of UN peace operations management. When a dispute which may threaten international peace and security is brought before the UN Security Council (UNSC) (by UN member states, the UN Secretary-General, the UN General Assembly, or through the Council's own response to UN Charter responsibilities), the Council may elect to establish a peacekeeping mission. Nine members of the Council must approve the operation, but any one of the five permanent members can veto it.

UN survey teams with political, civil and military components conduct a fact-finding mission and develop the mission concept for presentation to the UNSC. The Council will subsequently request the Secretary-General to develop an implementation plan detailing force size, structure, duties and mission duration. This responsibility falls upon the planners in several UN Secretariat departments. This would include the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the logisticians in what was, until September 1993, the Field Operations Division of the Department of Administration and Management. Security Council approval of the detailed mission concept is followed by development of its budget by the Field Operations Division for ultimate approval by the General Assembly (U.S. Congress e: 84). Evolution of a Management Agency: The Office of Special Political Affairs

The management structure adopted for peacekeeping operations was a product of the Cold War. The UN Military Staff Committee, envisioned to direct UN military forces under Article 47 of the Charter, was rendered ineffectual by the U.S.-Soviet standoff. Thus, even when the UN could agree to authorize a peacekeeping mission, no infrastructure for its direction existed. Secretariat-level orchestration of the operations therefore initially fell upon the personal staffs of two "Under-Secretaries General Without Portfolio" created by Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold in the 1950s. These offices were renamed Under-Secretaries General for Special Political Affairs when the Office of Special Political Affairs was created in 1961 (Durch b: 59).

The Office of Special Political Affairs (OSPA) was the locus of Secretariat peacekeeping management until replaced by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in 1992. One Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs (UNSGSPA) oversaw UN Middle East affairs, a region which included over half of the UN peacekeeping operations conducted through 1985. This office was initially held by the American Ralph Bunche, who was succeeded by Britons

Brian Urquhart in 1971, and Marrack Goulding in 1985. The other USGSPA post was traditionally held by Latin Americans. They served as the SecretaryGeneral's mediators and trouble-shooters until their office was abolished in 1988 and its functions absorbed by the Executive Office of the Secretary-General (Durch b: 60). That action effectively divorced the diplomatic aspects (mediation and negotiation) of peace operations from its operational aspects resident in OSPA. Subsequent reorganizations have not rectified this problem.

Military Advisor's Office and Field Operations Division

The main actors in the operational management of peacekeeping therefore became the Office of Special Political Affairs (OSPA), primarily the Secretary-General's Military Advisor's Office, and the Field Operations Division (FOD) of the Department of Administration and Management. The Military Advisor post was created in 1960 as a result of the UN Congo operation and remained attached to both the UN Secretary-General (UNSYG) and the OSPA, but in fact provided little military advice to the UNSYG. Through 1992 the main function of the office of the Military Advisor and its small staff of five to six seconded officers was to serve as the operations staff for peacekeeping operations. It took the lead role in formulating the implementation plan for presentation to the Security Council by the UNSYG, recruited military contingents, and coordinated military operations in the field (Berdal b: 53). The latter task was not difficult while the peacekeeping operations remained essentially observer missions and small in number, because the FOD handled most daily mission support tasks. FOD administered communications, logistics, budget and transport with a staff of approximately 90 in New York (one-half UN civil servants, 10 seconded military officers and the balance temporary personnel from elsewhere in the Secretariat) and 100 in the field (Durch b: 73). This resulted in a bifurcated chain of command for peacekeeping missions. Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO)

The growth in number of peacekeeping operations during the late 1980s was not matched with a commensurate increase in the Secretariat staff to manage them. While the UN fielded just five peacekeeping operations with 10,000 troops in 1987, this burden grew to 15 operations and 40,000 troops by mid-1991 (Lewis a: A22), while the staff available to handle all mission planning and support remained at less than 24. Concurrent with the expansion of UN peacekeeping responsibilities, incoming UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali conducted a restructuring of the UN Secretariat in

February 1992 in an attempt to rationalize the bureaucracy. The Department of Peacekeeping Operations was created from the Office of Special Political Affairs as one of seven departments reporting to the UNSYG.

The reorganization exacerbated both the decentralization of authority and the segregation of peace operation responsibilities by moving the "peacemaking" functions (mediation and negotiation) from the SecretaryGeneral's Executive Office to the new Department of Political Affairs while maintaining the Field Operations Division within the Department of Administration and Management. This disconnect of operational, political, and logistical planning responsibility for peace operations was supposed to be addressed by the establishment of the Senior Planning and Monitoring Group which, however, has failed to provide sufficient liaison between operators, negotiators and logisticians (Durch b: 60).

Personnel recruitment is a divided responsibility. The DPKO and the Secretary-General's Executive Office are responsible for troops and Human Resource Management for specialists and civilians. Once the required military capabilities for a mission are identified by the Military Advisor's Office, countries are individually solicited for troop contributions by the SYG's Executive Office. Troop training, quality, and competence often have a lower priority than willingness to participate and the "geographic distribution" of the contingents (Berdal b: 53).

Reorganization and Expansion

A reorganization of the DPKO was undertaken by Ghanaian Kofi Annan when he assumed the post of Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations from Marrack Goulding in March 1993. Annan's key goal was to address the chronic under-manning which thwarted effective Secretariat pre-deployment planning, operational oversight, and liaison with the field. Through 1992 fewer than 150 people, including those in the Field Operations Division, were responsible for planning, recruitment and management of some 40,000 troops and a budget larger than that of all the rest of the UN (Durch a: 2).

Goulding had already begun to work toward the creation of a large staff on long-term contract. Annan set out to immediately double his small staff to 50 using long-term contract personnel and seconded military professionals toward an eventual goal of 100 personnel (Lewis b: A10). Under Annan, the DPKO staff was expanded by April 1993 to 18 civilian political officers,

8 military officers in the Military Advisor's Office, and 17 short-term personnel. Continuous expansion and absorption of the Field Operations Division into DPKO raised total personnel to 300 by May 1994. Despite increased manning, Military Advisor Canadian Major General Maurice Baril claims his enlarged staff of 62 in DPKO is expected to do "what in my army would require a staff of 1,000 (Brooks: A4).

UN Situation Center

A somewhat controversial element of the DPKO reorganization was the establishment of the UN Situation Center. Marrack Goulding was opposed to creation of a UN “war room" during his tenure as Under-SecretaryGeneral for Peacekeeping Operations. He argued "[t]he management of peacekeeping forces is essentially political. You're trying to prevent wars not make them" (Lewis c: A12). Kofi Annan, however, saw a 24-hour UN operations center as a necessity to cope with the UN's large and complex peace operations (Lewis b: A10).

Initially conceived as an interface with NATO to coordinate enforcement of an expected Bosnian peace plan, the establishment of the Situation Center was hastened by the UN's scheduled May 1993 assumption of command of operation RESTORE HOPE, the humanitarian relief mission in Somalia. At the time the U.S. assessed that "[t]he UN was not organized or equipped to disseminate information critical to its expanding proactive peace enforcement/peacemaking operations" (U.S. DoD k). In accordance with U.S.government policy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff obtained UN permission and cooperation in organizing an around-the-clock watch center.

When the Situation Center was opened in April 1993, it provided the first capability for UN field commanders-known as "Force Commanders" to communicate with UN Headquarters on a 24-hour basis (MacKenzie: 330-331). The facility also serves as an after-hours communications link with UN agencies and offices worldwide. The role of the Center is purely to monitor field operations. It is clearly not intended to be a command center (U.S. DoD k). In some respects the Situation Center serves an analogous role to that of the White House Situation Room-providing senior policymakers with information. Consequently, the Situation Center has fallen short of the desires of some to see a fullfledged command and control center developed to direct UN military operations (Saracino: 370; Friedman: A1).

UN Political and Operational Relationships Prior to DPKO Creation.

source: author

The UN peace operations in Somalia, former Yugoslavia, and Cambodia were the initial focus of the Situation Center's monitoring responsibilities, which today include all peacekeeping operations. Twenty-four hour watches are maintained by two duty officers drawn from the Center's staff of 26 personnel. A total of 25 seconded officers from 18 countries serve in the Center under a Canadian civilian director. Their equipment is limited to maps, secure phones, facsimile, commercial television, on-line data bases.