The prospect of disasters in Africa concentrates the world's mind wonderfully on the problems and failures of international peacekeeping. We should focus also on the parallel danger of creeping apartheid. Sensitivity to body bags has made Western powers increasingly averse to the perils of peacekeeping. In conflict-prone areas outside their own neighborhood, they leave risky operations to nonwhite soldiers. The result is that those with the military muscle to mount effective operations lack the courage of their convictions; those with the will lack the military means. Such a tribalization of peacekeeping undermines the solidarity of the international community in the shared management of a fragile world order.
One source of bitterness for developing countries has been the tendency of industrialized countries to volunteer for peacekeeping duties where their national interests are strongly engaged, as in the Balkans, but not in Africa. The hurried withdrawal of the United Nations from Somalia was essentially dictated by Western countries unwilling to run further risks there following the deaths of 18 U.S. Army Rangers in October 1993. The shameful withdrawal of most U.N. troops from Rwanda at the height of the genocide in April 1994 was also necessitated by Western, particularly U.S., refusal to intervene meaningfully. This has now led to a broader pattern of Western flight from peacekeeping duties in Africa. The message has not been lost on African warlords, for whom this is excellent news.
Western U.N. contingents in Somalia, the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda could not prevent ultimate failure of these operations, but in their absence, success seems a much longer shot for high-risk U.N. operations. Western governments are still prepared to volunteer troops for classic peace-monitoring operations such as that on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border following a ceasefire earlier this year. However, most wars today resist tidy solutions and involve the U.N. in staring down a variety of combatants prone to shifting alliances and goals. These are the duties Western governments prefer to avoid.