Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords, and a World of Endless Conflict

by William Shawcross

Book Overview

We have all seen press and TV pictures of winding lines of refugees in Africa or in Europe and felt that something must be done. In this book, the author reveals what lies behind decisions by the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 068483233X
• ISBN13: 9780684832333
• Release Date: March 2000
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 447 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Deliver Us From the Evil of a Lack of Political Will

Deliver Us from a Lack of Political Will, by Peter Gantz, Partnership for Effective Peace Operations.A review of Deliver Us From Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict, William Shawcross, Simon & Schuster, 413pp.So, yes, this book is about peacekeeping, that amorphous blob of activity the international community tasks the UN with accomplishing every day in conflict zones throughout the world. It is clear that expectations far exceed what the UN is capable of delivering, as Mr. Shawcross points out early on. The UN in the nineties was tasked with bringing peace to areas where conflict had erupted, following the end of the Cold War. Mr. Shawcross does an admirable job of describing how well and how often that did not work, and how deep the failures were.This book is not a UN bashing book, though. It certainly points out the problems at the UN, but Mr. Shawcross knows that these problems, just as the UN itself, are the creation of the member states and their political leaders. In particular, the most powerful member state, the United States, has played a spectacularly unhelpful role. Congress nearly destroyed the UN financially in the late nineties, largely driven by provincial isolationists in the Republican Party. President Clinton and his top advisors were no better, perhaps most notably during the Rwandan genocide. Muddled decisions from the administration did much to worsen crises and conflicts the world over.Mr. Shawcross puts his finger squarely on the problem. Time after time it has been a lack of political will. The inability of the international community to summon the courage to stop the deaths of millions of blacks in Rwanda, Burundi, and other parts of Africa is one of the more despicable features of the twentieth century, and one of the examples of problems with UN peacekeeping that Mr. Shawcross covers quite well. The U.S. and other countries are simply not willing to back up words with actions.Hard and fast solutions are not offered by Mr. Shawcross. The reader would be better directed to other works for that. (The book came out prior to the UN's own surprisingly honest and straightforward assessment of peacekeeping, the Brahimi Report, commissioned by Secretary-General Kofi Annan.) But to understand the problems with UN peace operations, and to understand the fundamental root cause of these problems, the lack of political will to act, or to act well, this book is better than most. Mr. Shawcross suggests in the end that UN peace operations have too often been about asking for miracles.But make no mistake; he does not suggest that peacekeeping should be abandoned. And certainly this book should not provoke a reader to gag at the idea of deploying peacekeepers-they should gag, however, at the antics of their elected officials. The U.S. and other countries sit at the Security Council and give the UN grand and noble tasks to save the world, but when it comes to providing the means to accomplish th

enlightening

For anyone interested in world affairs, or interested in learning more about the United Nations in today's fractured and dangerous world, I strongly recommend this work by Shawcross.This work is essentially a survey of hotspots around the world that eventually boiled over spurring the intervention of foreign governments in the name of "humanity". Shawcross begins with the backgrounds of these conflicts and spells out the events leading up to and including foreign intervention and the aftereffects. Shawcross often begins to outline one conflict, leaves it to start another at a crucial point, may then introduce the reader to yet another, or return to the original. In this fashion, the reader is carried from conflict to conflict, without discovering a resolution until later. This device keeps the reader more interested and in the end perhaps mirrors the real world as well. Hotspots of the world don't wait for each other to resolve before cropping up.Much of the work also focuses on Kofi Annan the current secretary general, and it is this topic that is most enlightening. As citizens of the world, we have painted a romantic picture of the U.N and become frustrated when it does not accomplish the things we would like it to. We often forget that the United Nations are composed of individual nations with individual interests. At the heart of the U.N. lies the Security Council. A veto by any of the members of the Security Council essentially cripples the U.N.'s ability to act. The U.N.is also reliant on its members for funding and equipment. It is in this context that Shawcross presents Annan, who himself is not without blame for some of the the U.N.'s shortcomings, but nevertheless comes across in a very sympathetic light.The aforementioned members of the Security Council come across much more poorly, particulary the United States and France. The highest complement I can give this work is that Shawcross is even handed. His writing does not heap blame on any party. He is merely spelling out the limitations of the world we live in and the simple fact that states are first and foremost looking out for their own interests.Especially interesting is the material dealing with Saddam Hussein. He has been a thorn in the world's side for years. He also touches on Serbia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, East Timor among others. One comes away with a new perspective on the limitations and failings of the United Nations, but also a profound feeling that it is as indispensible and vital as ever.

Fundamental Primer on Real-World Security Challenges

EDIT of 23 Feb 08 to add links. This remains a priceless reference work. This book is serious, scholarly yet down to earth, compassionate, insightful, terribly relevant and most useful to any citizen, overseas practitioner, or policymaker. By the books own rendering, "good will without strength can make things worse." Most compellingly, the author demonstrates both the nuances and the complexities of "peace operations", and the fact that they require at least as much forethought, commitment, and sustainment as combat operations. Food scarcity and dangerous public health are the root symptoms, not the core issues. The most dangerous element is not the competing sides, but the criminal gangs that emerge to "stoke the fires of nationalism and ethnicity in order to create an environment of fear and vulnerability" (and great profit). At the same time, humanitarianism has become a big part of the problem-we have not yet learned how to distinguish between those conflicts where intervention is warranted (e.g. massive genocide campaigns) and those where internal conflicts need to be settled internally. In feeding the competing parties, we are both prolonging the conflict, and giving rise to criminal organizations that learn to leverage both the on-going conflict and the incoming relief supplies. Perhaps more troubling, there appears to be a clear double-standard-whether deliberate or circumstantial-between attempts to bring order to the white western or Arab fringe countries and what appears to be callous indifference to black African and distant Asian turmoil that includes hundreds of thousands victim to genocide and tens of thousands victim to living amputation, mutilation, and rape. When all is said and done, and these are my conclusions from reading this excellent work, 1) there is no international intelligence system in place suitable to providing both the global coverage and public education needed to mobilize and sustain multi-national peacekeeping coalitions; 2) the United Nations is not structured, funded, nor capable of carrying out disciplined effective peacekeeping operations, and the contributing nations are unreliable in how and when they will provide incremental assistance; 3) we still have a long way to go in devising new concepts, doctrines, and technologies and programs for effectively integrating and applying preventive diplomacy, transformed defense, transnational law enforcement, and public services (water, food, health and education) in a manner that furthers regionally-based peace and prosperity instead of feeding the fires of local unrest. See also: The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism Confessions of an Economic Hit

As it is.. as it shouldn't be

For most of the last decade, it seems to me, the world has been busy taking in the implications of the post Cold War environment. Out of this gestation there has recently arrived a flood of books. Geoffrey Robertson's "Crimes Against Humanity" details the development of the legal arguments for humanitarian intervention; Susan Moeller's "Compassion Fatigue" explains its political limits in terms of domestic apathy (blaming, rather too heavily I think, the media); Michael Ignatieff has written compellingly on humanitarian intervention from the perspective of a muscular-minded moral philosopher.. but Shawcross - more than anyone in my view - "tells it like it is."Shawcross says his is a story of hope. It is hard to see how. With commendable clarity he charts the history of humanitarian-inspired interventions, focussing on the post Cold War world, when the end of superpower rivalries seemed briefly to make all things possible.Encouraged by the apparent (though only partial) success of UNTAC in Cambodia, the "international community" (please God, let us find another phrase!) rushed naively and disastrously into Somalia (for more on this I recommend Scott Peterson's lively new memoir "Me Against My Brother"). The world powers then turned to water when confronted by the terrible challenge of Rwandan genocide. Shawcross writes powerfully of this, as Gourevitch among others have done. He also writes with chilling force of the events leading to the fall of Srebrenica, and the global pusillanimity that allowed Foday Sankoh his free and terrible reign in Sierra Leone.As the century turns there are slim victories for those who believe the "good guys" of the outside world can bring peace to the blighted. The Australian-led INTERFET force in East Timor secured a shattered territory to give some hope of genuine transition to peaceful democracy. Mozambique, too, has been a quiet success story, making the recent devastating floods all the more tragic.But the lessons of Shawcross's dispassionate analysis are those that the political powers least want to hear. If the US, France and other Western powers want to live up to the fine sound of their humanitarian rhetoric, they must stop playing their policies to their domestic audiences. If they want to approve impressive-sounding mandates, they must be willing to back them with men and material. They must be willing to risk the lives of their soldiers. They must look upon their cowardice in Srebrenica and Rwanda with shame (and I don't speak of the individual Dutch and Belgian soldiers who, respectively, were there). They must be more ready to see in Kofi Annan perhaps the last best hope the UN has.If they are not willing to do those things, Shawcross makes clear, they might as well admit that humanitarian intervention is an emperor without clothes, and that the worst suffering in the world is irremediable.

A Close Examination of UN Peacekeeping Forces

A Close Examination of UN Peacekeeping Forces By David Isenberg Stars and Stripes Contributing WriterDeliver Us From Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict, William Shawcross, Simon & Schuster, 413pp.After reading this book nobody will ever again be able to contemplate a call to deploy United Nations peacekeepers without gagging. After I read it I was reminded of the saying that one is either part of the problem or part of the solution. For years people have assumed that when it came to peace and conflict issues in general and peacekeeping in specific that the United Nations was part of the solution. Perhaps it's time to change our minds. The Bible may say "Blessed are the peacemakers" but UN peacekeepers, unfortunately, are not.In this book William Shawcross, longtime British journalist and veteran of many war zones, has written a dispassionate account of most of the major conflicts the UN has been involved in. The first part is a detailed, and at times dizzying history of UN involvement in the killing zones whose names we have seen so many times in the news: Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Chechnya, and Iraq. He analyzes, in great detail, the few, partial, tentative successes that UN Blue Helmets, such as UNTAC in Cambodia, and the far too many failures such as Rwanda, Somalia, and Sierra Leone.The second part is a review, as seen by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan with whom Shawcross has obviously spent a great deal of time with, of the politics and diplomacy that occurred in the amorphous creature called the "international community," especially those nations that are members of the UN Security Council.Sometimes it is hard to know which is worse; reading the accounts of the various atrocities perpetrated by the warlords and thugs posing as national leaders, i.e., Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevich, Foday Sankoh, Laurent Kabilah, or reading about the petty intrigues and bickering among the leaders of the Western governments and in the UN Secretariat. Reading this book is like driving by a traffic accident; you are horrified by what you see but you can't keep from looking. The accounts of the enormous pressures encountered by Kofi Anan in trying to secure pledges of funds personnel, and approval for peacekeeping operations, and the obstacles encountered by UN peacekeepers from the forces who oppose their deployment, makes one appreciate that, unlike the Cold War era, there is no longer any peace to keep and precious little will to make peace. At a time when UN forces are being captured by the hundreds by rebels in a heart of darkness like Sierra Leone one realizes that if UN peacekeeping operations could be symbolized by a car it would be the Edsel.Though Shawcross is obviously sympathetic to the idea of UN peacekeeping he is too much the dispassionate observer to believe that current "humanitarian" interventions are a model to follow in the fu