Former adviser discusses
UN
By Russ Brickey
Staff
Writer
In a voice as smooth and cultured as a fine European
liquor, former United Nations adviser Frank Van Kappen addressed a small
group of Purdue students and faculty Monday night.
Van Kappen, a retired Netherlands marine corps
general, spoke for more than an hour about the difficulties of keeping
peace in the post Cold War era. He has been a vocal critic of the United
Nation's military mandates since leaving the organization in 1998.
"I'm a diplomat. I'm a solider. I'm not an American;
I'm a European," Van Kappen joked with the crowd. "So don't believe
everything I say."
Van Kappan gained a reputation as a solider in
the war on drugs while leading a joint U.S./Netherlands task force in
the Caribbean. When given his assignment to the United Nations, Van
Kappen hoped his ignorance of United Nations policy would exclude him
from the job.
"I always thought it was an organization that ran
away when people started shooting at them," Van Kappen said.
A fresh perspective was exactly what United Nation's
bureaucrats were looking for, however, and Van Kappen had the job. "It
was the most frustrating and the most rewarding work of my whole career,"
Van Kappen said.
The most serious problems facing United Nations
peacekeepers are often the political differences between member-nations.
"If you want to be successful (as a global peace
keeping organization)," Van Kappen said, "you have to dovetail your
political and military forces."
With the Cold War at an end, the political arena
has become more complex, and the United Nations military mandates have
become more difficult to enforce.
"In the good old days of the Cold War," Van Kappen
said, "the peace keeping missions were much fewer and much simpler."
Now the United Nations is often dealing with proxy
governments, which are no longer dependent on major powers. These conflicts
are more likely to be ethnic or civil wars, Van Kappen explained, sometimes
involving from four to six parties at a time.
"Those parties are not susceptible to international
pressure," Van Kappen said. "They don't command armies; they command
militias or armed gangs," which are not as easily controlled as
a formal army is.
"Armies do what they are told," Van Kappen said.
The reasons for many of the current conflicts are
often generations old and rooted in ethnic or religious differences.
Van Kappen used Serbia as an example to demonstrate
the point.
"Imagine, you put a lightly armed U.N. battalion
in an open air prison called 'a safe zone,'" Van Kappen said by way
of illustration, "and this is surrounded by hostile Serbian forces."
In this real-life scenario, United Nations' advisers
requested at least 32,000 additional troops. They received 7,800.
"If the U.S. would have (sent in additional troops),"
Van Kappen said, "other (North American Trade Organizations) 'froggies'
would have jumped out of the barrel."
In part, Van Kappen blamed the difficulties on
the deeply rooted differences between the countries in the United Nations.
"Even though I am critical of the U.N.," Van Kappen
said, "it is very important. We'd better kick it till it works better."
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