UNEF in Suez, 1967

Okay...just bear with me, because this all follows kind of a thin strand but could have an immense effect later on.

The United Nations Emergency Force was the peacekeeping force put in place after the Suez Crisis in 1956 erupted into war along the Egyptian-Israeli front. The militaries from Canada, India, Brazil, Finland, Sweden, and Yugoslavia all contributed significant amounts of men and material, finally reaching a force number of 6000 spread along the Egyptian side of the border with Israel from Gaza south along the Sinai to the sea.

It was the first of it's kind and demonstrated what we would later know as "peacekeeping." UNEF was spearheaded by Les Pearson, the Secretary of External Affairs of Canada, and Dag Hammarskjold, the UN Secretary General. This constant support from the Canadian government was evident when UNEF's first commander was selected to be Major-General E.L.M Burns, who had previously commanded I Canadian Corps in northwest Europe during WWII.

Dag Hammarskjold would pass away in a plane crash in the Congo in the early '60s, leaving the UN for the first time to rush to find a replacement Secretary General. They ended up nominating and then unanimously voting for: U Thant, a former Burmese prime minister.

When relations between Israel and Egypt began to become more strained, and some would say inverted from in 1956 due to Nasser's threatened blockade of the Straits of Tiran, U Thant took a very different tac than his predecessor. He sidelined UNEF, having decided that if Egypt and Israel were no longer interested in peace, then UNEF as a peacekeeping force wasn't viable.
As they were on Egyptian territory, then they would be forced to leave when Egypt asked them to, U Thant remarked, "regardless of Israel's territorial whims."

In May '67, U Thant tried to convince either Egypt to keep UNEF, or Israel to let UNEF redeploy on it's side of the border. Neither government would budge. U Thant felt he was without maneuver room, and the US was already preparing it's own plan, Operation Regatta, to open the Straits.

By the end of May, Egypt had formally asked UNEF to leave. When Egyptian troops began their push towards Israel, their first operation was to occupy and take into custody what UNEF posts hadn't yet been evacuated.
Over two dozen peacekeeping troops were killed in firefights.


This leads one to ask a few questions, not the least among them: what if U Thant had not been the Secretary-General in charge? Dag Hammarskjold died in a plane crash, and so the search for another UN head was fairly hurried.
Hammarskjold could've easily missed the flight and lived, in which case had he supported keeping UNEF in place to support a negotiated settlement or possibly even an armed wall between the Israelis and Egyptians, he would've had support from now Canadian Prime Minister Les Pearson, who would be under pressure to prove that the Canadian Forces Reorginization Act, which had amalgamated the Army, Navy, and Air Force, had actually done some good.

This leads us to a scary setup on the Egyptian/Israeli border in 1967: two armies who desperately want to settle the bad blood between them, and another force who wants to keep them apart and is prepared to fight.

This also leads the UN down another path, one that at first seems good (they may have stopped a war that brought us to the brink of nuclear conflict), but when we stare a bit deeper may in fact be setting a dangerous precedent.

Egypt will almost certainly still ask UNEF to leave no matter who the Secretary-General is, and even if Canada drops the Airborne Regiment in, and Yugoslavia sends in reinforcements, and they actually hold, the end is still the same: a force from the UN was invited on to Arab soil and when asked to leave, they stayed of their own volition. Not only did they stay, but they actively engaged in combat against their hosts.

This is a world with a different kind of peacekeeping. The kind that people seem to wish for: the kind that actively stops wars, and that keeps people safe from evil. It is less restrained, and more proactive.
But with more proactivity comes less activity in the world at large. Egypt wouldn't ever want a UN force on it's soil again, nor would any other Arab state. We can butterfly away the UN forces in Lebanon, and the Palestinian gunmen kept under house arrest by UN police in the West Bank. The Communist world may also feel estranged. This may even butterfly away the UN mission to the DMZ in Vietnam, and Panama.

Yugoslavia, too, may develop a dislike of the organization that it's troops fought and died in, making a UN deployment to that country in the 90s that much harder.

This is just something I was thinking about. UNEF defined peacekeeping, and there were alot of precedents set. And thought I believe U Thant got a lot of grief that he deserved for his handling of the situation, I believe it could've been handled more poorly.

Really? Nothing?

Everyone talks about how the UN sends in peacekeeping forces with no teeth, or asks for PODs with ways to make peacekeeping/peacemaking more proactive, and I finally was able to come up with a POD that changes the whole concept of peacekeeping. And there's nothing?

hey Mac, just been considering your post- very inteersting scenario, I think had UNEF ended up shootin at both sides at the same time in Suez, blue helmet peacekeeping could well have been undermined- perhaps fatally. I mean, if in this instance tehre were 2 armies wanting to have it out at each other with a neutral interpositional force in the way, then there'd be no point to the blue helmets being there anymore- since the key principles of consent & the desire by both parties to find a peaceful solution no longer exist- & UN peacekeepers by definition under Ch. VI of the UN Charter aren't meant to initiate hostilities. There were other instances where UN peacekeepers engaged combatants from both sides- in self-defence- such as in ONUC, UNFICYP, UNIFIL, or UNPROFOR- but in relatively discrete & isolated cases. Well, Suez was a conflict involving regular armed forces who for the most part didn't engage in systematic atrocities, but I think had there been a UN PKO willing to fight to keep both sides apart in a war which involved mass atrocities committed by both sides- such as Cyprus, Lebanon or Bosnia later down the track- that would've been potentially more feasible with some good purpose to be achieved.

Melvin Loh said:

Well, Suez was a conflict involving regular armed forces who for the most part didn't engage in systematic atrocities, but I think had there been a UN PKO willing to fight to keep both sides apart in a war which involved mass atrocities committed by both sides- such as Cyprus, Lebanon or Bosnia later down the track- that would've been potentially more feasible with some good purpose to be achieved.

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Well, the big difference is that the definition of peacekeeping had already been established by then. Chapter 7 or 7 1/2 was already the given way of doing things, and a force knew how to assert itself.

UNEF was the first of it's kind, and what ever it did would set a precedent. Had some other Secretary General been in charge at the time who believed that, perhaps, the UN knew better than did Egypt and Israel, then that would alter the dynamic considerably. The UN would no longer be a neutral Swiss-like party. It would be an actual belligerent, albeit one that would probably have much less popularity for armed excursions.

MacCaulay said:

The UN would no longer be a neutral Swiss-like party. It would be an actual belligerent, albeit one that would probably have much less popularity for armed excursions.

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This thing with the Swiss comparison, however, is that their basic principle is "armed neutrality" - if Switzerland ever got attacked, watch out!

I didn't know Egypt attacked UNEF positions. I do know Israel attacked or ran over (literally) some UNEF positions.
Perhaps if U Thant or various UN members (like the nations that provided UNEF troops ([FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, India, Indonesia, Norway, Sweden and Yugoslavia)) pushed for an attack on the UNEF to be an attack on all UN members, things would turn out very differently. Take away the veto power, and we could see a lot of nations vs. Egypt (and Allies?) vs Israel (and Allies?).
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Orville_third said:

I didn't know Egypt attacked UNEF positions. I do know Israel attacked or ran over (literally) some UNEF positions.

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I think saying that Egyptian forces "attacked UNEF positions" would probably be the wrong way to put it.

When the Egyptians moved on to the attack against Israel, they occupied all UNEF positions, including those that weren't vacant. This meant that anyone who was still manning the positions (mostly along the Gaza Strip) was often out of contact with UNEF HQ due to the communications being cut by the Egyptian Army.
There were some fire fights, and some deaths on both sides, mostly caused by the Egyptians already being in "war mode" and the UNEF forces being faced with tanks in the front yards and not having much other choice.

Perhaps if U Thant or various UN members (like the nations that provided UNEF troops ([FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, India, Indonesia, Norway, Sweden and Yugoslavia)) pushed for an attack on the UNEF to be an attack on all UN members, things would turn out very differently. Take away the veto power, and we could see a lot of nations vs. Egypt (and Allies?) vs Israel (and Allies?).
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I think it would be out of U Thant's character to take a militant stance like that. He was very...passive. He was by faith a Buddhist, and that very much informed the way he handled crises around the world.

That was the primary reason I felt that if UNEF was to be reinforced and given new Rules of Engagement, then a different Secretary General would probably have to be in charge.