Peacekeeping for the Next US President

The Stimson Center and the Better World Campaign recently released a report (PDF) called: "Peace and Stability Operations: Challenges and Opportunities for the Next U.S. Administration." (p.8). The report provides a list of recommendations of how the next US administration can work more cooperatively with the UN through, including financial and logisitical support, diplomacy, training peacekeepers, and contributing experts.

The report also touches upon an unfortunate irony embedded within current US-UN relations. Washington is one of the largest donors to the UN peacekeeping budget. However, as the report says, the US "chronically under-budgets its share of UN peacekeeping costs, even as it votes for more and expanded peacekeeping missions on the Security Council." As a result, the US has accumulated the world's largest debt to the UN: $1.5 billion and growing (according to the Better World Campaign).

Yet, here is a list of peacekeeping missions US recently voted in favor for (p.5 of report):

• A new peacekeeping mission in Somalia;
• A seven-fold expansion of the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Lebanon;
• The four-fold expansion of the peacekeeping mission in Darfur;
• Reauthorization of the UN’s peacekeeping missions in Haiti and Liberia;
• A renewed peacekeeping mission for East Timor; and
• New missions in Chad, the Central African Republic, and Nepal.

The report also mentions how "most peace missions struggle to attract the manpower and the funds to make a real change." (p.2)

With regards to UN peacekeeping, it seems that the responsibility of the next administration (and of those in the future) will be two-fold:
(1) To rebudget how to continue sustaining its contributions to UN peacekeeping in an effective way, while also paying off its debt. (This is, of course, after figuring out how they want to refinance new strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan.)
(2) To assume a strong leadership role in the Security Council and ensure that all peacekeeping missions have the appropriate balance of its effectiveness regarding the scope of its mandate, and sufficient funding for operationalization. The US needs to take leadership over this issue so we can overcome the current global norm of failing to muster appropriate manpower and funds to make a real change in conflicts that are devastating millions of innocent civilians.