rape will be
waiting for you when you finally get around to doing something. "I’ve got to put my energies into
stopping nuclear war" or "environmental destruction." When will you make the connection that the same
male patterns of violence involved in power, control, and humiliation in international conflict are
involved in the violation, degradation, and domination of individual women by individual men? You
identify with the porpoises that are destroyed at the hands of the tuna industry to provide a food source for
you to eat. Why is it harder for you to identify with the women who are humiliated, mutilated, and
murdered at the hands of the pornography industry to provide images for you to view while masturbating?
How can a new age man consider himself sensitive if he cannot sense or does not respond to the pain that
engulfs his sisters?
Answers To: Peacekeeping Solves Sexual Violence

Peacekeeping didn’t solve sexual violence in Haiti

UN failing to protect against sexual violence

Efforts to protect women from sexual violence have failed

Too difficult for peacekeepers to stop sexual violence

Ending conflict doesn’t stop rape

United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, 2012, Addressing
Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: An Analytic Inventory of Peacekeeping Practice,
http://www.unwomen.org/~/media/headquarters/media/publications/en/04dananalyticalinventoryofp
eacekeepingpracti.pdf DOA: 1-2-15
In Burundi in 2006, despite the war being mostly at an end, and the United Nations Operation in
Burundi (ONUB) being in place, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and MSF reported a steady
stream of mothers bringing daughters for post-rape care in areas where rebel groups had settled. In
Northern Uganda in 2007, even as the political situation stabilized, rape remained rampant in the camps.
In Liberia, rape is currently the number one crime reported to the Liberian National Police (LNP)
according to the monthly crime statistics. Despite the prevalence of sexual violence and women’s pivotal
role in peacebuilding, the issue was not addressed in the 2003 Liberian Peace Agreement. Rather, the
arrival of ECOWAS at the end of the civil war marked a “frenzy of rape” as a form of “scorched earth
policy” by both rebel and government fighters, who saw the female population “as booty to be taken
before the peacekeepers took over” (according to a 2004 study by the African Women and Peace Support
Group, “Liberian Women Peacemakers: Fighting for the Right to be Seen, Heard and Counted”).
Multilateralism Impact Answers
Multilateral cooperation fails – states want to preserve relative superiority, so they
won’t enter into agreements that are good for them if they also benefit other states
disproportionately – multilateral institutions are becoming increasingly costly for
states, so they’d rather just leave them – that’s Cohen
States have increasingly diminishing reason to abide by multilateral agreements
Harlan Grant Cohen 2018, Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law,
University of Georgia School of Law, 3-16-2018, “Multilateralism’s Life Cycle”, The American Society of
International Law, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-journal-of-international-
law/article/multilateralisms-life-cycle/49343526DF8DD1B9C3834F0577C03B98
As proof of the influence of global scripts, scholars have observed disconnects between states’ external
commitment and internal behaviors.86 Such scholars have suggested that over time, the former may
influence the latter, moving the states to actual compliance.87 In the short term though, this
observation recognizes the inherent instability of these commitments. Until internal behaviors or
attitudes change, state commitments may be highly sensitive to external power shifts . If the pessimistic story is
true, then many global, multilateral institutions may either unravel or be gutted by multipolarity. The
incentives to remain or comply may no longer be there . Keeping everyone together may require either
sweetening the deal for each individual member (tacitly allowing non-WTO conforming free trade agreements) or
decreasing the downside risk by weakening the overall agreement (accepting the views of African states on official
immunity88). IV. THE DOWNSIDE OF SUCCESS Paradoxically, the diminished power of linkages may be compounded
by the increasing effectiveness89 of these various multilateral institutions . For those states who had
little interest in the institutions in the first place, and who perceive little short-term benefit from these
institutions, the effectiveness of the institution is a cost. As the institutions take hold, states may see increasing pressure
to come into compliance with the institutions’ rules, whether on trade, human rights, investment protection, or criminal justice. States’ chosen
policies may face challenge at international organizations, in front of international courts and tribunals, and even in domestic courts. Costs
associated with membership in a particular institution may range from economic sanctions, awards of
compensation, judicial criticism, NGO shaming and pressure, to negative public opinion at home . It is key
that, for the state receiving little perceived benefit from the institution, even bad publicity may be
enough of a cost to make withdrawal seem reasonable, particularly if the costs of withdrawal seem low.
African states considering withdrawal from the Rome Statute may have already crossed that threshold.
Given other states’ inconsistent commitment to the ICC, they may rightly see the costs of withdrawal
will also be low. Venezuela too may have crossed that threshold with regard to the Inter-American Human Rights system.90 Withdrawal is unlikely to do
relevant damage to the Maduro government’s already exceedingly low reputation for human rights, giving that government little reason to stay in and face
continued shaming. The Duterte government in the Philippines may be thinking through similar math with regard to the ICC, Uni ted Nations, and other institutions.
At the very least, President Duterte’s threat of leaving91 may change the calculus of his critics who do not want to lose the limited leverage they have. Of course, for
at least some states, increasingly effective institutions should provide some benefits. States can rely on the WTO to guarantee that the benefits they bargained for
are protected. Members of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) benefit from increased security and stability for shipping, fishing, and mining. All of
these benefitsshould raise the costs of withdrawal and/or non-compliance. The problem is that this
calculus is true for many members of that institution. With so many states reliant on those institutions’
continued success, free-riding becomes a real, viable strategy. States know that they can withdraw
from, violate, or cheat on the agreement without it falling apart. Others have too much invested in it.
China, the United States, the European Union, and others can play hard and fast with WTO rules, knowing that the overall agreement and the
benefits they receive will not go away. In particular, those states have negotiated free trade agreements hard to square with WTO rules. Few
have challenged them though,92 almost certainly for fear that a successful challenge would undermine either their own s uch agreements or
the WTO as a whole. Better for everyone to look the other way. Similarly, the
United Kingdom has consistently fallen back
on the continued presence of the WTO and its rules both to justify Brexit and as supposed leverage in its
negotiations with the rest of the European Union.93 The United States has long been able to rely on the
stability created by UNCLOS even as it remains outside. 94 China has largely ignored the Permanent Court
of Arbitration’s decision against it with regard to China’s actions in the South China Sea,95 knowing that it
would still benefit from the regime elsewhere in the world.96

Multilateral deals are ineffective, local solutions are better

Harlan Grant Cohen 2018, Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law,
University of Georgia School of Law, 3-16-2018, “Multilateralism’s Life Cycle”, The American Society of
International Law, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-journal-of-international-
law/article/multilateralisms-life-cycle/49343526DF8DD1B9C3834F0577C03B98
But tothe extent to which there has been a blanket preference for global-scale multilateral deals to
provide global public goods,123 that preference may need to be rethought. Providing global public goods
in a multipolar world may require smaller deals that can guarantee states specific, desirable club goods.
International justice, for example, might have to move to the local level, take local interests more directly
into account, and promise specific realizable benefits to the country or countries in question.124 And this
may be the case even if the resulting deals are less efficient or effective in providing the broader good.
Enhancing protections for endangered species or labor rights through TPP-like free trade areas, with all of that model’s flaws, may be more
durable and effective than attempts to work through the global multilateral Convention on the International Trade in Endanger ed Species.
Local, bilateral, and regional environmental governance may more effectively get actors to change their
policies than global multilateral ones. Tim Meyer, for example, has noted how local clean energy plans
that favor local providers can overcome political obstacles better than national or multilateral efforts .125
The cost is borne as an externality by others; such costs though may be the inevitable byproduct of multipolar, post-multilateral policymaking.
Notably, while
these other-shape solutions may be less efficient from a global policy perspective, they may
be fairer or more just along other metrics.126 These structural realities thus dovetail well with other
critiques of multilateralism-for-multilateralism’s-sake, including concerns that multilateral solutions are
not neutral, that they may favor certain interests over others, and that a more pluralist perspective
that encourages bespoke policy choices may be more normatively desirable.127 One can hear echoes of
older concerns about the “democracy deficit” of multilateral institutions128 beneath current voter
complaints in the United Kingdom, United States, and elsewhere that multilateral institutions ignore
them in favor of others. Deeper, broader integration may not always be better. Seeing multilateralism’s structural limits
may help reveal some of its normative ones as well. Policymakers will also have to think hard about
whether providing any particular global good really does require universal or near universal
participation. An agreement between the states with the most emissions may be more important for progress on climate change than a
broader agreement that can win everyone’s support. And while some aspects of a problem may require near universal cooperation, other
discrete aspects may take the form of aggregate effort or even single-best-effort public goods.129 Norm-settingand
implementation may require different strategies and different shape agreements. For the former, global
multilateral deals may continue to be the best strategy; for the latter they may not. Policymakers may have to
break complex problems into their component parts and devise an effective strategy for solving each. Recognizing multilateralism’s
limits may make policymaking more complicated, but it may also make it more thoughtful.

Global multilateral cooperation structurally fails---overwhelming data confirms

Robert J Lieber 14, Professor, Department of Government, Georgetown University, 2014, “The Rise of
the BRICS and American primacy,” International Politics, Vol. 51, p. 137-154
Equally important, liberal internationalists and others tend to assume that international relations are a positive sum
game (Keohane, 1984; Ruggie, 1993). Experiences with multilateralism and with regional international institutions are said to enco urage
cooperation. Transparency, reciprocity and habits of collaboration are seen as self-reinforcing. In order to achieve their own domestic needs for
economic growth, countries find not only these experiences beneficial, but such cooperation spills over across related functi ons and issue
areas. A generation ago, scholars writing and theorizing about regional integration in Western Europe defined this process as one of ‘spillover’.
For liberal internationalists and globalists there is at least an implied analogy with that European experience despite the i mmense differences in
geography, history and path dependence.5 That assumption has some basis in the areas of economics and trade, though the mercantili st and
In the security realm , however, there is little reason for
predatory behavior of China provides a serious contrary indicator.
such an optimistic assumption. Cases in point include nuclear proliferation (North Korea, Iran), tensions in
East Asia (China, Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, the Philippines, the East and South China Seas) and conflicts in the Middle East
(Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon, as well as Israel and the Palestinians). Nonetheless there are exceptions. Brazil has playe d a
continuing role in UN Peacekeeping. It assigns nearly 2500 military and police personnel to those missions and has played a l eading role in Haiti,
where it has commanded the UN’s operation since 2004. It also has headed the maritime component of UNIFIL (Lebanon) since 201 1. In
addition, Turkey has participated actively in NATO-led peacekeeping missions in Bosnia (SFOR), Kosovo (KFOR), and Afghanistan (ISAF).

Skepticism about the BRICS and the momentum assumed by liberal internationalists has not been
scarce.6 Realist scholars have understandably been critical of the assumptions underlying these approaches as well as of the foreign policy
choices they imply. However, other scholars too have found increasing reason for criticism . For example, Barma et al (2013,
p. 56) have recently observed that, ‘Instead of a gradual trend toward global problem solving punctuated by
isolated failures, we have seen over the last several years essentially the opposite : stunningly few instances of
international cooperation on significant issues’. Moreover, Patrick (2010, p. 44) of the Council on Foreign Relations has
cautioned that, ‘The United States should be under no illusions about the ease of socializing rising nations.
Emerging powers may be clamoring for greater global influence, but they often oppose the political and
economic ground rules of the inherited Western liberal order, seek to transform existing multilateral
arrangements, and shy away from assuming significant global responsibilities’. In this regard, Laidi has argued that
despite their own heterogeneity, the BRICS actually share a common objective in opposing Western liberal
internationalist narratives that run counter to traditional state sovereignty. Instead, they seek to protect their own
prerogatives, independence of action and national autonomy in an increasingly interdependent world
(Laidi, 2012, pp. 614–615).

Multilateralism fails—diverging interests and a lack of faith guarantee cooperation is

at best superficial
Heribert Dieter 14, Senior Associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs,
Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Visiting Professor for
International Political Economy at Zeppelin University, Doctorate in Political Science and Economics,
Free University of Berlin, 1/31/14, The G-20 and the Dilemma of Asymmetric Sovereignty – Why
Multilateralism Is Failing in Crisis Prevention, International Relations and Security Network,
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Articles/Detail/?lng=en&id=176145

the mantra-like repetition of

Yet, tightening the rules for financial market regulation is not the only field where the G-20 is failing. Despite

memoranda of understanding, the trade ministers of the G-20 have not been able to overcome their conflicts of
interest and reach a settlement in the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO). What are the reasons for this failure?Althoug h the G-20 managed
to prevent a revival of protectionist measures on a broad front in the midst of the crisis, there is a large gap between the announcements of the G-20 and
quantifiable results in trade policy. There
is not one final communiqué that lacks a clear statement stressing the
importance of the WTO and the necessity to conclude the Doha Round. Nonetheless, the reality of trade policy looks
very different. All the states that are preventing the conclusion of the Doha Round through their vetoes are members of the G-20.
Despite there being little public information available on the reasons for the deadlock in the Doha Round, it is known that the US, Brazil, and China are blocking its
conclusion. The emerging economies Brazil and China oppose the US’s demand for the complete elimination of tariffs on industrial goods. Conversely, the US resists
the request to comprehensively abandon subsidies to the agricultural sector.Thus, the Doha Round is not concluded because three important
members
of the G-20 no longer believe in multilateral solutions and would rather engage in preferential agreements.
For experts in the field of international trade, this is a paradox. There is a broad consensus that a single rulebook for international trade would facilitate economic
growth and contribute to a worldwide increase in prosperity. This, however, cannot be said for the currently popular free trade agreements. So why are the
countries in the G-20 incapable of further developing the common rules for international trade? One explanation is the lack of a hegemonic power that is willing to
guarantee compliance with the rules of the game, but at the same time establish a system that provides member countries with sufficient economic benefits. In any
event, this is how the postwar economy emerged: The US enforced the system of Bretton Woods and made sure that the participat ion in this economic regime
remained attractive. Of course, the Bretton Woods regime never was a truly global system, since member countries of the Council on Mutual Economic Assistance
did not participate. Still, within the bipolar order of the Cold War, the US managed to keep the system open and stable.¶ After the collapse of the USSR and the
following short-lived “unipolar moment” (Charles Krauthammer) of complete hegemony of the US, the multilateral order was being advanced until 1995, the
founding year of the WTO. Since the turn of the millennium and the parallel emergence of a multipolar order, nearly all attempts to organize cooperation without
hegemony (Bob Keohane) have failed. The present multipolar world is characterized by superficial cooperation. Global
Governance, whether in policies to prevent further climate change or in economic policy, remains on
hold. Even worse: The world is returning to regulation on the level of the nation-state and non-cooperation. The American political scientist Ian Bremmer refers
to the resulting situation as “G-Zero,” an era in which groups such as the G-20 will no longer play a vital role. The negative perception of the international division of
labor¶ Apparently, there is no such thing as an identity of interests of individual states, as assumed by the advocates of global regulation and global governance. In
other words: The gap between the preferences of individual states is widening rather than narrowing. However, governments
must respect the preferences of their societies in the formulation of policies if they do not wish to lose legitimacy. Then again, the
different
preferences of societies are the immediate result of severely diverging perceptions of the international division of labor.
Even in the G-20, individual societies have very different perceptions of the effects of globalization and its economic
effects.¶ In Europe and the US, many people are increasingly critical of the international division of labor, if not outright hostile t o globalization. According to a
number of surveys, only about one-fifth to one-third of the respondents in OECD countries see greater opportunities than risks in globalization. Even in Germany,
numerous politicians and citizens have been critical of globalization, although Germany strongly benefits from open markets and the resulting intensification of
international trade.¶ Without a political anchoring in the member states, the G-20 has no future¶ The
unfavorable perceptions of
globalization and the outlined asymmetric sovereignty have resulted in a standstill in the G-20. Instead of a further
development of the multilateral order, at best the status quo will be preserved . This is why we can expect nothing

substantial – at least in terms of economic policy and financial regulation – from the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg on September 5 and 6. The
structural impediments to successful financial regulation and trade policies on a supranational level cannot be overcome by the heads of
government and state of the G-20. At least there is some hope in those areas where the countries of the G-20 have identical interests. This applies primarily to
measures to close down tax loopholes. In 2008, ambitious expectations of a comprehensive reorganization of international trade relations through the G-20 were
raised. Unfortunately, the G-20 cannot and will not deliver on crisis prevention. Today, more modest goals will have to be set. The key obstacle to success in the
further development of global rules in trade and finance can be found in the G-20 societies themselves. Perceptions about globalization need to be addressed by
policy makers at the national level, as do the widespread reservations about the international division of labor in the OECD countries. If
societies
continue to show diverging preferences, the development of comprehensive global economic governance in
the G-20 will be all but impossible.

Gridlock is locked in — assumes their impacts

Self-reinforcing interdependence has now progressed to the point where it has altered our ability to
engage in further global cooperation. That is, economic and political shifts in large part attributable to the successes of
the post-war multilateral order are now amongst the factors grinding that system into gridlock. Because of the remarkable
success of global cooperation in the postwar order, human interconnectedness weighs much more heavily on politics than it did in 1945. The
need for international cooperation has never been higher. Yet the “supply” side of the equation,
institutionalized multilateral cooperation, has stalled. In areas such as nuclear proliferation, the explosion of
small armssales, terrorism, failed states, global economic imbalances, financial market instability, global
poverty and inequality, biodiversity losses, water deficits and climate change, multilateral and transnational
cooperation is now increasingly ineffective or threadbare . Gridlock is not unique to one issue domain,
but appears to be becoming a general feature of global governance : cooperation seems to be increasingly difficult
and deficient at precisely the time when it is needed most.

Effective coordination is impossible---transaction costs and divergent interests

guarantee failure
David Held 13, Professor of Politics and International Relations, at the University of Durham AND
Thomas Hale, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University
AND Kevin Young, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst, 5/24/13, “Gridlock: the growing breakdown of global cooperation,”
http://www.opendemocracy.net/thomas-hale-david-held-kevin-young/gridlock-growing-breakdown-of-
global-cooperation

It is possible to identify four reasons for this blockage, four pathways to gridlock: rising multipolarity, institutional inertia,
harder problems, and institutional fragmentation. Each pathway can be thought of as a growing trend that embodies a specific mix of causal
mechanisms. Each of these are explained briefly below.¶ Growing multipolarity. The absolute number of states has
increased by 300 percent in the last 70 years, meaning that the most basic transaction costs of global
governance have grown. More importantly, the number of states that “matter” on a given issue—that is, the states
without whose cooperation a global problem cannot be adequately addressed—has expanded by similar proportions. At
Bretton Woods in 1945, the rules of the world economy could essentially be written by the United States with some
consultation with the UK and other European allies. In the aftermath of the 2008-2009 crisis, the G-20 has become the
principal forum for global economic management, not because the established powers desired to be more inclusive, but because they
could not solve the problem on their own. However, a consequence of this progress is now that many more countries, representing
a diverse range of interests, must agree in order for global cooperation to occur.¶ Institutional inertia.
The postwar order succeeded, in part, because it incentivized great power involvement in key institutions. From the
UN Security Council, to the Bretton Woods institutions, to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, key pillars of the global order explicitly grant special
privileges to the countries that were wealthy and powerful at the time of their creation. This
hierarchy was necessary to secure
the participation of
the most important countries in global governance. Today, the gain from this trade-off has
shrunk while the costs have grown. As power shifts from West to East, North to South, a broader range of
participation is needed on nearly all global issues if they are to be dealt with effectively. At the same time, following decolonization, t he end of
the Cold War and economic development, the idea that some countries should hold more rights and privileges than
others is increasingly (and rightly) regarded as morally bankrupt. And yet, the architects of the postwar order did not, in
most cases, design institutions that would organically adjust to fluctuations in national power. ¶ Harder problems. As independence has
deepened, the types and scope of problems around which countries must cooperate has evolved. Problems
are both now more extensive, implicating a broader range of countries and individuals within countries,
and intensive, penetrating deep into the domestic policy space and daily life. Consider the example of trade.
For much of the postwar era, trade negotiations focused on reducing tariff levels on manufactured products traded
between industrialized countries. Now, however, negotiating a trade agreement requires also discussing a
host of social, environmental, and cultural subjects - GMOs, intellectual property, health and
environmental standards, biodiversity, labour standards—about which countries often disagree sharply.
In the area of environmental change a similar set of considerations applies. To clean up industrial smog or
address ozone depletion required fairly discrete actions from a small number of top polluters. By contrast,
the threat of climate change and the efforts to mitigate it involve nearly all countries of the globe. Yet, the
divergence of voice and interest within both the developed and developing worlds, along with the sheer
complexity of the incentives needed to achieve a low carbon economy, have made a global deal , thus
far, impossible (Falkner et al. 2011; Victor 2011).¶ Fragmentation. The institution-builders of the 1940s began with, essentially, a
blank slate. But efforts to cooperate internationally today occur in a dense institutional ecosystem shaped by
path dependency. The exponential rise in both multilateral and transnational organizations has created a
more complex multilevel and multi-actor system of global governance. Within this dense web of institutions
mandates can conflict, interventions are frequently uncoordinated, and all too typically scarce resources are
subject to intense competition. In this context, the proliferation of institutions tends to lead to dysfunctional
fragmentation, reducing the ability of multilateral institutions to provide public goods. When funding and
political will are scarce, countries need focal points to guide policy (Keohane and Martin 1995), which can help define the nature and
form of cooperation. Yet, when international regimes overlap, these positive effects are weakened. Fragmented institutions, in turn,
disaggregate resources and political will, while increasing transaction costs .¶ In stressing four pathways to
gridlock we emphasize the manner in which contemporary global governance problems build up on each other,
although different pathways can carry more significance in some domains than in others. The challenges now faced by the multilateral
order are substantially different from those faced by the 1945 victors in the postwar settlement. They are
second-order cooperation problems arising from previous phases of success in global coordination. Together,
they now block and inhibit problem solving and reform at the global level.

No will or capability for effective cooperation

Hellmann, 13 (Gunther Hellmann is a senior fellow at the Transatlantic Academy, an initiative of the
German Marshall Fund, “The Decline of Multilateralism,” May 2, German Marshall Fund Blog,
http://blog.gmfus.org/2013/05/02/the-decline-of-multilateralism/)

WASHINGTON— It is becoming increasingly difficult to argue against retrenchment in Europe and North
America. Economic crises and domestic political stagnation absorb energy and consume financial resources.
Global military engagements in faraway places cost lives and treasure and often yield limited success. There is
growing disillusionment with democracy promotion. Coalitions of sovereign state defenders like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South
Africa) make life for the guardians of the liberal world order ever more challenging. The upshot is multilateral fatigue in both Europe and

North America.¶ This is a perilous state of affairs because state-transcending global problems are proliferating. “Global Trends 2030,” a study published by the U.S. National
Intelligence Council last December, predicts that “the current, largely Western dominance of global structures … will have been transformed by 2030 to be more in line with the changing

it remains unclear to what degree new or reformed

hierarchy of new economic players.” Yet even if this were to happen, the report argues,

institutions “will have tackled growing global challenges.”¶ One might be forgiven for taking this to be an overly optimistic projection.
Based on current trends, the outlook is much gloomier, due mainly to the political contagion effects of
sovereigntism, the fixation on state sovereignty as an absolute value, and minilateralism. Moisés Naím, who initially
coined the term, defined minilateralism as getting together the “smallest possible number of countries needed to have the largest possible impact on solving a particular problem.” The
problem is that the smallest possible number may quickly grow very large; Naím’s own book, The End of Power, provides ample evidence that this is so. Consider, for instance, the number and
political weight of countries needed to address the problems in the aftermath of a military escalation in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. The minimum number of countries required to
effectively regulate global warming does not look any more encouraging. In other words, sovereigntism and minilateralism are symptoms of the crisis of liberal world order — manifestations
of The Democratic Disconnect — and not a recipe for curing its ills.¶ In the old days when multilateralism was not yet qualified politically with such adjectives as “assertive” (Madeleine
Albright) or “effective” (EU), it served as a descriptor for a fundamental transformation of interstate collaboration in the second half of the 20th century. In an influential article, John Ruggie, a
Harvard professor and former high-ranking UN official, showed that the actual practice of multilateralism by the liberal democracies of North America and Europe after World War II was based
on a set of generalized principles of conduct. These principles rendered segments of the post-war international order into more reliable cooperative settings, such as the United Nations, or
islands of peaceful change, such as the zone of European integration. A readiness to give up sovereignty or, at least to cooperate on the basis of reciprocity, were characteristic elements of

the “liberal world order.”¶ This liberal order is under strain today because its creators
multilateralism and what came to be called

and guardians have themselves strayed from these principles. In the security field, “coalitions of the willing” have
undermined multilateralism not only in the UN context, but also in NATO. In economic and financial
matters, the politics of European sovereign debt crisis management illustrates both the dangers of
executive federalism and the limits of diffuse reciprocity among Europe’s nation states in the world’s
most integrated region. “Responsible stakeholders,” the former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick once said, do more than merely “conduct diplomacy to promote
their national interests…They recognize that the international system sustains their peaceful prosperity, so they work to sustain that system.” What was meant as advice to China when Zoellick

gave that speech in 2005 can easily be redirected at the liberal democracies of North America and Europe today.¶ There are no easy ways out. Even if the
slide toward retrenchment can be stopped, the prospects do not seem bright for the kind of bold new
initiatives for global institutional reform that are required. It is debatable whether calls for “democratic
internationalism” or a new alignment among “like-minded democracies” can do the trick, but Europe and North
America need to realize that their stakes in the liberal order are much higher than those of relative newcomers. Indeed, overcoming crises at home hinges at least in part on sustaining a
conducive global environment. Readjusting the balance between minilateralism and multilateralism will help.

Global governance is inevitable---rising powers will play by the rules

G. John Ikenberry 11, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton
University, “The Future of the Liberal World Order”, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2011,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67730/g-john-ikenberry/the-future-of-the-liberal-world-
order?page=show

But this panicked narrative misses a deeper reality : although the United States' position in the global system is changing,
the liberal international order is alive and well . The struggle over international order today is not about fundamental
principles. China and other emerging great powers do not want to contest the basic rules and principles of
the liberal international order; they wish to gain more authority and leadership within it. Indeed, today's
power transition represents not the defeat of the liberal order but its ultimate ascendance . Brazil, China,
and India have all become more prosperous and capable by operating inside the existing international
order -- benefiting from its rules, practices, and institutions, including the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the newly organized G-20.
Their economic success and growing influence are tied to the liberal internationalist organization of world politics, and they have deep

interests in preserving that system.¶ In the meantime, alternatives to an open and rule-based order have yet
to crystallize . Even though the last decade has brought remarkable upheavals in the global system -- the emergence of new powers,
bitter disputes among Western allies over the United States' unipolar ambitions, and a global financial crisis and recession -- the
liberal
international order has no competitors. On the contrary, the rise of non-Western powers and the growth of economic and
security interdependence are creating new constituencies for it.¶ To be sure, as wealth and power become less concentrated in the United
States' hands, the country will be less able to shape world politics. But the underlying foundations of the liberal
international order will survive and thrive . Indeed, now may be the best time for the United States and its democratic
partners to update the liberal order for a new era, ensuring that it continues to provide the benefits of security and prosperity that it has
provided since the middle of the twentieth century.¶ THE LIBERAL ASCENDANCY¶ China
and the other emerging powers do not
face simply an American-led order or a Western system. They face a broader international order that is the product of
centuries of struggle and innovation. It is highly developed, expansive, integrated, institutionalized, and
deeply rooted in the societies and economies of both advanced capitalist states and developing states. And over the last half
century, this order has been unusually capable of assimilating rising powers and reconciling political and
cultural diversity.

Countries have interests in the existing order---no chance of overall collapse

To begin with, rising states have deep interests in an open and rule-based system. Openness gives them
access to other societies -- for trade, investment, and knowledge sharing. Without the unrestricted investment from the United States
and Europe of the past several decades, for instance, China and the other rising states would be on a much slower developmental path. As
these countries grow, they will encounter protectionist and discriminatory reactions from slower-growing countries threatened with the loss of
jobs and markets. As a result, the rising states will find the rules and institutions that uphold nondiscrimination
and equal access to be critical. The World Trade Organization -- the most formal and developed institution of the liberal
international order -- enshrines these rules and norms, and rising states have been eager to join the WTO and
gain the rights and protections it affords. China is already deeply enmeshed in the global trading
system , with a remarkable 40 percent of its GNP composed of exports -- 25 percent of which go to the United States.¶ China could be
drawn further into the liberal order through its desire to have the yuan become an international
currency rivaling the U.S. dollar. Aside from conferring prestige, this feat could also stabilize China's exchange rate and grant
Chinese leaders autonomy in setting macroeconomic policy. But if China wants to make the yuan a global currency, it will need to loosen its
currency controls and strengthen its domestic financial rules and institutions. As Barry Eichengreen and other economic historians have noted,
the U.S. dollar assumed its international role after World War II not only because the U.S. economy was large but also because the United
States had highly developed financial markets and domestic institutions -- economic and political -- that were stable, open, and grounded in the
rule of law. China will feel pressures to establish these same institutional preconditions if it wants the benefits of a global currency. ¶
Internationalist-oriented elites in Brazil, China, India, and elsewhere are growing in influence within their
societies, creating an expanding global constituency for an open and rule-based international order.
These elites were not party to the grand bargains that lay behind the founding of the liberal order in the early postwar decades, and they
are seeking to renegotiate their countries' positions within the system. But they are nonetheless embracing the rules and
institutions of the old order. They want the protections and rights that come from the international order's Westphalian defense of
sovereignty. They care about great-power authority. They want the protections and rights relating to trade and investment. And they want to
use the rules and institutions of liberal internationalism as platforms to project their influence and acquire legitimacy at home and abroad. The
UN Security Council, the G-20, the governing bodies of the Bretton Woods institutions -- these are all stages on which rising non-Western states
can acquire great-power authority and exercise global leadership.¶ NO OTHER ORDER¶ Meanwhile, there is no competing global
organizing logic to liberal internationalism. An alternative, illiberal order -- a "Beijing model" -- would presumably
be organized around exclusive blocs, spheres of influence, and mercantilist networks. It would be less open and rule-
based, and it would be dominated by an array of state-to-state ties. But on a global scale, such a system would not advance
the interests of any of the major states, including China. The Beijing model only works when one or a few
states opportunistically exploit an open system of markets. But if everyone does, it is no longer an open
system but a fragmented, mercantilist, and protectionist complex -- and everyone suffers .¶ It is possible that
China could nonetheless move in this direction. This is a future in which China is not a full-blown illiberal hegemon that reorganizes the global
rules and institutions. It is simply a spoiler. It attempts to operate both inside and outside the liberal international order. In this case, China
would be successful enough with its authoritarian model of development to resist the pressures to liberalize and democratize. But if the rest
of the world does not gravitate toward this model, China will find itself subjected to pressure to play by
the rules . This dynamic was on display in February 2011, when Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff joined U.S. Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geithner in expressing concern over China's currency policy. China can free-ride on the liberal international
order, but it will pay the costs of doing so -- and it will
still not be able to impose its illiberal vision on the world.

Multilateralism is strong—fragmented international cooperation solves better and

overcomes their alt causes
Stewart Patrick 14, Senior fellow and director of the program on International Institutions and Global
Governance (IIGG) at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), PhD in International Relations from
Stanford, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, January/Feburary 2014, The Unruled World: The Case for Good
Enough Global Governance, Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140343/stewart-
patrick/the-unruled-world
The analysts Ian Bremmer and David Gordon have written about the emergence of a “G-Zero world,” in which collective global leadership is
almost impossible thanks to a global diffusion of power among countries with widely divergent interests. But what really marks the
contemporary era is not the absence of multilateralism but its astonishing diversity. Collective action is
no longer focused solely, or even primarily, on the UN and other universal, treaty-based institutions, nor even
on a single apex forum such as the G-20. Rather, governments have taken to operating in many venues
simultaneously, participating in a bewildering array of issue-specific networks and partnerships whose membership varies
based on situational interests, shared values, and relevant capabilities.¶ A hallmark of this “G-X” world is the temporary coalition of
strange bedfellows. Consider the multinational antipiracy armada that has emerged in the Indian Ocean . This loosely
coordinated flotilla involves naval vessels from not only the United States and its NATO allies but also China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan,
Malaysia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Yemen. These countries might disagree on many issues, but they have
found common cause in securing sea-lanes off the African coast.¶ At the same time, the G-X world permits the United States to
strengthen its links within the traditional West. Take the surprisingly resilient G-8, composed of the United States, Japan, Germany,
France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, and Russia (plus the EU). For years, pundits have predicted the G-8’s demise, and yet it still moves.
The G-8 allowsadvanced market democracies to coordinate their positions on sensitive political and
security issues -- just as the parallel financially focused G-7 permits them to harmonize their macroeconomic policies. With the exception
of authoritarian Russia, unwisely added in 1997, G-8 members share similar worldviews and values, strategic interests, and major policy
preferences. This like-mindedness facilitates policy coordination on matters ranging from human rights to humanitarian intervention, rogue
states to regional stability.¶ The wealthy G-8 members also possess distinctive assets -- financial, diplomatic, military, and ideological -- to
deploy in the service of their convictions. At the Deauville summit of May 2011, the G-8 moved quickly to offer diplomatic support and material
assistance to the Arab Spring countries. That action reaffirmed the G-8 as a practical and symbolic anchor of the Western liberal order while
reminding the world that the G-8 remains the overwhelming source of official development assistance. ¶ In global governance, as elsewhere,
necessity is the mother of invention, and the global credit crisis that struck with full force in 2008 led to the rise to prominence of a relatively
new international grouping, the G-20. Facing the potential meltdown of the international financial system, leaders of the world’s major
economies -- both developed and developing -- shared an overriding interest in avoiding a second Great Depression. Stuck in the same lifeboat,
they assented to a slew of institutional innovations, including elevating the G-20 finance ministers’ group to the leaders’ level, creating an
exclusive global crisis-response committee.¶ The
G-20 quickly racked up some notable achievements. It injected
unprecedented liquidity into the world economy through coordinated national actions, including some $5
trillion in stimulus at the London summit of April 2009. It created the Financial Stability Board, charged with developing new regulatory
standards for systemically important financial institutions, and
insisted on new bank capital account requirements under
the Basel III agreement. It revitalized and augmented the coffers of the once-moribund International Monetary Fund and negotiated
governance reforms within the World Bank and the IMF to give greater voice to emerging economies. And its members adopted “standstill”
provisions to avoid a recurrence of the ruinous tit-for-tat trade protectionism of the 1930s.¶ As the immediate panic receded and an uneven
global recovery took hold, however, narrow national interests again came to the fore, slowing the G-20’s momentum. For the past four years,
the G-20 -- whose heterogeneous members possess diverse values, political systems, and levels of development -- has struggled to evolve from
a short-term crisis manager to a longer-term steering group for the global economy. The reform of major international financial institutions has
also stalled, as established (notably European) powers resist reallocating voting weight and governing board seats. So what l ooked for a brief
moment like the dawn of a newly preeminent global forum proved to be just one more outlet store in the sprawl.¶ GOVERNANCE IN PIECES¶
For much of the past two decades, UN mega-conferences dominated multilateral diplomacy. But when it comes to multilateralism, bigger is
rarely better, and the era of the mega-conference is ending as major powers recognize the futility of negotiating
comprehensive international agreements among 193 UN member states, in the full glare of the media and alongside tens of thousands of
activists, interest groups, and hangers-on. Countries will continue to assemble for annual confabs, such as the Conference of the Parties to the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in the Sisyphean quest to secure “binding” commitments from developed and
developing countries. But that circus will
increasingly become a sideshow, as the action shifts to less formal
settings and narrower groupings of the relevant and capable. Already, the 17 largest greenhouse gas
emitters have created the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, seeking breakthroughs
outside the lumbering UNFCCC. To date, the forum has underdelivered. But more tangible progress has occurred
through parallel national efforts, as states pledge to undertake a menu of domestic actions, which they subsequently submit to the
forum for collective review.¶ Regional organizations are giving universal bodies a run for their money. ¶ There is a more general lesson here.
Faced with fiendishly complex issues, such as climate change, transnational networks of government officials now seek
incremental progress by disaggregating those issues into manageable chunks and agreeing to coordinate
action on specific agenda items. Call it “global governance in pieces .” For climate change, this means abandoning the
quest for an elusive soup-to-nuts agreement to mitigate and adapt to global warming. Instead, negotiators pursue separate initiatives, such as
phasing out wasteful fossil fuel subsidies, launching minilateral clean technology partnerships, and expanding the UN Collaborative Program on
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries, among other worthwhile schemes. The result is
not a unitary international regime grounded in a single institution or treaty but a cluster of
complementary activities that political scientists call a “regime complex.”¶ Something similar is happening in global
health, where the once-premier World Health Organization now shares policy space and a division of labor with other major organizations, such
as the World Bank; specialized UN agencies, such as UNAIDS; public-private partnerships, such as the GAVI Alliance (formerly called the Global
Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization); philanthropic organizations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; consultative bodies, such
as the eight-nation (plus the EU) Global Health Security Initiative; and multi-stakeholder bodies, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria. The upshot is a disaggregated system of global health governance. ¶ Sometimes, the
piecemeal approach
may be able to achieve more than its stagnant universalist alternative . Given the failure of the WTO’s Doha Round,
for example, the United States and other nations have turned to preferential trade agreements in order to spur further liberalization of
commerce. Some are bilateral, such as the U.S.–South Korean pact. But others involve multiple countries. These include two initiatives that
constitute the centerpiece of Obama’s second-term trade agenda: the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership. The administration describes each as a steppingstone toward global liberalization. And yet future WTO negotiatio ns will likely take
a disaggregated form, as subsets of WTO members move forward on more manageable specific issues (such as public procurement or
investment) while avoiding those lightning-rod topics (such as trade in agriculture) that have repeatedly stymied comprehensive trade
negotiations.

Global multilateral cooperation structurally fails---overwhelming data confirms

Robert J Lieber 14, Professor, Department of Government, Georgetown University, 2014, “The Rise of
the BRICS and American primacy,” International Politics, Vol. 51, p. 137-154

Equally important, liberal

internationalists and others tend to assume that international relations are a positive sum
game (Keohane, 1984; Ruggie, 1993). Experiences with multilateralism and with regional international institutions are said to enco urage
cooperation. Transparency, reciprocity and habits of collaboration are seen as self-reinforcing. In order to achieve their own domestic needs for
economic growth, countries find not only these experiences beneficial, but such cooperation spills over across related functi ons and issue
areas. A generation ago, scholars writing and theorizing about regional integration in Western Europe defined this process as one of ‘spillover’.
For liberal internationalists and globalists there is at least an implied analogy with that European experience despite the i mmense differences in
geography, history and path dependence.5 That assumption has some basis in the areas of economics and trade, though the mercantilist and
In the security realm , however, there is little reason for
predatory behavior of China provides a serious contrary indicator.
such an optimistic assumption. Cases in point include nuclear proliferation (North Korea, Iran), tensions in
East Asia (China, Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, the Philippines, the East and South China Seas) and conflicts in the Middle East
(Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon, as well as Israel and the Palestinians). Nonetheless there are exceptions. Brazil has played a
continuing role in UN Peacekeeping. It assigns nearly 2500 military and police personnel to those missions and has played a leading role in Haiti,
where it has commanded the UN’s operation since 2004. It also has headed the maritime component of UNIFIL (Lebanon) since 201 1. In
addition, Turkey has participated actively in NATO-led peacekeeping missions in Bosnia (SFOR), Kosovo (KFOR), and Afghanistan (ISAF).
Skepticism about the BRICS and the momentum assumed by liberal internationalists has not been
scarce.6 Realist scholars have understandably been critical of the assumptions underlying these approaches as well as of the foreign policy
choices they imply. However, other scholars too have found increasing reason for criticism . For example, Barma et al (2013,
p. 56) have recently observed that, ‘Instead of a gradual trend toward global problem solving punctuated by
isolated failures, we have seen over the last several years essentially the opposite : stunningly few instances of
international coope

Multilateral action fails- resources, information, coherence

Samans et al, 2011, January, Richard Samans is managing director of the World Economic Forum
and former special assistant for international economic policy to U.S. President Bill Clinton. Klaus
Schwab is executive chairman and founder of the World Economic Forum. Mark Malloch-Brown is
former deputy secretary-general of the United Nations and author of The Unfinished Global Revolution.
“Running the World, After the
Crash,”http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/1/02/running_the_world_after_the_crash
Let's begin with scale. Many of the most crucial collective-action problems the world faces, such as
poverty, income inequality, and climate change, require the mobilization of resources on an order of
magnitude that far exceeds the capability of governments and international organizations. Private
financial flows from rich to poor countries, for example, are already about four times greater than
foreign aid, and even this amount is but a small fraction of the funds sloshing around the world in bond
and equity markets each year. But institutions like the World Bank have only begun to experiment with
partnerships that tap into the far greater power of the private sector and civil society. For this to change,
the bank and bilateral aid agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, or even
international negotiations like the U.N. climate talks, need to reposition themselves as enablers of
solutions rather than direct providers of them. Thiswill require profound changes in theirskill base,
management culture, and budgetary priorities, which still largely reflect the world as it was in the
1970s,before globalization and the expansion of the private sector took off.Then there is the
information gap. These days, governments and intergovernmental institutions have a hard time simply
keeping up with the pace of change. An obvious example is the spread of complex financial instruments
like collateralized debt obligations and credit-default swaps -- and we know how that turned out. Even
billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who warned to no avail in 2003 that derivatives were "financial
weapons of mass destruction," has admitted that he often doesn't understand them. Many regulators
and CEOs are equally in the dark, if less candid about it. Or take the U.S. State Department, which relies
on NGOs like the International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch to report on unfolding threats to
stability in undercovered parts of the world. Government officials now need to cast a much wider net,
systematically embedding themselves in diverse, often informal networks of expertise. They can no
longer claim to be paramount authorities in and of themselves. Finally, coherence is a growing problem.
In nearly every organization, public or private, stories abound of one department working at cross-
purposes with another. But governmental bureaucracies, by their very nature, tend to put issues in
discrete boxes, reflecting their organizational charts instead of the real world. This tendency often
produces fragmented, partial, and sometimes even incoherent responses to problems.It is exacerbated
by highly fragmented governance. Most international organizations fall under the authority of different
ministers who guard their turf jealously. And unlike in a company, there is no single CEO or board to set
priorities acrossthe various bureaucracies and drive coordination, even though the issues facing the
International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, International Energy Agency, and others are
highly interconnected. In theory, G-20 leaders could propel this kind of coordination and prioritization.
But so far, they haven't.

Multilat can’t solve anything

David Held 13, Professor of Politics and International Relations, at the University of Durham AND
Thomas Hale, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University
AND Kevin Young, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst, 5/24/13, “Gridlock: the growing breakdown of global cooperation,”
http://www.opendemocracy.net/thomas-hale-david-held-kevin-young/gridlock-growing-breakdown-of-
global-cooperation
The Doha round of trade negotiations is deadlocked, despite eight successful multilateral trade rounds
before it. Climate negotiators have met for two decades without finding a way to stem global
emissions. The UN is paralyzed in the face of growing insecurities across the world, the latest dramatic
example being Syria. Each of these phenomena could be treated as if it was independent, and an
explanation sought for the peculiarities of its causes. Yet, such a perspective would fail to show what
they, along with numerous other instances of breakdown in international negotiations, have in
common.¶ Global cooperation is gridlocked across a range of issue areas. The reasons for this are not
the result of any single underlying causal structure, but rather of several underlying dynamics that
work together. Global cooperation today is failing not simply because it is very difficult to solve many
global problems – indeed it is – but because previous phases of global cooperation have been incredibly
successful, producing unintended consequences that have overwhelmed the problem-solving
capacities of the very institutions that created them. It is hard to see how this situation can be
unravelled, given failures of contemporary global leadership, the weaknesses of NGOs in converting
popular campaigns into institutional change and reform, and the domestic political landscapes of the
most powerful countries.

Structural problems means multilat fails – their evidence is all theory and not in
practice.
Barma et al, Naval Postgraduate School assistant professor, 2013
[Naazneen, Ely Ratner is a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and Steven Weber is a
professor of political science and at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley,
National Interest, “The Mythical Liberal Order” EBSCO, p.61-2, accessed 3-6-14, TAP]
Assessed against its ability to solve global¶ problems, the current system is falling¶ progressively further
behind on the most¶ important challenges, including financial¶ stability, the "responsibility to protect,"¶
and coordinated action on climate change,¶ nuclear proliferation, cyberwarfare and¶ maritime security.
The authority, legitimacy¶ and capacity of multilateral institutions¶ dissolve when the going gets
tough—when¶ member countries have meaningfully¶ different interests (as in currency¶
manipulations), when the distribution¶ of costs is large enough to matter (as in¶ humanitarian crises in
sub-Saharan Africa)¶ or when the shadow of future uncertainties¶ looms large (as in carbon reduction).
Like¶ a sports team that perfects exquisite plays¶ during practice but fails to execute against¶ an actual
opponent, global-governance¶ institutions have sputtered precisely when¶ their supposed skills and
multilateral capital¶ are needed most. Why has this happened? The hopeful¶ liberal notion that these
failures of¶ global governance are merely reflections¶ of otganizational dysfunction that can be¶ fixed by
reforming or "reengineering" the¶ institutions themselves, as if this were a¶ job for management
consultants fiddling¶ with organization charts, is a costly distraction¶ from the real challenge. A decade-
long effort to revive the dead-on-arrival Doha¶ Development Round in international trade¶ is the
sharpest example of the cost of such¶ a tinkering-around-the-edges approach and¶ its ultimate futility.
Equally distracting and¶ wrong is the notion held by neoconservatives¶ and others that global governance
is¶ inherently a bad idea and that its institutions¶ are ineffective and undesirable simply¶ by virtue of
being supranational. The root cause of stalled global¶ governance is simpler and more¶ straightforward.
"Multipolarization"¶ has come faster and more forcefully than¶ expected. Relatively authoritarian and¶
postcolonial emerging powers have become¶ leading voices that undermine anything¶ approaching
international consensus and,¶ with that, multilateral institutions. It's¶ not just the reasonable demand
for more¶ seats at the table. That might have caused¶ something of a decline in effectiveness¶ but also
an increase in legitimacy that¶ on balance could have rendered it a net¶ positive. Instead, global
governance has gotten the¶ worst of both worlds: a decline in both¶ effectiveness and legitimacy. The
problem¶ is not one of a few rogue states acting badly¶ in an otherwise coherent system. There has¶
been no real breakdown per se. There just¶ wasn't all that much liberal world order¶ to break down in
the first place. The new¶ voices are more than just numerous and¶ powerful. They are truly distinct
from the¶ voices of an old era, and they approach the¶ global system in a meaningfully different¶ way.

Multilat fails- new mini-coalitions solve issues best

Weinstein ’13 [Jeremy M. Weinstein is associate professor of political science, senior fellow at the
Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Ford-Dorsey Director of the Center for African
Studies at Stanford University. Between 2009 and 2011, he served as director for development and
democracy on the National Security Council staff at the White House, where he was a principal architect
of the Open Government Partnership, “TRANSFORMING MULTILATERALISM: INNOVATION ON A GLOBAL
STAGE,” April 19, http://blog.opengovpartnership.org/2013/04/transforming-multilateralism-
innovation-on-a-global-stage/]
Fast forward 18 months: the Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a robust and growing global effort
to make governments better. Launched by eight governments and nine civil society organizations in
September 2011, OGP intends to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote
transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen
governance. The founding governments announced national action plans at the launch, and 38 new
participating countries presented their commitments in Brasilia in 2012. Political leaders representing 2
billion people have made more than 300 commitments to reform and have pledged to be held
accountable for their progress by an independent body.¶
members_of_open_government_partnership_chart¶ This supplement tells the story of OGP—how it
came about, the impact it is having, and the challenges it faces—and speaks to the possibility of social
innovation in the multilateral space, as policy entrepreneurs actively seek to redefine and transform
how governments and citizens relate to one another across borders. Multilateralism is not an arena that
has been known for experimentation, given the cautious nature of governments. But this new form of
partnership demonstrates the kind of transformative multilateral engagement that is possible, at the
same time exposing the challenges of making multi-stakeholder initiatives work in practice.¶ CHANGING
MODELS OF MULTILATERAL ENGAGEMENT¶ For many people, international institutions, such as the
World Bank, IMF, United Nations, and European Union, are the paradigmatic examples of international
cooperation. Designed to facilitate cooperation among states on issues that transcend national
boundaries, these institutions establish rules and actions that are considered binding on participating
governments. The legitimacy and authority of these international institutions often stem, at least in
part, from their broad or near-universal membership. Yet to secure agreement among a diverse set of
countries, significant compromise is typically required. As a result, the laws or rules promoted by these
organizations often reflect the preferences of the least cooperative country—a “lowest common
denominator” outcome—potentially blunting their impact. In addition, as a model of multilateral
engagement, international institutions are often seen as opaque, highly bureaucratic, and resistant to
change. This is not surprising, given how challenging it is to establish these institutions in the first place. ¶
Contrast this approach with a totally different paradigm, what William Savedoff of the Center for Global
Development has called “the mixed coalition” and what Philanthrocapitalism authors Matthew Bishop
and Michael Green have termed “the posse.” This approach involves gathering together a wide variety
of interested parties—governments, civil society groups, the private sector, philanthropy, international
organizations—around specific initiatives that may or may not lead to the establishment of formal
organizations.¶ A focused, achievable goal is at the center of mixed coalitions, and the ambition is to
identify governments, organizations, and groups that are willing to take actions that, collectively, will
demonstrate success and make the case for broader international engagement. This form of
international cooperation prioritizes flexibility and agility, dispensing with universal, binding
commitments in favor of voluntary pledges that enable participants to lead by example. Recent
examples of initiatives that fit this model include the Global Fund Against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and
Malaria and the International Campaign to End Landmines.¶ Traditional approaches to international
cooperation have delivered important successes, especially in the period since the end of World War II.
The standards and rules contained in the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) and its
successor organization, the World Trade Organization (WTO), have contributed to significant growth in
international trade. A set of interlocking international treaties and monitoring bodies, including the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have enabled progress on nonproliferation in nuclear,
chemical, and biological weapons. Important treaties and international organizations have emerged to
manage climate change, promote global development, ensure global financial stability, and advance
basic human rights norms.¶ But the international environment is changing in consequential ways, and
with it, the form that international cooperation is taking. Most international institutions were
constructed in a period in which Western countries had nearly unrivaled power. They used their
influence to secure near-universal participation and to incentivize compliance. But with the United
States now, in the words of New York University politics professor Bruce Jones, “the world’s largest
minority shareholder,” international institutions are struggling to manage a far greater diversity of
preferences among their members. Emerging powers, including Brazil, India, and China, are making their
views known and seeking influence consistent with their growing economic clout. The challenge of
seeking unanimity or consensus on international issues is becoming all too apparent, as evidenced by
the difficulty of advancing climate change negotiations. And the difficulties of securing compliance with
international treaties and agreements are hard to ignore in the face of growing trade disputes and other
actions by national governments that flout international rules and laws on proliferation and human
rights.¶ Of course, the old paradigm of international cooperation is not dead—it is being modernized.
The emergence of the G-20 is recognition that global cooperation on economic issues cannot happen
without the major emerging economies at the table. Commitments to shift the voting shares of
countries at the World Bank and IMF and pressure to reform the UN Security Council provide further
evidence that a redistribution of influence and power is under way.¶ At the same time, new forms of
cooperation—mixed coalitions or posses—are increasingly important. Tackling issues that are not being
adequately addressed by existing institutions, mixed coalitions are playing by a new set of rules. Their
membership is not universal, but instead focuses on governments that need to be at the table to get
something started. They are often able to set higher standards because they are not universal. They rely
on voluntary and collaborative means of generating action, prioritizing meaningful actions over binding
commitments that are routinely ignored. And they incorporate the expertise and active participation of
nongovernmental players.

Multilat trades off with minilat- combo causes confusion and gridlock
Eckersley ‘12 [Robyn Eckersley, PhD in environmental politics from the University of Tasmania,
Professor and Head of Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of
Melbourne, Australia, “Moving Forward in the Climate Negotiations: Multilateralism or Minilateralism?”
http://www.cappe.edu.au/docs/Climate%20governance%20workshop%20docs/Eckersley_paper.pdf]

Since many parties wear more than one hat in terms of the criteria of “most capable” and ¶ “most
responsible”, the size of the Climate Council could be as small as eight (the USA, ¶ China, EU, Russia,
Japan, India and a representative from AOSIS and LDC) or as large as 23 (the G20 plus AOSIS, LCD and
AU). Determining the “magic number” invariably requires a trade-off between the virtues of a
relatively smaller, more intimate and efficient group and a larger, more representative group with
greater collective “emissions power” and greater potential for trade-offs to facilitate agreement.37¶ Yet
even a Council as small as twelve, ¶ made up of the USA, the EU, Japan, the Russian Federation, China,
India, Brazil, Korea, ¶ Mexico, AOSIS, AU and LDCs would capture the most responsible, the most capable
and the ¶ most vulnerable while including around 70% of total emissions and around 70% of the world
population.¶ 38¶ It would also happen to include a rough balance of developed and developing
countries, representation from the UN’s five regional groupings, all the major negotiating ¶ blocs, all the
great powers, and a mix of pioneers, leaders, pushers and laggards. And a Council of around twelve
would be the size of a jury, which many deliberative democrats ¶ argue is the optimal size for meaningful
deliberation. The proposal for “common but differentiated representation” in a minilateral council
builds ¶ upon the negotiating coalitions, improvized procedures and informal and out-of-session ¶
meetings developed by the parties to the COP to work around the highly ritualized and ¶ staged plenary
sessions. The most significant of these for present purposes is the “Friends of ¶ the Chair” groups, which
are convened at the discretion of the COP President.39¶ These ¶ groups vary in style, name and task,
ranging from informal consultation on matters of ¶ process to end-game bargaining over key issues.
There is no set procedure for the selection ¶ of members – much depends on the issues and context –
but the President usually strives to ¶ achieve some form of balanced representation in terms of interests
and regions. Although ¶ the purpose of such informal groups is to provide a more efficient supplement
to the ¶ bilateral negotiations and shuttle diplomacy conducted by the President, they have ¶ attracted
considerable criticism from excluded parties and have not always been effective.40 If the Friends of the
Chair are seen to be unrepresentative, then any deal that is brokered is likely to be rejected.41¶
However, efforts to improve the representativeness and hence ¶ legitimacy of the groups by, for
example, expanding representation, and providing ¶ negotiating coalitions with the opportunity to select
and consult with their representative ¶ and observe proceedings, can raise transaction costs and
undermine their basic appeal, which is to provide the President with a small, informal, private, candid,
flexible and efficient forum to deal with key questions of process and/or substance. Friends groups also ¶
suffer from other drawbacks. The informal character of the groups means there are no equity and
procedural safeguards, they often contain a mix of ministers and officials with different experiences, and
they are ad hoc and highly fluid. This sometimes produces a rather chaotic process, with many smaller
groups meeting concurrently, creating confusion over the development of the negotiating text.42¶ At
Copenhagen, the regular negotiations ¶ were suspended on the last day of the conference while a 25
member Friends of the Chair ¶ group met to craft a short compromise text to replace the 200-plus pages
of text that had been negotiated over two years. Violations in normal procedures, including lack of ¶
transparency and inclusivity, were cited as some of the reasons by those states who refuse ¶ to give their
support to the Accord in the final plenary.43

Multilateral cooperation fails – states priorities are too diverse

Patrick, 10 - Senior Fellow and Director of the Program on International Institutions and Global
Governance at the Council on Foreign Relations (Stewart, “Irresponsible Stakeholders? The Difficulty of
Integrating Rising Powers,” Foreign Affairs, November/December, proquest)

Rivalry among the emerging powers may also complicate multilateral cooperation. This is most obvious
between China and India, which share a disputed border extending over 2,000 miles, compete for
regional influence and natural resources, and remain acutely sensitive to changes in their relative
military capabilities. China's cultivation of India's neighbors is making New Delhi afraid of strategic
encirclement, and maritime competition between the two powers is increasing in the Indian Ocean.
Finally, even on those issues on which the basic interests of the established and the emerging powers
align-terrorism, climate change, nuclear proliferation, or global financial stability-these states' priorities
may differ. The issue of North Korea is an obvious example. Both the United States and China want the
North Korean nuclear program eliminated. But whereas Washington places a high priority on this
objective, Beijing seeks above all to preserve cordial relations with Pyongyang. It fears the anarchy of a
failed state on its borders and would rather maintain the status quo than see the Korean Peninsula
reunified under a democratic government that might prove hostile to Chinese interests. Beijing had
these motives in mind when it ensured that a UN Security Council resolution in July addressing the
sinking of a South Korean naval vessel earlier this year offered only a tepid condemnation, failing to
indict by name the obvious perpetrator, North Korea.

No will or capability for effective cooperation

it remains unclear to what degree new or reformed

hierarchy of new economic players.” Yet even if this were to happen, the report argues,

the “liberal world order.”¶ This liberal order is under strain today because its creators
multilateralism and what came to be called

There are no easy ways out. Even if the

gave that speech in 2005 can easily be redirected at the liberal democracies of North America and Europe today.¶

slide toward retrenchment can be stopped, the prospects do not seem bright for the kind of bold new
initiatives for global institutional reform that are required. It is debatable whether calls for “democratic
internationalism” or a new alignment among “like-minded democracies” can do the trick, but Europe and North
America need to realize that their stakes in the liberal order are much higher than those of relative newcomers. Indeed, overcoming crises at home hinges at least in part on sustaining a
conducive global environment. Readjusting the balance between minilateralism and multilateralism will help

Multilat doesn’t solve

Yun Sun 15, nonresident fellow in the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institute, "The Limits of
U.S.-China Cooperation in Africa," 4/6/15, www.brookings.edu/blogs/africa-in-focus/posts/2015/04/06-
limit-us-china-cooperation-in-africa-sun

However, despite the rhetoric and enthusiasm, people might be disappointed at the reality, which is
that exemplary cases of successful cooperation between Washington and Beijing on the continent
remain scarce. The few examples of collaboration are on issues of the “lowest common denominator”
(most basic and least controversial), such as the flaring crisis in Sudan/South Sudan and severe non-
traditional threats such as the Ebola outbreak. Upon examining the American and Chinese perspectives
on cooperation in Africa, more realistic expectations as to what the two powers can and will jointly do
for a better Africa might be warranted. The logic of U.S.-China cooperation in Africa is a sound one. Both
Beijing and Washington have important political and economic interests in promoting peace and
development of Africa. The two countries’ vested interests in Africa, particularly in commercial
investment, make peace and stability imperative. In addition, as two responsible powers, the countries
carry a shared moral obligation to Africa. In cases such as South Sudan, both the U.S. and China stand
much to lose if the crisis continues to fester. Furthermore, a stable and prosperous Africa will provide
both the U.S. and China more investment and trade opportunities, which can enhance the momentum
for their cooperation. Nevertheless, while scholars and media reports on both sides have produced
numerous papers and analysis on what the U.S. and China “could” or “should” do to cooperate in Africa
(as listed above), concrete cooperation that the two countries are in fact pursuing or planning to pursue
is yet to develop quickly. The fundamental cause of inadequate U.S.-China cooperation in Africa is an
underlying sense of zero-sum competition between the two powers on the continent. Essentially, the
U.S. and China are yet to see each other as genuine cooperation partners or friendly forces on many
important issues due to their diverging perceptions and national interests. On the U.S. side, a 2014
RAND study accurately captures the current U.S. perspective and reflects the U.S.’s concern around
China’s expanding influence in Africa and about the U.S. losing in the Africa game. After listing details of
China’s expanding engagements in the continent and how they undermine U.S. influence, the report
recommends that the U.S. counter Chinese efforts such as the Forum on China Africa Cooperation
(FOCAC) by cultivating relations with a wider range of African countries. Following the same line of
thought, President Obama took a swipe at China during the 2014 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit by
differentiating the U.S. approach from those that “look to Africa simply for its natural resources … and
simply want to extract minerals from the ground …” Although the president did not mention China by
name, the comments were clearly aimed at Beijing. Such a competitive theme is also popular in China.
As summarized by a 2013 report by the China Academy of Social Sciences, “the strengthening of the
West’s influence in Africa means that China will face more difficulties in achieving its strategic interests
in Africa … The West’s current campaign to deepen their influence presents more strategic competition
to China … China should focus more on a competitive strategy in Africa.” Chinese analysts are keen to
study how the U.S.’s Africa strategies might affect or undermine Chinese political and commercial
interests on the ground. Some have suspected that the American interventions in Mali, Sudan, South
Sudan, and Libya were indeed targeted at undercutting Chinese economic interests in those countries.
To counter American criticism of China’s resource-centric economic engagement, China has also grown
increasingly adept at attributing such disapproval to Americans’ “sore loser” mentality. Other than the
strong sense of competition, another key factor that hinders U.S.-China cooperation in Africa is the
different approaches and standards the two countries have adopted on issues such as foreign aid and
development assistance. While China does not allow political issues such as democratic or authoritarian
systems to interfere with its pragmatic ties with African countries, the U.S. has strong value-oriented
policies that prevent Washington from engaging regimes with poor human rights records. On the
technical level, China views development and foreign aid as practical policy instruments to promote
political friendship and economic cooperation, while the U.S. attaches clearly stated goals, stringent
conditions, and strict criteria to its development programs. In reality, these vast differences significantly
limit the potential for U.S.-China cooperation.

And in most instances the West doesn’t want to intervene anyhow and simply
supports genocide

Jeff Bachman, 2013, https://fpif.org/america-genocide-national-interest/ America, Genocide, and the

“National Interest”

Years of massacres around the world demonstrate Washington’s selective outrage: condemnation of
certain atrocities and silence or complicity toward others. One of the most famous cases of the United
States remaining silent occurred in 1971. On March 25, the regime based in West Pakistan launched
“Operation Searchlight,” which initiated its genocide against Bengalis in East Pakistan (present day
Bangladesh). Acting with the courage to challenge his own government, Arthur Blood, at the time the
U.S. general consul in Dhaka, sent what came to be known as the “Blood Telegram.” In it, he and others
criticized the U.S. government for failing to denounce Pakistan’s “genocide” and for choosing “not to
intervene, even morally.” This silence in the face of massacre can be explained by geopolitics. At the
time, the United States and China were using Pakistan as an intermediary in their attempt to open and
improve Sino-American relations. Despite Blood’s passionate insistence that genocide was taking place,
the Nixon administration refused to use the word “genocide” to describe the atrocities. Doing so would
have implied an obligation to intervene under the Genocide Convention and undermined the
administration’s geopolitical goals. Halfway around the world and a decade later, the United States not
only fell silent, but actively supported a government while it was committing genocide. Following
Efrain Rios Montt’s military coup in March 1982, the Guatemalan army massacred indigenous Mayan
villagers deemed sympathetic towards leftist rebels. The suppression of left-wing activity fit squarely
with U.S. goals during the Cold War. When the Commission for Historical Clarification presented its final
report, Guatemala: Memory of Silence, in 1999, it found that 83 percent of the victims had been Mayan
and concluded that “agents of the state committed acts of genocide against groups of Mayan people.”
The Reagan administration had been no passive bystander in this crime. During Rios Montt’s recent trial
on charges of genocide, award-winning journalist Allan Nairn reminded us that “U.S. military attachés in
Guatemala, the CIA people who were on the ground aiding the G2 military intelligence unit, [and] the
policy-making officials back in Washington…were direct accessories to and accomplices to the
Guatemalan military. They were supplying money, weapons, political support, intelligence.” Far from
standing silently by, the United States directly supported those committing the atrocities in order to
achieve its own Cold War goals. A mere six years later, the Reagan administration once again gave
support to a genocidal regime—this time Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Despite the fact that Washington had
facilitated arms transfers to Iran during the Iran-Contra affair, the Reagan administration did not want
Iraq to lose in its war with Iran, which raged throughout the 1980s and claimed over a million lives.
Despite knowing full well that the Iraqi leader had used chemical weapons to commit genocide against
Iraq’s Kurdish population, U.S. government officials continued to support Hussein. According to
journalist Mike Shuster, in the 1980s the United States “play[ed] a key role in all of [Hussein’s] actions,
military and political.” Hussein, according to Shuster, “was meeting with senior U.S. diplomats. They
were looking the other way when he was using chemical weapons and developing other unconventional
weapons. He couldn’t have helped but to think that the United States was behind him.” And so once
again, geopolitical considerations led the United States to back a dictator engaged in genocide. Over two
decades later, the Obama administration has similarly maintained relations with genocidal regimes. In
2010, a leaked UN report alleged that Rwanda, under current president Paul Kagame, may have
committed a reprisal genocide against ethnic Hutus who had taken refuge in the neighboring DRC. More
recently, Rwanda has been accused of having direct control over the Congolese M23 rebel group, which
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navy Pillay called “among the worst perpetrators of human
rights violations in the DRC, or in the world.” But Paul Kagame has maintained close relations with the
United States ever since the 1994 genocide, and Rwanda remains a strategic ally for the United States in
central Africa. A similar drama may be unfolding in Myanmar, where Muslim Rohingya villagers have
been denied their right to citizenship and targeted by Buddhist mobs and sympathetic security forces
as part of a campaign to ethnically cleanse Myanmar of its Rohingya population. According to Human
Rights Watch, “An ethnic Arakanese campaign of violence and abuses since June 2012 facilitated by and
at times involving state security forces and government officials has displaced more than 125,000
Rohingya and Kaman Muslims in western Burma’s Arakan State. Tens of thousands of Rohingya still lack
adequate humanitarian aid – leading to an unknown number of preventable deaths – in isolated, squalid
displacement camps.” The systematic nature of these abuses — and the involvement of Myanmar
officials — constitutes crimes against humanity as defined by the Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court. Further, if the intent behind the policy of isolating Rohingya in camps and denying them
access to humanitarian aid is their eventual death, Myanmar’s crimes could elevate to genocide under
Article 2 of the Genocide Convention, which includes “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of
life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Ahamed Jarmal, Secretary
General of the Burmese Rohingya Organization, recently warned that “the situation is getting really
desperate. Mobs have attacked our villages, driving us from our homes, children have been hacked to
death, and hundreds of my people have been killed by members of the majority. Thugs are distributing
leaflets threatening to ‘wipe us out’ and children in schools are being taught that the Rohingya are
different.” Yet minor democratic reforms and the release of some political prisoners were rewarded
with the lifting of sanctions and visits to Myanmar by then Secretary of State Clinton, as well as
President Obama. More recently, President Obama welcomed Myanmar president Thein Sein to the
United States. In November 2012, prior to President Obama’s visit to Myanmar, U.S. Ambassador to
the UN Samantha Power wrote glowingly of the Obama administration’s support for human rights in
Myanmar and the reforms already underway. Yet Power also tempered the praise, warning that “We are
clear-eyed about the challenges that Burma faces. The peril faced by the stateless Rohingya population
in Rakhine State is particularly urgent, and we have joined the international community in expressing
deep concern about recent violence that has left hundreds dead, displaced over 110,000, and destroyed
thousands of homes.” More than a year later, conditions for the Rohingya have worsened. Yet U.S.
policy stays the course, a classic exemplification of the foreign policy of selective outrage. Myanmar is
committing crimes against humanity, yet is rewarded with the lifting of sanctions and presidential
visits. The good treatment is no wonder: resource-rich Myanmar holds economic opportunities for the
United States and is strategically located on China’s southwestern border. The United States does not
have a policy of disengagement when it comes to the prevention of genocide. Rather, U.S. policy is far
worse: it operates on a principle of direct engagement with — and sometimes support of — genocidal
regimes when Washington’s geopolitical goals demand it.

War fails and causes mass suffering

J Store, March 20, 2019, Atore, A retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of history,
https://fpif.org/americas-generals-havent-learned-anything-from-iraq/, America’s Generals Haven’t
Learned Anything from Iraq
Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed that famed saying when summing up the Obama administration’s military intervention in Libya in
2011 — with a small alteration. “We came, we saw, he died,” she said with a laugh about the killing of Muammar Gaddafi, that country’s
autocratic leader. Note what she left out, though: the “vici” or victory part. And how right she was to do so, since
Washington’s
invasions, occupations, and interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere in this century
have never produced anything faintly like a single decisive and lasting victory. “Failure is not an option” was the
stirring 1995 movie catchphrase for the dramatic 1970 rescue of the Apollo 13 moon mission and crew, but were such a movie to be made
about America’s wars and their less-than-vici-esque results today, the phrase would have to be corrected in Clintonian fashion to read “We
came, we saw, we failed.” Wars are risky, destructive, unpredictable endeavors , so it would hardly be surprising if
America’s military and civilian leaders failed occasionally in their endless martial endeavors, despite the overwhelming superiority in firepower
of “the world’s greatest military.” Here’s the question, though: Why have all the American wars of this century gone down in flames and what
in the world have those leaders learned from such repetitive failures? The evidence before our eyes suggests that, when it comes to our senior
military leaders at least, the answer would be: nothing at all. Let’s begin with General David Petraeus, he of “the surge” fa me in the Iraq War.
Of course, he would briefly fall from grace in 2012, while director of the CIA, thanks to an affair with his biographer with whom he
inappropriately shared highly classified information. When riding high in Iraq in 2007, however, “King David” (as he was then dubbed) was
widely considered an example of America’s best and brightest. He was a soldier-scholar with a doctorate from Princeton, an “insurgent” general
with the perfect way — a revival of Vietnam-era counterinsurgency techniques — to stabilize invaded and occupied Iraq. He was the man to
snatch victory from the jaws of looming defeat. (Talk about a fable not worthy of Aesop!) Though retired from the military si nce 2011, Petraeus
somehow remains a bellwether for conventional thinking about America’s wars at the Pentagon, as well as inside the Washington Beltway. And
despite the quagmire in Afghanistan (that he had a significant hand in deepening), despite the widespread destruction in Iraq (for which he
would hold some responsibility), despite the failed-state chaos in Libya, he continues to relentlessly plug the idea of pursuing a “sustainable”
forever war against global terrorism; in other words, yet more of the same. Here’s how he typically put it in a recent interview: “I would
contend that the fight against Islamist extremists is not one that we’re going to see the end of in our lifetimes probably. I think this is a
generational struggle, which requires you to have a sustained commitment. But of course you can only sustain it if it’s sustainable in terms of
the expenditure of blood and treasure.” His comment brings to mind a World War II quip about General George S. Patton, also k nown as “old
blood and guts.” Some of his troops responded to that nickname this way: yes, his guts, but our blood. When men like Petraeus measure the
supposed sustainability of their wars in terms of blood and treasure, the first question should be: Whose blood, whose treasure? When it
comes to Washington’s Afghan War, now in its 18th year and looking ever more like a demoralizing defeat, Petraeus admits that U.S. forces
“never had an exit strategy.” What they did have, he claims, “was a strategy to allow us to continue to achieve our objectives… with the
reduced expenditure in blood and treasure.” Think of this formulation as an upside-down version of the notorious “body count” of the Vietnam
War. Instead of attempting to maximize enemy dead, as General William Westmoreland sought to do from 1965 to 1968, Petraeus i s suggesting
that the U.S. seek to keep the American body count to a minimum (translating into minimal attention back home), while minimizing the
“treasure” spent. By keeping American bucks and body bags down (Afghans be damned), the war, he insists, can be sustained not just for a few
more years but generationally. (He cites 70-year troop commitments to NATO and South Korea as reasonable models.) Talk about lacking an
exit strategy! And he also speaks of a persistent “industrial-strength” Afghan insurgency without noting that U.S. military actions, including
drone strikes and an increasing reliance on air power, result in ever more dead civilians, which only feed that same insurgency. For him,
Afghanistan is little more than a “platform” for regional counterterror operations and so anything must be done to prevent th e greatest horror
of all: withdrawing American troops too quickly. In fact, he suggests that American-trained and supplied Iraqi forces collapsed in 2014, when
attacked by relatively small groups of ISIS militants, exactly because U.S. troops had been withdrawn too quickly. The same, he has no doubt,
will happen if President Trump repeats this “mistake” in Afghanistan. (Poor showings by U.S.-trained forces are never, of course, evidence of a
bankrupt approach in Washington, but of the need to “stay the course.”) Petraeus’s critique is, in fact, a subtle version of the stab-in-the-back
myth. Its underlying premise: that the U.S. military is always on the generational cusp of success, whether in Vietnam in 1971, Iraq in 2011, or
Afghanistan in 2019, if only the rug weren’t pulled out from under the U.S. military by irresolute commanders-in-chief. Of course, this is all
nonsense. Commanded by none other than General David Petraeus, the
Afghan surge of 2009-2010 proved a dismal
failure as, in the end, had his Iraq surge of 2007. U.S. efforts to train reliable indigenous forces (no
matter where in the embattled Greater Middle East and Africa) have also consistently failed . Yet
Petraeus’s answer is always more of the same: more U.S. troops and advisers, training, bombing, and killing, all to be repeated at “sustainable”
levels for generations to come. The alternative, he suggests, is too awful to contemplate: “You have to do something about [Islamic extremism]
because otherwise they’re going to spew violence, extremism, instability, and a tsunami of refugees not just into neighboring countries but…
the U.S. invasions of
into our western European allies, undermining their domestic political situations.” No mention here of how
Afghanistan and Iraq spread destruction and, in the end, a “tsunami of refugees” throughout the
region. No mention of how U.S. interventions and bombing in Libya, Syria, Somalia, and elsewhere help
“spew” violence and generate a series of failed states. And amazingly enough, despite his lack of “vici” moments, the
American media still sees King David as the go-to guy for advice on how to fight and win the wars he’s had such a hand in losing. And just in
case you want to start worrying a little, he’s now offering such advice on even more dangerous matters. He’s started to comment on the new
“cold war” that now has Washington abuzz, a coming era — as he puts it — of “renewed great power rivalries” with China and Russia, an era, in
fact, of “multi-domain warfare” that could prove far more challenging than “the asymmetric abilities of the terrorists and extremists and
insurgents that we’ve countered in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan and a variety of other places, particularly since 9/11.” For Petraeus, even if
Islamic terrorism disappeared tomorrow and not generations from now, the U.S. military would still be engaged with the supercharged threat
of China and Russia. I can already hear Pentagon cash registers going ka-ching! And here, in the end, is what’s most striking about Petraeus’s
war lessons: no concept of peace even exists in his version of the future. Instead, whether via Islamic terrorism or rival great powers, America
faces intractable threats into a distant future. Give him credit for one thing: if adopted, his vision could keep the national security state funded
in the staggering fashion it’s come to expect for generations, or at least until the money runs out and the U.S. empire collapses. Two Senior
Generals Draw Lessons from the Iraq War David Petraeus remains America’s best-known general of this century. His thinking, though, is
anything but unique. Take two other senior U.S. Army generals, Mark Milley and Ray Odierno, both of whom recently contributed forewords to
the Army’s official history of the Iraq War that tell you what you need to know about Pentagon thinking these days. Published this January, the
Army’s history of Operation Iraqi Freedom is detailed and controversial. Completed in June 2016, its publication was pushed back due to
internal disagreements. As the Wall Street Journal put it in October 2018: “Senior [Army] brass fretted over the impact the study’s criticisms
might have on prominent officers’ reputations and on congressional support for the service.” With those worries apparently resolved, the study
is now available at the Army War College website. The Iraq War witnessed the overthrow of autocrat (and former U.S. ally) Saddam Hussein, a
speedy declaration of “mission accomplished” by President George W. Bush, and that country’s subsequent descent into occupati on,
insurgency, civil war, and chaos. What should the Army have learned from all this? General Milley, now Army chief of staff and President
Trump’s nominee to serve as the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is explicit on its lessons: “OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom] is a sober reminder
that technological advantages and standoff weapons alone cannot render a decision; that the promise of short wars is often elusive; that the
ends, ways, and means must be in balance; that our Army must understand the type of war we are engaged with in order to adapt as
necessary; that decisions in war occur on the ground in the mud and dirt; and that timeless factors such as human agency, cha nce, and an
enemy’s conviction, all shape a war’s outcome.” These aren’t, in fact, lessons. They’re military banalities. The side with the best weapons
doesn’t always win. Short wars can turn into long ones. The enemy has a say in how the war is fought. What they lack is any sense of Army
responsibility for mismanaging the Iraq War so spectacularly. In other words, “mission accomplished” for General Milley. General Odierno, who
commissioned the study and served in Iraq for 55 months, spills yet more ink in arguing, like Milley, that the Army has learned from its mistakes
and adapted, becoming even more agile and lethal. Here’s my summary of his “lessons”: * Superior technology doesn’t guarantee victory. Skill
and warcraft remain vital. * To win a war of occupation, soldiers need to know the environment, including “the local politica l and social
consequences of our actions… When conditions on the ground change, we must be willing to reexamine the assumptions that underpin our
strategy and plans and change course if necessary, no matter how painful it may be,” while developing better “strategic leaders.” * The Army
needs to be enlarged further because “landpower” is so vital and America’s troops were “overtaxed by the commitments in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and the decision to limit our troop levels in both theaters had severe operational consequences.” * The Iraq War showcased an
Army with an “astonishing” capacity “to learn and adapt in the midst of a war that the United States was well on its way to losing.” The gist of
Odierno’s “lessons”: the Army learned, adapted, and overcame. Therefore, it deserves America’s thanks and yet more of everything, including
the money and resources to pursue future wars even more successfully. There would, however, be another way to read those lessons of his:
that the Army overvalued technology, that combat skills were lacking, that efforts to work with allies and Iraqi forces regularly failed, that Army
leadership lacked the skills needed to win, and that it was folly to get into a global war on terror in the first place. On t hose failings, neither
Milley nor Odierno has anything of value to say, since their focus is purely on how to make the Army prevail in future versions of just such wars.
Their limited critique, in short, does little to prevent future disasters. Much like Petraeus’s reflections, they cannot envision an end point to the
process — no victory to be celebrated, no return to America being “a normal country in a normal time.” There is only war and more war i n their
(and so our) future. The Undiscovered Country Talk of such future wars — of, that is, more of the same — reminded me of the sixth Star Trek
movie, The Undiscovered Country. In that space opera, which appeared in 1991 just as the Soviet Union was imploding, peace fi nally breaks out
between the quasi-democratic Federation (think: the USA) and the warmongering Klingon Empire (think: the USSR). Even the Federation’s
implacable warrior-captain, James T. Kirk, grudgingly learns to bury the phaser with the Klingon “bastards” who murdered his son. Back then, I
was a young captain in the U.S. Air Force and, with the apparent end of the Cold War, my colleagues and I dared talk about, if not eternal
peace, at least “peace” as our own — and not just Star Trek‘s — undiscovered country. Like many at the time, even we in the military were
looking forward to what was then called a “peace dividend.” But that unknown land, which Americans then glimpsed ever so briefly, remains
unexplored to this day. The reason why is simple enough. As Andrew Bacevich put it in his book Breach of Trust, “For the Pentagon [in 1991],
peace posed a concrete and imminent threat” — which meant that new threats, “rogue states” of every sort, had to be found. And found they
were. It comes as no surprise, then, that America’s
generals have learned so little of real value from their twenty-
first-century losses. They continue to see a state of “infinite war” as necessary and are blind to the
ways in which endless war and the ever-developing war state in Washington are the enemies of
democracy. The question isn’t why they think the way they do. The question is why so many Americans share their vision. The future is
now. Isn’t it time that the U.S. sought to invade and occupy a different “land” entirely: an undiscovered country — a future — defined by
peace?

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