By John Amoda

THE Ministry of Defence will be holding at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre a two-day International Seminar on Peace Operation, August 2-3, 2010. The subject matter is intriguing because as it is phrased the topic of the seminar pertains to a matter in the portfolio of the Ministry of External Affairs.

The question that this seeming invasion of the territory of the Ministry of External Affairs suggests is: Is the Ministry of Defence taking on this task because the subject matter Ministry has failed in its duty in this matter now taken up by the MOD? This is surely not the case, for this subject matter is at the core of the multilateral diplomacy of the Ministry of External Affairs.

This answer raises another question, and that is one of approach. Is the choice of this subject matter indicative of the exclusion of the MOD’s expertise in the conduct of peace support operations diplomacy by the Ministry of External Affairs and thus this seeming invasion is to compensate for the incomplete implementation of the National Foreign Policy Objectives through Peace Support Operations?

Again this is surely not the case since peace support operations are dominated by the Ministry of Defence as evident by the role of the Military Staff Committee in the Security Council and the roles carved out for the Ministry of Defence in the provision of standby forces, peace keepers and the construction of peace support operations.

What then seems to be the case for the MOD in the phrasing of the seminar is the use of peace support operations for achieving national foreign policy objectives. Even in this within “my province” attitude of the MOD, it is hoped that the role of the Ministry of External affairs is not limited to that of an invitee and the MOD should have involved the External Affairs Ministry in the planning of the seminar.

This is so because one of the aftermaths of the post-Cold War is the fact that demands for peace support operations has become predominantly responses to the course of intra-state politics that have generated conflicts some of whose consequences are addressed by peace support operations.

This is the principal reason why planning such a seminar on the government side should involve the Ministries of External Affairs and Interior and Defence, and on the political-societal side politicians, media and civil societal organisations who are the representatives of the nation. This much for planning- the need to involve both societal stakeholders and governments who are their agents in matters of peace and support operations.

Now to the subject matter of the seminar, “Achieving National Foreign Policy Objectives through Peace Support Operations”. This phrasing of the seminar raises three categories of issues namely:
*What kind of instrument is peace support operation?
*Who are the present beneficiary of peace support operations?
*What kind of national foreign policy objectives can be achieved through peace support operations?

We shall address each seriatim. What kind of instrument is peace support operations? The Charter of the Security Council provides no role for peace support operations (PSOs). PSOs are the orphans of the Cold War that rendered the Security Council powerless to address threats to the post-World War II Global Order.

 The Charter’s Chapter VI only made provisions for pacific settlement of disputes because the post-World War II Order envisaged by the United States dominated architects of that order was a Liberal-Democratic Global Order where inter-state and  intra-state disputes were postulated and indeed decreed to be mainly disputes on how to achieve purposes commonly agreed.

 Disputes over ends or goals were excluded in this post-World War II Order; all disputes were assumed to be those over means, how to achieve common goals. Thus, Chapter VI on Pacific Settlements of Disputes and Chapter VIII on Regional Arrangements were devoted to modalities of how disputes over policy instruments can and should be peacefully resolved.

The post-World United Nations was engineered only for members subscribing to one global ideology, the Liberal-Democratic Ideology. This is why Chapter VII dealt with “Action With Respect To Threats To The Peace, Breaches of the Peace and Acts of Aggression” Article 39 summarises the vision of the post-World War as a world constituted of liberal democratic societies and threats to its order would not emanate from the Soviet Union or China but from the resurgence of national socialist states, namely the axis powers.
Article 39 states:

“The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Article 41 and 42 to maintain or restore international peace and security”.

The actions contemplated under Article 39 were actions to maintain the order as it was. And the source of the threats to the peace was known and so described in the Charter-they were the powers that the Allied Powers fought and prevailed over, the enemy states, mainly a resurgent Germany, Italy and Japan. Article 51 provided a transitional provision for the protection of the Allied Powers while the Security Council was being established.