[Presidential Review Directives]
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT OF 1994 (Senate - October 18, 1993) Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that both of these articles be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
From the Washington Post, June 18, 1993
[FROM THE WASHINGTON POST, JUNE 18, 1993] United States Plans Wider Role in U.N. Peace Keeping
(BY R. JEFFREY SMITH AND JULIA PRESTON) The Clinton administration is drafting a new set of criteria for U.S. involvement in U.N. peacekeeping operations that would provide for a much wider role for U.S. military personnel, according to senior defense and diplomatic officials.
Under the proposed criteria, the officials said, U.S. forces could help plan, train and participate in U.N. peace-keeping activities when justified by general U.S. interests, not just when the United States could make a unique military contribution.
The administration's plan also calls for a substantial beefing up of the peace-keeping staff at U.N. headquarters in New York. U.S. forces, in turn, would be more inclined to accept greater U.N. authority over the peacekeeping operations that involve them, the officials said.
The aim of the plan is partly to demonstrate a U.S. commitment to using military force in concert with other nations rather than unilaterally, an approach dubbed `assertive multilateralism' by Madeleine K. Albright, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. It is also meant to strengthen the ability of the United Nations to conduct military operations successfully in strife-torn areas, the officials said.
The plan represents what one official termed an `evolutionary rather than revolutionary' shift from existing policy. Officials said one factor that has helped block a significant U.S. military role in such U.N. peace-keeping operations as Cambodia, Lebanon, Kashmir and Cyprus is a requirement that U.S. forces be able to make a unique military contribution.
Under the proposed criteria, articulated in classified drafts of a White House policy review document known as PRD-13, the United States could take part if such action would catalyze involvement by other nations or more generally advance U.S. interests, the officials said. The degree of involvement would be determined by such factors as the intensity of public support and the risk of any U.S. commitment becoming open-ended.
Officials said PRD-13 has not yet been presented to President Clinton, but general agreement has been reached on these points among senior officials at the State Department, Defense Department and Joint Chiefs of Staff. Albright outlined some of the proposed new features in a speech last Friday to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, saying that the administration had decided `the time has come to commit the political, intellectual and financial capital that U.N. peace keeping and our security deserve.'
The plan would constitute an official U.S. endorsement of many of the ambitious ideas suggested last year by U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in his report on the U.N.'s role in the post-Cold War era, entitled `Agenda or Peace.' Although the U.S. plan has not yet been presented in detail to the U.N. leadership, top U.N. peace-keeping officials aware of the plan's general outline said in interviews they welcomed Washington's shift.
`There is a definite change of mood and [a] willingness from the United States to be partners,' said Kofi Annan, U.N. undersecretary general for peace-keeping operations. `As U.N. operations become ever more complex and cumbersome to manage, U.S. participation becomes ever more important.'
U.N. officials acknowledged they sorely need the kind of political and logistical boost the United States is offering. U.N. peace-keeping operations are growing exponentially, straining the infrastructure, experience and planning capabilities at U.N. headquarters. By the end of this month, the United Nations will have about 90,000 troops in 13 operations around the world. Yet the entire force depends upon a staff of 35 military advisers and about 40 civilians in New York.
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT OF 1994 (Senate - October 18, 1993) `If I had to choose a single word to evoke the problems of U.N. peace keeping, it would be `improvisation,' Albright said. `A kind of programmed amateurism shows up across the board,' including what she described as `the near total absence' of contingency planning, `hastily recruited, ill-equipped and often unprepared troops and civilian staff,' the absence of centralized military command and control and `the lack of a durable financial basis for starting and sustaining peacekeeping operations.'
These and other problems have made U.S. military leaders reluctant to commit U.S. forces to peace-keeping operations, particularly under U.N. command, officials said.
The former head of U.N. forces in Sarajevo, Canadian Maj. Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, vividly described the insufficient staff problem last year. `Do not get into trouble as a commander in the field after 5 p.m. New York time, or Saturday and Sunday,' he said. `There is no one to answer the phone.'
Currently, only the three biggest operations--in Somalia, Cambodia and the former Yugoslav republics--have officers stationed in the U.N. situation room around the clock. The U.S. plan calls for a reorganization of the U.N. peace-keeping staff, including the creation with U.S. help of a military operations headquarters modeled after the Pentagon's 24-hour command center.
Administration officials also have agreed to work out arrangements for sharing some U.S. intelligence information with the staff of such a center, substantially bolstering its ability to run distant, complex military operations. Later this month, for example, the United States is to help install a joint defense intelligence information system (JDIIS) in the U.N. situation room to enhance its ability to handle such information.
`This is a very tricky business,' said Canadian Brig. Gen. Maurice Baril, the top U.N. military adviser for peace keeping. `You can't expect an organization that is already overworked to come up all of a sudden with a perfect new system. But at the same time we have to develop from within the heart of the United Nations.'
Officials said that in the course of the administration's review of its policy toward U.N. peace-keeping, U.S. military leaders have dropped their traditional insistence that U.S. forces be kept under U.S. command. The Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed to take a case-by-case approach and place U.S. troops under U.N. or allied command whenever they find the particular arrangements acceptable, officials said.
Recent models for the policy shift, the officials said, included the deployment of roughly 25,000 U.S. troops to Somalia and the planned deployment of 300 U.S. infantrymen to Macedonia to prevent the Balkans conflict from spreading there.
Part of the proposed policy directive also stipulates some of the conditions under which the United States would endorse, though not necessarily participate in, U.N. peace-keeping operations. These include: humanitarian needs such as those caused by civil strife or natural disasters; threats to democratically elected governments; a high risk that local strife could expand into regional conflict; and threats to international security.
Albright said that the United States intends to support U.N. efforts to create a central peacekeeping budget to pay for such operations, including an enlarged contingency fund and a ready pool of military equipment. She also said the administration favors the `creation of a cadre of highly qualified budget experts' to audit peacekeeping expenditures.
-- From the Washington Post, Aug. 5, 1993
[FROM THE WASHINGTON POST, AUG. 5, 1993] Wider U.N. Police Role Supported
(BY BARTON GELLMAN) President Clinton's top national security advisers have agreed to support the `rapid expansion' of United Nations peace enforcement operations around the world, but the new policy falls far short of U.N. hopes and the aggressive proposals of some members of the administration.
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT OF 1994 (Senate - October 18, 1993) The initiative, outlined in the classified final draft of Presidential Decision Directive 13, endorses the United Nations as ersatz world policeman and commits Washington to support multinational peacemaking and peacekeeping operations `politically, military and financially.' Its major emphasis is boosting the size and professionalism of the U.N. headquarters staff,
where fewer than 80 fulltime employers now attempt to control 80,000 troops around the world in 14 separate operations.If signed by Clinton this month as expected, the directive would formalize the president's acceptance of U.N. command over U.S. troops, a significant milestone. But the document rejects any open-ended U.S. commitments and directs American commanders to disobey U.N. orders they judge to be illegal or `militarily imprudent.'
The presidential directive and accompanying review paper, known respectively as PDD-13 and PRD-13, distill five months of contentious interagency debate over the best response to a world full of post-Cold War ethnic and subnational conflict. The new policy comes at a time of unprecedented growth in demands for U.N. intervention, and amid serious problems with major operations in Somalia and the Balkans.
In 1990, according to briefing charts prepared by the Pentagon's Joint Staff, the United Nations had about 10,000 peacekeepers deployed for an annual cost of $819 million. By this year, there were more than 80,000 U.N. peacekeepers deployed with annual bills exceeding $3.6 billion.
The final draft of PDD-13, approved in a July 14 interagency meeting of senior officials and obtained by The Washington Post, rejects Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's ambitious call last year for a standing U.N. `rapid deployment force' for intervention in world trouble spots, an idea Clinton endorsed in his presidential campaign. The Pentagon, in the words of one officer, threw `a major dose of cold reason' on more ambitious proposals from the State Department and National Security Council staff.
The presidential directive is in the form of a memorandum to Clinton's senior national security advisers. It says the United States will neither `earmark' U.S. military units for U.N. peace operations nor even promise in advance to supply generic capabilities, such as combat engineering or air cover. Instead, Washington will list a set of capabilities that it may be willing to contribute `on a case-by-case basis.'
The effect of that restraint, according to one disappointed administration advocate of greater commitment, leaves the world body in the position of `rounding up a posse' every time it considers a new intervention. At the same time, the presidential directive endorses a broad new definition of what constitutes a `threat to international peace and security,' setting the stage for forcible U.N. intervention when a country undergoes `sudden and unexpected interruption of established democracy or gross violation of human rights.'
The policy allows for U.S. troops to be placed under the `operational control' of a U.N. commander, which ratifies an experiment underway in Somalia. When the American-led humanitarian intervention there gave way to U.N. command in May, Clinton became the first president since the Korean War to place American troops under the world body's control.
But in a controversial hedge, the directive orders U.S. commanders in such operations to maintain separate reporting channels to higher U.S. military authorities and disobey U.N. orders which they judge to be illegal, outside the agreed U.N. mandate or `military imprudent and unsound.' The United States will also reserve `the right to terminate the participation of the U.S. unit. . . and to take whatever actions it deems necessary to protect them if they are endangered,' the directive says.
Although Pentagon officials insisted on these conditions, they acknowledge that they make for what one called `a double-edged sword.'
`If we're in charge, do we want the Turks to say, `I don't like that order?' asked one officer who has closely followed the debate. `It's going to cause us some problems as we try to sell this to other nations in the U.N.'
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT OF 1994 (Senate - October 18, 1993) Madeleine K. Albright, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, acknowledged in a closed-door talk to Army officers last Thursday that the reservation of national decision-making power makes for `serious command and control problems' in a U.N. force, according to a tape recording of her remarks.
Those problems are already manifest in Somalia. Italian forces in Mogadishu have conducted military operations and negotiations there without notifying Turkish Lt. Gen. Cevik Bir, the operation's overall commander, and they have refused direct orders to attack Somali militias. Small contingents from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have likewise rebuffed Bir's commands, and a 1,174-man American quick reaction force was never placed under Bir.
`If this is the wave of the future, the future looks pretty ugly,' said another Army officer.
But a senior administration official who has played a central role in drafting the new policy initiative insisted that the hedge against `imprudent' orders would not justify the behavior of the Italians. He said it is intended only to stop reckless tactical moves, not disagreements over a mission's larger strategy.
A central aim of PDD-13 is to boost the prestige, staff and resources of the U.N. military headquarters staff, long hobbled by the U.S.-Soviet deadlock and unaccustomed to operational responsibility. The initiative seeks to more than double the peacekeeping headquarters with 100 new staff members, 20 of whom would be supplied by the State and Defense departments.
A revamped U.N. staff, the directive says, should have a `research division,' a euphemism for military intelligence; an operations division with a 24-hour staff and encrypted command, control and communications facilities; a `rapidly deployable headquarters team' to control new operations in the field, and a `standing airlift capability' using commercial and possibly leased Russian military transports.
Unwilling to pay for most of this, the Clinton administration is directing Albright to begin recruiting donors, `focusing on Japan and Germany,' to expand the peacekeeping office.
Within the administration, the State and Defense departments have been battling for months to control the newly important budgets and policy decisions on peace operations. The dispute flared Tuesday at a closed meeting of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees attended by senior Pentagon, State and National Security Council staff officials. `It was abruptly ended after the administration embarrassed itself by not speaking with one voice,' said one government official.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I cite those two articles and I will cite a couple of other quotations that concern me because we are talking about a massive expansion of U.S. forces committed to United Nations and, in many cases, to U.N. commanders that are not from the United States.
DoD News Briefing
Thursday, February 17, 1994 - 1:00 p.m.
Ms. Kathleen M. deLaski, ATSD (PA)
Q: Whatever happened to PDD-13? Has that ever been
signed?
A: PDD-13 has not been signed, but it is nearing a state
of readiness.
Q: How near?
A: I think that the NSC has the lead on that. That would
be the place to ask.