Sex and drugs in hell

OK, we can go back to the U.N. now, since it's certainly becoming clearer that sex and partying is probably not what upset them about the book. Is it possible that they're concerned about failing certain missions that are going on right now, for example, Sudan? Are we at one of those moments -- as we were in Rwanda in 1993 or 1994, when we should all recognize that we are experiencing another genocide?

Heidi: Yes. The government of Sudan is saying they don't want a peacekeeping operation. That's always a problem for the U.N. But they're not tough enough.

Kenneth: The Security Council can say, "We don't care what the government says, we're going in." From the immediate post-Cold War moment, when Mr. Annan was the head of peacekeeping, the institution has squandered its moral authority. It's been in a permanent process of disgracing itself. It started in Somalia. The week that the U.S. pulled out of Somalia was the week that the war started in Rwanda. It was then that the safe havens collapsed in Bosnia. All hell broke loose in the early '90s. Well, people notice. So the government of Sudan knows that it's more or less costless for them to say that they don't want a peacekeeping force. They know nothing's going to happen.

Andrew: It is a chance for Mr. Annan to redeem himself over his personal failures in Rwanda and Srebrenica, and I'm following it with great interest. You can call it ethnic cleansing, acts of genocide, crimes against humanity -- who gives a shit? People are dying and they've been dying for a long time. The Sudanese government needs to be leaned on hard. During the genocide in Rwanda, Rwanda had a seat on the Security Council. And the Rwandan ambassador -- the ambassador who represented the government that was busy killing its own people -- was listened to and respected. Why didn't someone punch his lights out? Or throw him out of the Security Council? It's obscene, this politeness. Throw Sudan out of the U.N.

Kenneth: The players get addicted to the credibility they get at a major conference. In Somalia, there were dozens of peace conferences in Nairobi. You have these Somali warlords who are raping and butchering and stealing, and you march them up to Nairobi for a peace conference and give them a five-star banquet. They have a lot to drink and they have ready access to prostitutes. Of course, they don't want to leave the peace process! They're happy to have more peace process!

Somalia was really the turning point for U.S. foreign policy, but it's hard to grasp its effects and how it might be affecting our current situation. You were in Haiti, Andrew, at the time. Can you describe what that was like?

Andrew: It was amazing how rapidly it all fell apart. "Black Hawk down" in Somalia led to a loss of nerve in the Clinton administration, and it led them directly to order that boat, the USS Harlan County, out of Port-au-Prince harbor. The boat had military and civilian police on it and our civilian mission collapsed. It was a shameful moment.

Kenneth: It's a little hard to disaggregate where we point fingers at the U.N. and where we point fingers at the U.S. That particular moment was a U.S. failing. What the Clinton administration and the U.N. couldn't understand is how bad the loss of authority is when you promise to intervene, and withdraw right after. [Civilians] come forward and tell the truth about the regime. And then you leave. That can backfire terribly for that [civilian]. The decisions we're making in Iraq right now are going to have implications for a decade in the Middle East, and policymakers constantly forget that.

Andrew: The men on the ground with the guns are very sensitive to the smell of any capitulation. Once they see a boat sailing out of the harbor with the troops that were supposed to bring peace, everyone's a target.

Heidi: I also think the U.N. needs to stop pretending that it's a neutral party, because it has a greater impact than any other group once it steps into a country.

Is what happened in Somalia still affecting U.S. policy now?

Kenneth: Today, we have a group of people [in power] who understood what a catastrophe that was in terms of the U.S.'s authority, and they have gone way too far in the wrong direction. The blowback from Somalia is now going on in Iraq, going in the wrong direction.

The decision was made not to send civilian peacekeepers to Iraq, correct?

Heidi: Not now. We have no one in Iraq now. They're running the civilian part of the mission from Cyprus.

And that's because it's too dangerous?

Heidi: Yes.

Andrew: What can we do for the Iraqis if we can't even protect our own staff? We're still in shock from that suicide truck bomb hitting our headquarters in Baghdad a year ago, last August. Twenty-three dead, 100 wounded. An investigation showed that U.N. security was dysfunctional at every level, right up to the top, high up.

Kenneth: Every six months there's an egregiously scandalous moral catastrophe in that building about which no one is responsible.

Andrew: Now we have a food-for-sex scandal in eastern Congo, where our peacekeepers have been exchanging food for sex from young Congolese women who have been raped and brutalized.

And that happened in Liberia, too, correct, which you write about. That chapter is one of the most harrowing in the book -- Nigerian and Ghanian peacekeepers raping and killing young Liberian girls. So there's no screening process for U.N. peacekeeping soldiers?

Heidi: None. I remember when we were in Cambodia there was a group of African troops. They were barefoot. They had no shoes. They weren't soldiers at all -- they were people they picked up off the street, put on a plane, and shipped to Cambodia.

Next Page: "It took me a while to get back to choosing the right shampoo"

• View blog reactions