au1929 wrote:Standing by and watching people getting slaughtered in Darfur is not my idea of peacekeeping. AS long it and similar situations continue to occur with the UN unwilling or powerless to act it can in no way be considered as anything but an overly expensive debating society. Or a place where diplomats go to live the highlife.
I don't have a definition of "peacemaking". It sounds macho to me, and that's about it. The term kind of implies that, in a situation of an ongoing war, a third party steps in and, all of a sudden, all hostilities end. I don't think that's possible, no matter what organisation or entity or situation we're talking about. I'd say that the term or the connotation of being able to "make peace" is nothing but an illusion.
Now, peacekeeping is an entirely different matter. It implies that in the situation of a ceasefire, there's an entity to control the mutally agreed-upon rules. Or that in a situation where unrest or civil war is likely to erupt, an entity is in control of the situation and able to "keep the peace". The thing about peacekeeping is that its success can be jugded by the absence of wars, right?
Anyways, Darfur is not my idea of peacekeeping either. Quite the contrary. However, does that mean that all the other peacekeeping missions should be discontinued? How do you judge their success or failure? Don't you think that people in Congo or Liberia profit from the presence of UN troops, in spite of the fact that the UN did nothing for the people in Darfur?
