Nato air attacks on Serbian military targets continue in what is clearly a paradoxical exercise: the emphasis on air intervention has worsened Serbian attacks on Kosovar military and civilians, bringing the prospect of Nato ground intervention to establish control – peacemaking – imminent; and the expanded Serbian repression has increased Kosovar support for independence, a goal the United States and its allies have resisted as antagonistic to reasonable Yugoslav interests.
In South Africa, criticism has been limited to the resident Serbian community, some editors and the government. Minister of Foreign Affairs Alfred Nzo has called the Nato initiative out of order in international law and an affront to the authority of the United Nations. His comments entail a bit of truth, a larger bit of naivety about the exercise and a bit of sophistry.
It is true Nato acted without final authorisation from the UN Security Council. But even if UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was not forewarned officially, Nato military commitment was imminent once ambassador Richard Holbrooke left Belgrade after his final, abortive talks with President Slobodan Milosevic.
The sophistry has two dimensions. The South African government’s intervention in Lesotho last year involved no specific authorisation from the UN Security Council or the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). Further, the decision involved no more than an informal consultation by acting president Mangosuthu Buthelezi with a few Southern African Development Community (SADC) presidents.
Hiding the unilateral nature of that intervention with the last-minute resort to Botswana troops and then insisting it was a SADC operation was deceitful. The Lesotho intervention was closer to the US/Britain intervention in Iraq – given the absence of genuine consultation and formal endorsement by the regional organisations under whose aegis the initiatives took place – than to the Kosovo intervention.
It wasn’t peacekeeping. That term has come to mean intervention requested by parties to a domestic military conflict and dependent on their continued acceptance of that interpolation to reduce the risk of renewed fighting while an attempt at negotiation is made toward political accommodation.
Why should peacemaking, in which the resort to interventionary force is a prerequisite, be seen as a feasible approach if peacekeeping so seldom succeeds? Two polar answers come to mind: there is a genuine moral impulse, and there is a self- perception of righteousness. Those who decide to intervene stress the former consideration; their critics focus on the righteousness.
The argument for genuine, broadly based consultation speaks to this dilemma, if in fact the consultative process is something more than a pro forma one. But it can seldom achieve moral agreement. At least the UN Security Council can explore the ambiguities of morality in international conflicts, but its political will to reach agreement on action and its resources to carry out even peacekeeping activities are at an ebb.
To resort to regional organisations is not only more practical but more principled. The direction of regional peacemaking should rest with regional governments.
In principle, the OAU should serve a function for Africa similar to Nato for Europe, but at present, it cannot get to grips with African conflict.
What, if anything, is left? Certainly, the model of Nigerian troops equivocally serving Ecowas and Nigerian and personal motives is not an answer. Weak governments may make any other regional option impossible for West Africa.
A similar possibility might still emerge for Southern Africa, given the economic and military preponderance of South Africa and the frittering away of resources by the Angolan, Namibian and Zimbabwean involvement in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It need not happen.
The Lesotho intervention should clarify the South African government’s decision-making about future regional interventions and the feasibility of such actions.
Director of Operations in the Department of Defence Colonel Rockie Williams’s paper at a conference on African peacekeeping offers encouraging suggestions. His call for “appropriate standard operating procedures” within the executive and consultation with the responsible parliamentary committees makes good sense.
In all ventures where there is no immediate threat to security, broader consultation with the public would be useful to build appreciation and agreement with the regime’s motivations.
Williams concludes that the regional institutional framework to launch and sustain such ventures needs strengthening. The recent decisions by the SADC’s Inter State Defence and Security Committee to establish staffing and to work toward a brigade-size multilateral force hold promise for broadening the support base for Southern African regional actions.
These steps will take time to flesh out. In the meantime, the government must be prudent about taking military steps toward regional conflict resolution.
Even when the SADC planning and operational mechanisms are working, the erratic behaviour of some regional heads of state will make co- ordinated multilateral implementation difficult. Even peacekeeping will suffer, while peacemaking within the immediate region will always be extraordinarily dangerous and seldom worth the cost in lives, money and regional stability.
SADC-mandated peacekeeping beyond the region has negligible prospects for success. Keeping military contingents out of extra-regional conflicts is hard enough to manage. Diplomatic efforts focused on conflicts beyond the region are probably all the South African government can do, as long as it avoids taking sides.
Practically, if ironically, that puts South African diplomacy in Africa beyond this immediate region in the same category as its surprisingly successful efforts at a greater distance – Libya and East Timor come to mind: traditional diplomacy, with no hint of any military role, whatever the auspices or motivation.
John Seiler is an American political scientist based in South Africa