Free Making War to Keep Peace by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Page B

achieved its stated goal: the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. As Bush explained later, the war’s beginning and end were guided by Security Council resolutions. U.S. forces, he said, did not pursue and destroy Saddam’s forces because the authorizing resolution limited the scope of military action, calling only for Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait.
    But what kind of precedent for what kind of new world order did the Gulf War set?
    From 1948, when the United Nations deployed 259 peacekeepers to oversee the armistice between Israel and the Arab states, until approximately the end of the cold war, UN peacekeeping was carried out according to the principles articulated by Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld in the Suez Crisis in 1956. The Hammarskjöld model assumed a conflict between states, a cease-fire, or between the parties to the conflict, the consent of the conflicting parties to the peacekeeping mission, the neutrality of the peacekeepers, and minimum use of force by peacekeepers. 96 The model postulated a multinational military action authorized by the Security Council under Chapter VI of the UN Charter. But the Gulf War was assuredly not a peace operation—it was a war. The forces dispatched to enforce the resolution did not have Saddam’s consent. They did not rely on peacekeeping rules of engagement or on the principle of minimum force. Instead, U.S. leaders, applying the lessons of Vietnam and the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine, operated on the principle of overwhelming force, congressional and popular support, decisive action, and victory as a goal.
    Desert Storm was carried out not under the command and control of the UN secretary-general, but under U.S. commanders collaborating with those of more than two dozen other countries, several of which were principal U.S. allies. It was a coalition of the willing under American leadership. Javier Perez de Cuellar, the UN’s secretary-general at the time, interposed no obstacles; in fact, he helped as he was able. The Security Council passed the resolutions that authorized the war’s foundational policies. The Secretariat assisted with coordination. The Gulf War was successful and efficient in achieving its limited objectives, though its slowstart gave Saddam a prolonged opportunity to inflict damage on the people and resources of Kuwait. The war’s early end left the Republican Guard intact and Saddam in power and strong enough to impose murder and mayhem on the Kurds and Shiites in Iraq.
    Despite the dazzling demonstration of American military power and the professionalism of U.S. forces, the Gulf War displayed some of the characteristics of later, unsuccessful multinational operations. James Baker’s five-month-long effort to secure and preserve consensus and to elicit financial commitment came at a very high price, especially considering that a consensus existed in the Security Council for condemning Saddam’s invasion from the day of the invasion, and that most of the money to wage the war was contributed by a mere five nations: the United States, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, France, and Great Britain.
    Still, Desert Storm was a clear example of collective action against international aggression. By his actions and words, Bush committed the United States to the principles of the UN Charter and the resolutions of the Security Council. The Gulf War was successful, in spite of the disadvantages of war by committee and the difficulties of recruiting a coalition and maintaining a consensus in the Security Council.
    Although as a military operation Desert Storm had been a great success, it quickly became clear that the threat posed by Saddam to the region or to Iraq’s minorities had not been eliminated. By mid-March through early April 1991, Saddam’s forces drove fleeing Kurds from their homes toward the borders of Iran and Turkey, creating great human misery and threatening the always-tense relations in the area.
    After the