5.7 Justifying exit in Provide Comfort II
6.2.3 The new world order’s transformative potential
Both UNSG Boutros-Ghali and his predecessor, Javier P´erez de Cu´ellar, advised the UNSC on desirable UN action in Somalia that went beyond aid delivery and ceasefire monitoring. de Cu´ellar called for international support for economic recovery and rehabilitation programs in Somalia. He noted poor government and physical infrastructure, as well as banditry and general lawlessness caused by weak public institutions, exacerbated the humanitarian crisis and complicated efforts to halt the civil war. de Cu´ellar argued restoring these institutions was central to sustainably
General S/24480 (New York: United Nations Security Council, August 24, 1992).
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., paras 27-28.
solving Somalia’s humanitarian problems and should therefore be part of the UN mandate in Somalia.22
Boutros-Ghali showed similar enthusiasm for expanding the scope of UN peacekeeping work to include state-building. Boutros-Ghali released his Agenda for Peace in June 1992 in which he identified preventative diplomacy, peacekeeping and peacemaking as necessary for global conflict prevention and resolution. Among the tasks of peacemaking was state-buildling with member states “rebuilding institutions and infrastructures of nations torn by civil war and strife” as well as “address[ing] the deepest causes of conflict: economic and social injustice and political opporession”.23
The idea the international community should be responsible for supporting state-building activities coincided with US President George H. W. Bush’s framing of America’s role in the post-Cold War world. In Chapter 5 I showed how Bush argued America’s Cold War ‘victory’ was consistent with ideas of American exceptional-ism/manifest destiny, demonstrating the inherent superiority of liberal democratic ideals distinguishing America from its Cold War enemies. Bush used the phrase ‘new world order’ to characterise the changing geopolitical landscape primed for America to shape in its own image and interests. Bush’s new world order required American global leadership to politically and economically transform former communist and failed states, and commit to continue fighting the new evils replacing communism.
In talking about US responsibilities, Bush analogised with the narrative of America leading post-World War II reconstruction, using this example of America pursuing a global transformation agenda to argue his new world order plans continued an American tradition:
After vanquishing the dictators of Japan and Germany and Italy, America’s war generation helped those countries rebuild and grow strong in the exercise of democracy and free enterprise.. . . to create and nurture international organi-sations aimed at protecting human rights, collective security, and economic
22. United Nations Secretary-General, Report of the Secretary-General on the Situation in Soma-lia S.24343 (New York: United Nations Security Council, July 22, 1992), para 56.
23. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-Keeping, Report of the Secretary-General A/47/277-S/24111 (United Nations, 1992), para 15.
growth.24
Bush’s recounting of this historical period positioned America as a benevolent leader acting altruistically, downplaying America’s economic and military power motivations for supporting vanquished nations and establishing international institutions.
Bush was confident in the American model’s wide applicability calling for a “Pax Universalis built upon shared responsibilities and aspirations”,25where the (American)
“blessings of liberty some day might extend to all peoples”.26 In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on 23 September 1991, Bush repeatedly asserted history was “resuming” and being “renewed”,27 bringing the world ever closer to realising what Americans “have always dreamed of[,] the day democracy and freedom will triumph in every corner of the world, in every captive nation and closed society”.28Bush’s comments conveyed a feeling of inevitability in the historical trajectory towards a liberal democratic peak, with America spearheading Francis Fukuyama’s portended ‘end of history’.29
In practical terms Bush called on the UN to join America in helping all nations achieve standards “of human decency”, reinvigorating state “institutions of freedom [that] have lain dormant”.30 Bush argued this type of state-building played “a crucial role in our quest for a new world order”,31 co-opting the UN into America’s global transformation mission. As I noted in earlier chapters, Bush’s claims to promote democracy and liberal state institutions across the world were not new; such claims featured in US foreign policy decision-making since the founding of the republic. What was novel was Bush arguing the end of the Cold War provided new opportunities for America, having emerged as the world’s only superpower, to deliver on these global
24. George H. W. Bush, Remarks to the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association in Honolulu, Hawaii, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, December 7, 1991.
25. George H. W. Bush, Address to the 46th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, September 23, 1991.
26. Bush, Remarks to the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association in Honolulu, Hawaii .
27. Bush, Address to the 46th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
28. George H. W. Bush, Remarks to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, April 9, 1991.
29. Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?,” The National Interest, no. 16 (1989): 3–18.
30. Bush, Address to the 46th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
31. Ibid.
transformative objectives. While the UNSC legitimised foreign military intervention in Somalia, the humanitarian crisis also provided another opportunity for Bush to demonstrate American leadership and transformational potential by reforming a failed state and bringing it into the democratic community of nations.