The man credited with putting muscle into UN peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, will leave his position on June 1, according to Le Monde newspaper. Guehenno had been widely credited with the restoring the reputation of U.N. “peace operations” as an effective and relatively agency in helping conflict-torn countries in Africa and elsewhere return to stability after civil wars and other strife.

Under his auspices, UN peacekeeping forces increased in size to become the second-largest military force operating outside their country – behind the size of U.S. expeditionary forces.

Guehenno, appointed eight years ago by then-Secretary General Kofi Annan, played an important role in changing the philosophy of peacekeeping after a period in the 1990s when the UN’s reputation was damaged by fiascos in Bosnia and elsewhere. Guehenno told European Affairs in 2006, in an article entitled Contemporary Peacekeeping Is State-Building, that he had lead the UN toward more “robust peacekeeping” — meaning readiness to use force when necessary to implement a peacekeeping mission.

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By David Young

At the time of the NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999, the premise of Western governments was that confronting ethnic cleansing was more important than respecting the international borders. The message was that would-be tyrants in future needed to know – and be deterred by – the cost that would be imposed on them by the international community if they sought to inflict such atrocities. The U.S. decision to throw its full political-military weight into Kosovo reflected eagerness to make up for perceived moral failures in the 1990s (notably Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia). President Bill Clinton was eager to restore America’s image as the global policeman backing up the recently proclaimed new world order. And he wanted to restore the strategic authority of the United States.

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The clashing views of Moscow and Washington about the future of Kosovo were laid out powerfully and clearly in a recent semi-public exchange between two well-placed individuals on opposite sides of the argument. Dimitri K. Simes, a scholar specialized in the affairs of his native Russia, who now heads the Nixon Center in Washington. Ambassador Frank G. Wisner, the U.S. special representative to the talks on Kosovo’s future headed by United Nations envoy, Martti Ahtissari.

Their dialogue of articles and letters was circulated by the Committee for the Republic, an informal circle of policy intellectuals in Washington. One of the circle’s members is former U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman to whom some of the correspondence was addressed. European Affairs found it a clarifying account of the fundamental arguments on both sides. (more…)