The UN, as of August 2020, had 71,786 men and women as a part of their armed forces, deployed in 14 separate peacekeeping missions. In terms of the number of troops actively deployed to combat zones worldwide since the end of the cold war, from any given country, only the United States during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could top that total .
Because of this it is extremely startling that, since its inception, the UN’s army has been Frankenstein's monster of differing parts. Every infantry battalion, helicopter squadron and field hospital is loaned to the UN’s command from a Troop Contributing Country (TCC). The various staff officers that command the forces, as well as staff mission headquarters and the UN bureaucracy in Turtle Bay, are all on loan from their home militaries for a one to two year period. This system, while it has been the UNs since the beginning, puts it at an unnecessary disadvantage. To improve the efficacy of UN peacekeeping, the UN must create its own staff officer corps, and furthermore, a fully independent military of its own.
Military contingents to the UN, particularly in eras like the 1990s where UN peacekeeping needs were high, have been entirely unsatisfactory in quality. Tales of units arriving without ammunition, food, or guns are frequent. Bangladeshi units in Rwanda, for example, arrived without any rations or ammunition. Even in intense, internationally encompassing conflicts such as in the Bosnian War (1992-1995), units often take orders from their respective capitals and national political leaders instead of their UN force commander, with disastrous results.
The failure of UN peacekeepers in Bosnia, and the failure to prevent the massacre of 8,000 civilians in Srebrenica specifically, highlights what happens when the current system fails. UN forces were charged with defending a “safe area” of tens of thousands of civilians deep within Serb-controlled Bosnia. When the Serbs assaulted the safe area in July 1995, the ad-hoc UN/NATO command and control fell apart. The Dutch defenders were unable to coordinate support from nearby Norwegian and Pakistani units, or air support from NATO. They then surrendered, leading to the massacre of thousands in the safe areas.
While the nucleus of a UN military was in the UN charter and was planned by its founders, a standing UN army was never founded, instead relying on ad-hoc troop contributions from member states. While a standing UN army would improve matters far more than a simple staff officer corps would, the idea of a standing army is currently unfeasible due to a lack of member state support. An appropriate compromise, that provides valuable expertise while tempering member state concerns, would be the creation of a staff officer corps.
Staff officers are the brain of any UN military mission. Staff officers serve as the commanding officer of the mission, are responsible for gathering needed intelligence, planning major operations, and ensuring logistical concerns are all met. Back at the UN’s headquarters in New York, staff officers are charged with planning new operations, ensuring these missions actually receive the needed troops from member states, and in general serve as the Pentagon for an army in the middle of 14 separate military operations.
The UN, as of May 2019, has approximately 3,500 staff officers serving the roles listed above. Unfortunately, none of these officers are permanent UN staff. They are loaned by member states, for periods of either one year of field service or two years at headquarters, before being recalled back to their own national armies. Creating a permanent UN staff, in place of the current loan system, would maintain institutional knowledge, allow the UN to develop critical skills, and ensure that best talent stays in the UN.
UN-led peace operations are highly complex, multidimensional missions. They frequently involve providing quick and deeply needed humanitarian aid, disarming combatant groups, improving human rights conditions, organizing elections, strengthening rule of law, etc.. Importantly, most of these tasks are outside the conventional spectrum of military operations. Most military officers do not receive significant training on peace operations during their initial training, instead focusing on conventional and unconventional warfare.
While peace operations is a part of most officers' training, and there are many transferable skills, staff officers often have their clock expire and are sent back to their national armies, just as they learn the nuances of how to carry out their tasks. This is further complicated at the higher ranks. High-ranking officers, such as Colonels and Generals, may have significant military training and leadership experience, but are often thrust into significant UN roles with little experience with peace operations.
For example, the four force commanders of the UN’s four largest operations (MINUSMA in Mali, MONUSCO in the DRC, MINUSCA in the CAR, and UNAMID in Sudan) have only spent three or so years of their decades-long military career in UN peacekeeping. UN capabilities would therefore expand if its military leadership had decades of experience with peacekeeping specifically, instead of military matters in general.
In addition, there is a general skill gap growing in the ranks of current staff officers. A recent UN report noted that there are a lack of officers with needed skill sets in civil-military coordination, military planning, and specialized skills like bomb disarmament, drone use, and map analysis. In addition, that same report found that the UN needed more french speaking female officers, as well as reiterating the need for high quality leadership. The best way to plug these persisting skill gaps comes in the form of a permanent UN staff officer corps. The UN can establish much needed training schools and officer training programs with the knowledge that they can spend six months training an officer in a skill like GIS (Geographic Information System, a way to analyze geographic information) analysis, and not have them leave the organization six months after that. In addition, the UN could select applicants who possess the needed skill set instead of relying on member states to hopefully contribute officers with the needed skill set.
Lastly, the UN can actually gain access to some of the talented officers that it currently can't recruit. While in some militaries, UN service is viewed as a highly coveted assignment that develops valuable intercultural skills and experience in conflict zones (particularly European and African militaries), in other militaries it is viewed as a career dead end. This is particularly true for the US military, who has rarely contributed military forces to UN missions since the 1990s. This is particularly worrisome, since the US military currently possesses the largest, best trained,
and most experienced staff officer corps in the world. It allocates $18,459,000 to officer education, currently maintains an officer corps 80,000 strong, and has extensive experience from Iraq and Afghanistan. By establishing a staff officer corps of its own, the UN could effectively poach military officers from armies that traditionally would never send these officers to the UN, promising them better benefits and chances for career advancement.
Because of all of these reasons, the UN needs a full time military bureaucracy. It can still rely on its member states as sources of new staff officers, which every country produces through officer training programs and military colleges. But once they are in the UN system, they are permanently loaned to the UN, with its own rank and promotion system, instead of only a few year long temporary loan.
Critics have two main concerns about any form of UN-led military. First, many ideological conservatives worldwide have concerns about a non-state entity having a military. It’s a pillar of modern sovereignty theory that only the state, through its armed forces and police, can make use of legitimate violence. An army that is fully loyal to an international organization, instead of only loaned to it, is a violation of those norms. Having only the staff officers be loyal to the UN, instead of the entire force as a whole, is a strong compromise. In this new world order, only the brains of the UN’s army would be fully loyal to the UN, the metaphorical arms, body, and legs of the being would still be loyal to the various UN member states.
In addition, critics contend that an international staff would be unwieldy at best due to the massive cultural and institutional differences in each separate officer's background and training. However, these issues can be overcome with strong intercultural training and by officers simply gaining more experience in the international work environment. These are best developed with a permanent corps. The ability for multicultural staff to work well provided they have common training and methods has been highlighted in recent years by the success of recent NATO and EU joint military commands, such as IFOR in Afghanistan.
In 2020’s conflict-ridden international stage, UN peacekeeping has become more necessary than ever before. The number of conflicts, UN missions, and UN peacekeepers rises every year. Furthermore, UN peacekeepers are more and more willing to engage in violent action as part of these operations, significantly upping the stakes and reiterating the need for a strong officer corps.
Creating a permanent officer corps for the UN would go a long way towards improving the capability of UN peacekeeping missions, while at the same time meeting the concerns of member states who are afraid of a “UN army” becoming a serious power in world military affairs. The secretariat and the security council should seriously consider implementing this policy if they want to improve the efficacy of peacekeeping operations at limited political and fiscal cost.