Tommie Sue Montgomery, ed.

Peacemaking and Democratization in the Western Hemisphere.

Miami: University of Miami, North-South Center Press, 2000, maps, figures, index, 334 p, paperback.

Reviewed by Donald E. Shulz, Cleveland State University

Latin American Politics and Society, Volume 44, #2, Summer 2002

With the end of the Cold War, peacemaking operations have become a cottage industry. In part, this has been because of an illusion—namely, that the end of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry offered an unprecedented opportunity for the international community to create a “new world order.” The United Nations and regional organizations, it was felt, could be strengthened and activated to promote democratization, political stability and human rights in troubled areas where Great Power rivalry had previously prevented such intervention. In this heady atmosphere, anything seemed possible. Only with the wisdom of experience and hindsight would the costs and limitations of these ambitions become evident and more sober judgments emerge.

Tommie Sue Montgomery’s most recent book is the product of an April 1996 conference on “Multilateral Approaches to Peacemaking and Democratization in the Hemisphere,” sponsored by the University of Miami’s North-South Center. The volume is divided into 3 main parts, the first of which is devoted to political missions (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, and Guatemala), the second to electoral missions (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico), the third to diplomatic/military missions (the Ecuador-Peru border war). The contributors include both social scientists and practitioners with extensive experience in these matters. Yet, the result is mixed. This is a volume of mostly descriptive case studies which—while providing much useful information—tends to be a bit thin on the kind of analysis and insight that might have made it a major contribution to our understanding.

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The most notable exceptions to this generalization are two fine chapters on El Salvador, the first by David Holiday and William Stanley on the UN Observer Mission (ONUSAL) and the challenges of verification and institution building, and the second by Tommie Sue Montgomery and Ruth Reitan on OAS and UN efforts at electoral observation. Holiday and Stanley stress, as do several other contributors, the uniquely fortuitous circumstances that made success possible in the country they are looking at, but that are unlikely to be repeated in other such ventures. They also underline the limitations of this success: the historically high levels of public insecurity that followed the war, as violent crime soared and the new and inexperienced civilian police struggled to cope with highly organized criminals. They note that by 1997 violent death rates exceeded those during the war years, an ironic reminder that the attainment of “peace” does not always accompany the formal termination of conflict.

Similarly, Montgomery and Reitan take a critical look at the UN and OAS election observation experiences (in 1991 and 1994, respectively), which they label “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” They emphasize the distinction between legitimizing the electoral process and ensuring its legitimacy. Both missions, they argue, tended to focus on the former at the expense of the latter, certifying the validity of elections that were substantially undermined by the incompetence and politicization of the authorities responsible for conducting them. They argue that observing agencies must use what leverage they have to make the government honor its own laws, and that this leverage should be negotiated into the terms of the observation agreement from the very beginning. Especially in a case like El Salvador, where the government has a heavy stake

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in obtaining an international stamp of approval, such leverage might be used to obtain a somewhat fairer outcome. This being said, the authors conclude that electoral observation played an important role in fostering democracy (imperfect though it is) and the transition to a post-war era.

Also of special note is a solid essay by Shelley McConnell on UN electoral observation in Nicaragua. She too emphasizes the unique circumstances of the country she is looking at, and cautions against its being used as a model for future UN electoral missions. In Nicaragua, she argues, Clausewitz’s famous maxim that “war is the continuation of politics by other means” was stood on its head. Here, politics became the continuation of war. She cites—as do Holiday and Stanley—the importance of a “mutually hurting stalemate” on the battlefield in convincing both the primary domestic actors and their foreign patrons of the desirability of ending the conflict. But she also raises the issue of dependency: the danger that countries like Nicaragua, with little experience in democratic government and limited material and human resources, may become unhealthily dependent on international observers to ensure the validity of future elections.

This dependency problem is especially prominent in the chapters on Haiti. Both Johanna Mendelson Forman and Colin Granderson suggest that, whatever the initial success in deposing the military dictatorship and restoring constitutional government, the international community’s work is far from done. Mendelson suggests that the Achilles’ Heal of the intervention has been the failure to create a national police force and judicial system capable of fostering the sense of security that is the key to a successful

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transition. She calls on international donors to revise the way they conduct military demobilization programs. Unless such efforts are combined with effective institution building and reform, they will fail to solve the basic problems of political instability and authoritarianism. Put simply, if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing right. The international community has yet to back its promises with the resources needed to do that. Similarly, Granderson, who was Executive Director of the OAS/UN civilian mission in Haiti from 1993 to 2000, questions whether the international community will continue to show the same kind of commitment to full-scale election observation missions that it displayed in the December 1995 balloting. Rather, he suggests that less costly alternatives must be found.

Such as what? One possibility, posed by Raúl Benítez Manaut, would be more efforts aimed not at electoral observation, but rather at technical electoral assistance to national non-governmental organizations. The idea would be to prepare the latter to assume this oversight responsibility. Benítez argues that the UN mission in Mexico demonstrated that, under the right circumstances, such a program can work and be more cost effective than traditional electoral missions. But whether this model would be viable in a country like Haiti, with its paucity of human and material resources and its utter lack of a democratic tradition, is questionable. At minimum, one anticipates the need for an ongoing international involvement that would take years, if not decades, to complete.

Haiti, of course, is in a class by itself. Elsewhere, the prospects for institution building and democratization are much better. Even so, some cases are problematic. In Guatemala, the UN presence made the peace process possible. But real peace, as

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Susanne Jonas points out, ultimately depends on the will of the internal players. In the Guatemalan case, one of the military’s goals may have simply been to outlast the UN presence. As elsewhere, the issue of the international community’s staying power remains in doubt. How much financial support will be forthcoming for peacekeeping and the implementation of the peace accords now that the war is over? And how long will such assistance last? Will Guatemala 15 or 20 years from now be that much different from the Guatemala of the past?

The third major section of the book focuses on diplomatic/military missions. While there is an introductory chapter covering a range of activities—for instance, confidence-building and de-mining—and the experiences in Central America, the main focus is on the Ecuador-Peru border war. David Scott Palmer provides a solid factual account of the peacekeeping efforts launched under the Río Protocol, along with a list of lessons learned. Among other things, he cites the “weight of history” as a factor inhibiting the resolution of the conflict and the importance of flexible diplomacy in crafting a settlement. He also notes that, in contrast to some oversimplified versions of the “democratic peace” theory, democracy may have actually made a negotiated solution more difficult. Public opinion served to harden the positions of political leaders on both sides. Finally, Colonel Glenn Weidner, commander of the U.S. contingent in the MOMEP peacekeeping mission, notes the importance of both parties having attained a “threshold of pain” (again, the mutually hurting stalemate thesis) that would make the continuation of hostilities unacceptable. He suggests that such missions only be committed under these circumstances.

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This is a useful contribution to the emerging literature on peacemaking. Among other things, it may help counter the excessive skepticism that one so often hears regarding these kinds of operations by demonstrating that they can indeed make major contributions towards the peaceful resolution of disputes. Still, one cannot but wish that the volume had been more analytically fruitful. Too many of the insights are obvious, and the rather dry, descriptive narratives do not make for inspired reading. While specialists will find it valuable, teachers should be cautioned about assigning the book to students, especially undergraduates.