16
Un-UNing the United Nations
Un-UNing the United Nations:
A Complexified Approach to International Peace
Sarah Sadowski
George Mason University
Considering the significant role the UN has played in conflicts
from Africa to Southeast Asia to Latin America it should be easy to
identify at least a few cases of a successful peacekeeping
operation that has transformed into long-term positive
peace[footnoteRef:1]. We should be able to look at places like
Cambodia, Bosnia and the Dominican Republic of the Congo (DRC) and
extol how far these countries have come from their retched pasts.
There should be a sense of security in these countries. They are
instead experiencing a state of stagnation, or even worse, a
looming threat of violence. Considering each of these countries was
a victim of genocide, we cannot deny that they have made vast
improvements over the past several decades. The question is whether
or not the resources and time the UN has allocated for these
peacekeeping missions aligns with the full potential that could
have been realized had the UN been more effective and efficient in
executing these missions. [1: Positive Peace:]
In the early 90’s we could look at “successful” international
interventions such as the Gulf War, but to lay claim that the Gulf
War was a UN success would be very shortsighted. The blue helmets
we see in conflict environments are supposed to be a sign of peace,
safety and security. Instead, UN peacekeeping forces have been more
of imposition on intervention efforts than they have been an
enabler of peace. The lack of prioritizing the UN over individual
state efforts is a driver of this. Without the necessary resources,
the UN will never be able to run successful interventions. Today we
can see multiple cases where the UN initiated an intervention in a
haphazard manner with incompetent forces from around the world
which only goes to exacerbate the conflict further. As stated in
Foreign Affairs Magazine,
When the United Nations does use
force, the results are often
pathetic. The various national contingents that make
up U.N. peacekeeping operations Bangladeshis,
Bulgarians, Brazilians, and the like-are chosen not for
martial prowess but because their governments are
willing to send them, often for no better reason
than to collect a daily
stipend. The quality of these outfits varies
widely…for instance, the Bulgarians in Cambodia were
"said to be more interested in searching for sex than for
cease-fire violations." Trying to coordinate all these
units, with their incompatible training, procedures, and equipment
(to say nothing of languages), makes a
mockery of
the principle of "unity of command."
Little wonder that blue helmets strike no fear
in the hearts of evildoers.
As the world continues to become more complex, due to increased
interconnectedness and a growing population, our organizations
should be evolving with that complexity. Instead, the roles and
responsibilities of organizations like the UN continue to become
more vast and convoluted. According to their website, the UN is
responsible for maintaining international peace and security,
promoting sustainable development, protecting human rights,
upholding international law and delivering humanitarian aid (UN,
2016). That is a lot of responsibility for one organization to plan
for, manage and execute especially with the arbitrary manner in
which nations provide resources to the UN. This is only amplified
by the ineffective manner the UN chooses to allocate and manage
those resources. According to Anthony Banbury, a 30-year veteran of
the UN,
The world faces a range of terrifying crises, from the threat of
climate change to terrorist breeding grounds in places like Syria,
Iraq and Somalia. The United Nations is uniquely placed to meet
these challenges, and it is doing invaluable work, like protecting
civilians and delivering humanitarian aid in South Sudan and
elsewhere. But in terms of its overall mission, thanks to colossal
mismanagement, the United Nations is failing…. If you locked a team
of evil geniuses in a laboratory, they could not design a
bureaucracy so maddeningly complex, requiring so much effort but in
the end incapable of delivering the intended result. The system is
a black hole into which disappear countless tax dollars and human
aspirations, never to be seen again (Banbury, 2016).
It would be easy to poke holes in the structure and management
of the UN, but that would not do much good in effecting lasting
improvement within the organization. In studying Conflict Analysis
and Resolution (CAR) over the past two years and experiencing war
first hand in Afghanistan I have learned one over arching lesson;
the majority of the problems we face in international relations are
actually symptoms of an underlying cause or condition that
perpetuates the conflicts we are attempting to interdict. If we
frame our challenges with the UN in this way, we may be able to
reveal the true cause of its difficulty in adequately responding to
the challenges it faces.
Take Lisa Schirch’s Conflict Tree Lens as an example. In looking
at the structure of a tree we can begin to understand the need to
identify the underlying cause and conditions, whether that be an
organizational problem or a violent conflict. In the Conflict Tree
Lens we must identify the roots of conflict, the structure (trunk)
that is the vehicle for conflict and what are actually just
symptoms of the root conflict (branches) (Schirch, 2013, pp.
132-133). For example, we may think a cause of the UN’s struggles
could be a lack of funding which results in an inadequately trained
and managed forces as cited in the Foreign Affairs article above.
Instead of taking funding as the primary driver of the UN’s lack of
efficiency, let’s look deeper. By going deeper we can see the UN’s
annual peacekeeping budget is less than half of 1% of the money the
world spends on their militaries. When international security is in
question, nations feel the need to protect themselves, which
results in increased military expenditures. However, if the UN was
successful in their operations, the world would be more secure and
less violent; thus, decreasing the need for a larger military
presence. Then why do world leaders invest so much more into their
militaries than the UN? Perhaps it is because there is a lack of
confidence in the UN’s ability to conduct their missions. If we had
stopped at the original argument that the UN’s inadequacy is due to
money, we will have only revealed a perpetual cycle of governments
not providing enough funding to the UN and the UN’s competency
lacking. This cycle would continue until either the ideals change
and the money begins to flow or the UN dissipates.
Perception plays a major role in all parts of life. If the UN is
perceived as being inept, the world leaders will continue making it
a lower priority because there is no sense in increasing investment
into an ineffectual organization. In looking at all of the things
the UN is responsible for, it is obvious with how complex the world
is today it is not possible for the UN to manage all of those
stated responsibilities. If instead, the UN reframed and improved
their capabilities, maybe governments would be more akin to
investing in long-term peace operations over military spending
because a more effective UN would negate the need for an expanded
military presence. The question still remains; how do we make the
UN more competent?
When organizations continue to grow, as has happened with the
expansion of technology, they must adapt and restructure to be
successful. In the case of the UN it appears their method for
adaptation to execute their expanded role has been to increase the
bureaucratic nuances necessary to execute a mission. Many large
organizations, including corporations have fallen victim to this as
well. By increasing the grandeur of the (mis)Management Office, the
UN has only made their missions more difficult execute or even
initiate. The main focus of the community has been to simply cite
all of the UN’s shortcomings and attempt to address them
individuals, but this does not work to improving a systematic
issue. Instead you are simply plugging a whole in the damn that is
only making the problem worse in the long-term. Instead, we should
re-evaluate the role the UN is playing in international
interventions and possibly change it.
From governments to private industry and consulting agencies,
there are a vast amount of resources at our disposal to conduct
peacekeeping operations, sustainable development and all of the
other missions that appear under the “what we do” tab of the UN
website. In all honesty, chances are these other organizations,
with specific expertise and cross-disciplinary approaches to
international relations, would be more effective in achieving the
stated mission(s) of the UN. Unfortunately, these organizations are
for the most part acting independently. A lot of organizations
receive funding via grants from specific government agencies.
Ideally, their missions should align with those of the overall
organization that is providing the funding which aligns with a
greater mission from that organization, like the US Department of
State. Even if this is done correctly the organizations would still
be operating in line with what that specific agency’s goals when
they could be operating as a part of a comprehensive strategy
conceived from an organization whose sole focus is to design and
manage conflict interventions.
In my experience working as a program manager for Lockheed
Martin, the largest defense contractor in the world, I have
discovered there is a special art in being aware of all of the
different capabilities of an organization and how you can leverage
them to create a cross-disciplinary capability. As technology
continues to drive rapid growth and development and globalization
continues to increase our interdependence on other nations, the
problems we face are becoming increasingly multifaceted and
difficult to solve. To address these complex problems, we have to
devise holistic solutions that leverage the capabilities of
organizations that operate across various disciplines to fully
understand the problems we are attempting to resolve and address
all of the aspects at play.
What we are missing in the conflict intervention arena is an
entity that has the power and the purse to help conceive these
hybrid solutions and manage the various programs, experts and
resources available within the international community to conduct
successful, peacebuilding initiatives. Banbury provides a good
example of the need for a cross-disciplinary approach in tackling
the challenges we face that the UN establishment only made more
difficult to obtain;
During the Ebola epidemic, I was desperate to get qualified
people on the ground, and yet I was told that a staff member
working in South Sudan could not travel to our headquarters in
Accra, Ghana, until she received a new medical clearance. We were
fighting a disease that killed many thousands and risked spinning
out of control and yet we spent weeks waiting for a healthy
colleague to get her forms processed.
Too often, the only way to speed things up is to break the
rules. That’s what I did in Accra when I hired an anthropologist as
an independent contractor. She turned out to be worth her weight in
gold. Unsafe burial practices were responsible for about half of
new Ebola cases in some areas. We had to understand these
traditions before we could persuade people to change them. As far
as I know, no United Nations mission had ever had an anthropologist
on staff before; shortly after I left the mission, she was let go
(Banbury, 2016).
This one individual had an immeasurable impact on the Ebola
crisis because of her specialized expertise in anthropology.
Because of the vast amount of information available we now have
experts in fields that would not typically be found in a health
crisis that are successfully working to help fight epidemics. Being
able to triangulate our resources to concoct a hybrid solution to a
complex problem is how we become more efficient and effective in
our conflict intervention strategies. Because of the convoluted
process and mismanagement of resources and capabilities, the UN has
not figured out how to do this effectively in a conflict
intervention strategy.
There are two ways to make the UN more effective. First, is to
provide it with all of the money it needs to conduct all of the
expanding missions under it’s preview. Even with access to all of
the funding the UN thinks it needs to conduct conflict
interventions, there is still no certainty that it’s strategies
would be successful based on the UN’s past performance. The second
way to fix the UN would be to reframe its actual mission into a new
role as the Project Management organization of conflict
intervention. By managing a conflict intervention strategy instead
of being responsible for executing it on a tactical and operational
level, the UN’s mission will warrant increased investment from the
international community to enable its success and slowly diminish
the need for military expansion.
Looking at the fundamentals of project management, we can see an
organizational structure and methodology that may be very helpful
in increasing the efficacy of the UN. There are three components to
project management, dependent upon the overall goals and size of
your organization. In a mature project management organization,
project management falls within the broader context of program and
portfolio management. A project is the smallest scope category of
the three, with defined objectives. Programs are organizations that
have a larger scope and consist of multiple projects. The Project
Management Institute defines a program as,
A group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to
obtain benefits and control not available from managing them
individually. Programs may include elements of related work outside
the scope of the discrete projects in the program (PMI, 2008, pp.
9).
In larger organizations there is a need for an even more macro
level management structure, a portfolio. A portfolio consists of
multiple ongoing programs, each with multiple ongoing projects. In
the most complex organizations, like the UN, there are multiple
ongoing portfolios each consisting of multiple programs and
projects. This sort of complexity comes with the need for a
portfolio management function. The Project Management Institute
defines portfolio management as,
The centralized management of one of more portfolios, which
includes identifying, prioritizing, authorizing, managing and
controlling projects, programs, and other related work, to achieve
specific strategic business objectives. Portfolio management
focuses on ensuring that projects and programs are reviewed to
prioritize resource allocation, and that the management of the
portfolio is consistent with and aligned to organizational
strategies (PMI, 2008, pp. 8).
The UN is not ignorant, they recognize the need for portfolio
management, which is why there is such a high level of bureaucracy
involved in every aspect of program execution, as cited by Banbury.
This makes the UN a top heavy organization with a massive
operational function underneath (Figure 1).
Figure 1Comment by Guest: I’m wondering if this should be a
sidebar or an appendix.
*Source: The United Nations Website
The blue boxes at the top of the diagram depict the 6 principle
portfolios of the UN. Under each of those portfolios is a list of
programs that make up each portfolio. Not depicted in this diagram
are the numerous projects that make up each of those programs. The
result is a convoluted, desperate organization with several issues.
First, conflicts today are complex problems that require a
cross-discipline approach to resolve. To devise and execute a
successful conflict intervention strategy, the UN must be able to
pull from programs that exist across the portfolios. Due to the
linear, hierarchical structure of the portfolios, this
cross-disciplinary approach does not typically occur. Second, the
resources for each portfolio must support the massive and expanding
number of programs that exist under each of them. If these programs
were run and applied in a cross disciplinary method, the resources
of each could be more effectively allocated and applied. Finally,
the UN has become responsible for staffing and executing all of the
programs under each portfolio, even when there are other
organizations that may be more effective, inexpensive and capable
of completing these tasks. As a result of this massive, linear
structure and the ineffective application of the fundamental
project management methodologies, the UN has become a confusing
bureaucracy with no definitive objectives.
To be effective the UN must be organized in a manner in which
the bureaucracy enables the mission instead of hindering it. It is
well accepted within the CAR field that every conflict is different
and each conflict requires a specialized intervention strategy
developed specifically for the conditions of the individual
conflicts at play (Schirch, 2013, pp. 1-3). Schirch has developed a
chart to depict the various stages of conflict intervention that
should be considered in developing and executing a tailored
intervention strategy (Figure 2).
Figure 2
Instead of having sub directorates of capabilities the way the
UN is structured now, it should be organized in a format that
enables them to develop this sort of tailored approach to conflict
intervention. The key directorate that the UN should focus on
staffing should not be the actual operational and tactical portions
of the conflict intervention strategy. Instead, the UN should be
responsible for the front-end analysis and management of the
intervention strategy. The UN should be responsible the
Self-Assessment and Conflict Assessment Lens columns of Schirch’s
diagram. The UN portfolio should have two program to assess the
Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of the conflict and the
resources available to mitigate it. Both Assessment Portfolios will
have resources from government, non-government, private sector, and
military organizations that specialize in research and analysis for
the specific areas in question.
The Conflict-Assessment Portfolio is where the UN’s process will
start. Under this portfolio there are six analytic programs broken
down by Geographic Commands; NORTHCOM, SOUTHCOM, EUCOM, CENTCOM,
AFRICOM, AND PACOM. Each of these programs will work to answer the
Who, What, When, Where, Why and How components of the conflict
assessment. By understanding all of the components listed in the
Schirch diagram, this portfolio will be able to identify the root
causes, stakeholders and spoilers of the conflict instead of simply
focusing on it’s surface symptoms.
After the conflict has been thoroughly analyzed it will move to
he Self-Assessment Porfolio. This portfolio is responsible for
identifying all of the government, non-government, private sector,
and military capabilities the UN can bring to bear on the root
causes of the conflict identified by the Conflict Assessment
Portfolio. None of these capabilities should be the UN’s
responsibility to run. Instead, the UN’s role is to identify the
organizations who specialize in the various components vital to the
intervention strategy’s success and to help fuse them together into
a cross-disciplinary solution.
Once these two portfolio’s have done their part in concocting a
holistic intervention strategy, they will pass it off to the
Operations Portfolio. The Operations Portfolio will be made up of
specific Conflict Intervention programs. In this model, the job of
the UN is not to actually execute the intervention, but instead
manage the multiple components that should be applied in these
full-spectrum intervention strategies. To illustrate this
structure, I have created the diagram below (Figure 3).
Figure 3
At an operational level the new UN structure would work in a
three step process. First, the UN will identify a conflict that
requires an intervention. The Conflict-Assessment Portfolio is
organized by sub-programs that are geographically constructed by
COCOM and specialty. Someone in the management organization
establishes an overarching program for a specific conflict to be
analyzed and assigns it to the UN analyst team for that specific
COCOM. The UN analyst team does the research and analysis to answer
the who, what, when, where, why and how of the conflict. To
accomplish this, the UN Analysts send Requests for Information
(RFI) to the various resources it has access to in the form of a
Request for Proposal. The non-UN organizations most capable of
answering the RFI based on the proposal they submit will be awarded
the work and execute it. The UN Analysts will take all of the
knowledge and research produced by the RFI sub-projects to devise
an overall assessment for what the root causes, stakeholders and
spoilers of the conflict are and passes it to the Self-Assessment
Portfolio.
As the second step, the Self-Assessment Portfolio’s
responsibility is to know all of the resources that are available
within the international development and international relations
community. The Self-Assessment Portfolio tasks the resource
management team with identifying the necessary organizations and
resources needed to address the root causes of the conflict
identified by the Conflict-Assessment Portfolio. The Resource
Management Program drafts and releases RFPs for NGO’s, the private
sector and think tanks to respond to. The Resource Management
Program also and identifies the military requirements needed. Once
the components are identified, the Resource Management Program
passes off their work to the Conflict Intervention Strategist
Program. The Strategists are responsible for taking the assessment
and root causes of the conflict and figuring out how to apply the
resources identified by the Resource Management Program to devise a
conflict intervention strategy to be executed. The intervention
strategy will include all components of the Project Management
Process Groups; Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and
Control, and Closing Process Groups.
Finally, the conflict intervention strategy, devised by the
Conflict Intervention Strategist Program, is passed off to the
Operations (Ops) Portfolio. The Ops Portfolio develops a program
for that individual conflict (i.e. Conflict X Program). Each
Conflict Program is comprised of various non-UN entities that were
identified by the Self-Assessment Portfolio. In this structure the
UN is solely responsible for managing the conflict intervention
strategy, not the actual “boots on the ground” operations. No UN
entity will need to be established to execute any of this work.
In organizing itself this way, the UN will mitigate three key
shortcomings in the way conflict intervention is currently
conducted. First, this structure will insure the analysis necessary
to be effective occurs prior to an intervention taking place. All
too often we go running into a conflict situation without
understanding the underlying causes driving it (Schirch, 2013, pp.
3-7) Second, this structure will allow for the UN to have the
bureaucracy necessary to conduct international conflict
intervention while alleviating the monotony of responsibilities for
the execution of intervention operations. Finally, this
organizational structure will help construct interventions with a
multi-disciplinary approach that allows us to pull from
cross-sectional resources and apply them in a way that is most
effective and efficient in breaking the perpetual cycle of conflict
by addressing its root causes to achieve positive peace.
As with anything, there are shortcomings and challenges to this
concept. The most obvious criticism of this UN organizational
structure revolves around time, that it will take too long to enact
due to the front-end work prior to the physical intervention. I
would like to remind such critics that under the current
operational model, the UN is wasting valuable resources and time to
conduct the simplest of operations. The time we currently waste in
achieving small objectives that are focused on addressing the
symptoms of conflict instead of its root causes do not work in
achieving lasting peace, which means the conflict continues for an
indeterminate amount of time. Therefor, the front-end work that
needs to be done will save time long-term because it will actually
address the causes of the conflict and work to achieve positive
systemic change instead of simply an absence of violence.
Another criticism could be that the time required to work
through the RFP and resource acquisition process would prevent us
from ever getting to the operational phase. This challenge can be
mitigated by leveraging technology to streamline the process for
releasing RFPs and responding to them. Before we implement this UN
re-structuring we can take the lessons learned from various
government contracts, acquisitions and processing protocols to
develop new technology to make these processes easy and efficient
by bridging the UN and Industry to develop tailored solutions to
these sorts of challenges.
A final criticism is that with globalization we have moved past
being able to function by COCOM because conflicts and adversaries
operate without borders. Because the UN staff responsibility would
be smaller, it would be easier to establish liaison entities that
function between the COCOMs to address hybrid
threats[footnoteRef:2] without creating too much complexity.
Further, the Self-Assessment and Operations Portfolios are designed
in a manner in which the need for liaisons will not become
overwhelming because they will only be necessary at the analysis
phase. [2: NATO defines a hybrid threat as an umbrella term,
encompassing a wide variety of existing adverse circumstances and
actions, such as terrorism, migration, piracy, corruption, ethnic
conflict etc. What is new, however, is the possibility of NATO
facing the adaptive and systematic use of such means singularly and
in combination by adversaries in pursuit of long-term political
objectives, as opposed to their more random occurrence, driven by
coincidental factors.]
Another, very valid, critique of this UN structure is that in
instances like Bosnia, we may be sitting around conducting analysis
while hundreds, thousands or even millions of people are being
slaughtered in a genocide. However, if this new UN structure were
implemented there would be a diminished demand on the militaries of
the various world powers. In cases like Afghanistan and Iraq world
actors first turn to military force to conduct interdiction
operations and then try to expand the military’s role to conduct
stabilization and reconstruction operations while brining in other
agencies for diplomacy and economic development prior to pulling
out the military forces. With this new UN model it would not be the
individual state militaries that are responsible for the long-term
operations. Instead, the role of the world’s militaries would be to
conduct interdiction operations to stop the violence, to establish
a negative peace, which is what they are more well-designed to do.
While the militaries are working achieve negative peace, the UN
would be conducting analysis on the conflict, to identify the root
causes and the resources necessary to address them. By the time the
militaries achieved a cessation in widespread violence, the UN
could take over with the intervention strategy that begins with a
transition plan and works through addressing the drivers of
conflict and achieve lasting positive peace.
The world is more complex today than ever before. The way in
which we deal with the challenges we face because of this need to
be complex as well. That does not mean that our conflict
intervention organizations need to be convoluted and ineffective.
Instead, it means that we must approach all of the challenges we
face by first understanding them. Only when we fully analyze and
understand a conflict can we conduct the planning necessary for us
to formulate an effective response. Yes, this new UN structure
would be complex, but it would be streamlined for efficiency and
effectiveness. It would require an immense amount of front-end
planning and coordination to make this transition, but the effort
would be worth the reward in the end; World Peace.
Work Cited
1. Banbury, A. (2016, March 18). I Love the U.N., but It Is
Failing. New York Times. Retrieved April 17, 2016, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/opinion/sunday/i-love-the-un-but-it-is-failing.html?_r=0
2. Boot, M. (2000). Paving the road to hell. Foreign
Affairs, 79(2), 143-148. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.mutex.gmu.edu/docview/214295100?accountid=14541
3. Financing peacekeeping. United Nations Peacekeeping. (UN).
Retrieved April 17, 2016, from
http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/operations/financing.shtml
4. Miklaucic, M. (2011, September 23). NATO Countering the
Hybrid Threat. Retrieved April 17, 2016, from
http://www.act.nato.int/nato-countering-the-hybrid-threat
5. Project Management Institute (2008). A guide to the project
management body of knowledge (PMBOK Guide). Newtown Square, PA:
Project Management Institute.
6. Sandole, D. J. (2010). Peacebuilding: Preventing violent
conflict in a complex world. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
7. Schirch, L. (2013). Conflict assessment and peacebuilding
planning: Toward a participatory approach to human security.
Boulder, CO: Kumarian Press.
8. United Nations. (UN). Retrieved April 17, 2016, from
http://www.un.org/en/index.html
