I think it's not a binary question of yes or no. I think the example of Afghanistan has shown us that.... As the ambassador said, there was a UN mission in Afghanistan. There was NATO. The chain of command was as complex as anything I had ever seen, at that stage of the game, in 25 years. That being said, you needed NATO to do the fighting and to establish the conditions necessary for the UN and the peace process to have some chance of succeeding.
I think in Mali, definitely, the counterterrorist operations led by the French and what the French are actually doing, which is fighting against a terrorist organization, are absolutely necessary to create the conditions to the point where in fact the UN comprehensive peace process can start to take place. It will take time. The UN is not mandated, organized, structured, or trained to operate against the insurgents that you see in Mali. They don't have intelligence capabilities. They have information capabilities. The quality of the troops that go out there has a direct effect on the types of effects you'll get on the ground. In fact, as complicated as it is, you need the French to actually set the conditions that allow for the UN.
The other thing I want to mention here is the human geography of any nation or country that you're operating in. Do the locals view whatever international agency as having credibility? Do they have the credibility to talk? For example, Afghanistan is a warrior nation. It's broken down essentially into three tribes—the Tajiks in the north, the Hazaras in the centre, and the Pashtuns in the south. They understand one thing: strength.
In Afghanistan, whether you liked it or not, the reality was that it was a male-dominated society. It was a warrior society. They understood strength. They looked to NATO, and mainly the United States, because they were an equivalent for them philosophically. They did not look to the UN as an equal. Quite frankly, the UN could not operate in Afghanistan because there was so much fighting going on, but they were there to start a process called a “peace settlement”.
You need to keep pushing the peace settlement process. That's where the diplomatic efforts come in. I think Mali's a prime example. Ultimately, there is no military solution to operations today. Where you had a Wellington and a Napoleon who could stand up and say, “The war is....” The ambassador said it: 15% of operations around the world have been resolved militarily. I would say that today it's going to be zero.
All that military operations give you is time—time for a peace settlement to find itself and to come in. In that peace settlement, you have to give voice to the opposition called “the terrorists”. You have to find out who in those organizations are moderate enough that they want to come over and talk, in whatever government process, and then create a voice for them. Once you start having that dialogue, peace has a chance. But until those conditions are set, all the military operations are doing is buying time—time for diplomatic efforts to happen until you bring all the parties together, around a table just like this, where they leave the guns at the door and go in and debate the issues.
That's what we're going to need to do.