Constraining Unipolarity } 551
UNPKO and playing a much more active role in Security Council debates
over the nature of those PKO. In fall 1989, China first declared its willing-
ness to provide manpower for UNPKO, and in November it dispatched five
Military Observers to the UN Truce Supervision Organization monitoring
peace agreements in the Golan Heights and the Sinai.^44 Over the next decade,
China would participate in nine more UNPKO. At the same time, it would
abstain from or eventually distance itself from four other UNPKO, mainly
because Beijing felt those operations violated the state’s sovereignty. Figure
20-3 lists UNPKO supported and not supported by China. By increasing its
role in PKO that it approved of, Beijing strengthened its voice in criticizing
PKO to which it objected.
There seem to have been two main reasons why Beijing joined the PKO
process in mid-1989: a desire to improve China’s post-6-4 image in the world
by demonstrating it was a reasonable power, and the need to work out a settle-
ment of the Cambodian question once Vietnam agreed to withdraw from
Cambodia. Working through a UN framework for Cambodia was espe-
cially important. Chinese diplomatic missteps there could easily alienate the
Southeast Asian countries where fear of China was traditional and strong,
and which Beijing hoped could be persuaded to contribute to China’s devel-
opment drive. Working through the UN offered a way of reassuring China’s
neighbors while ending the war that had raged in Indochina on China’s
southern borders for forty years.
Beijing also feared US manipulation of the UN to further US hegemony,
and deeper engagement with the United Nations could counter US efforts
to use the UN for anti-China purposes. The end of the Cold War, and the
beginning of far greater cooperation among the Perm-5 that resulted, led to
major shifts in UN thinking about the nature of PKO, yielding PKOs that
Supported Dates Abstained Dates
Mid East Supervision Organization 19 4 8–2013 Yugoslavia 1992–96
Iraq–Kuwait Observer Mission 1991–20 03 Somalia 1992–93
Western Sahara Referendum 1991 Rwanda 1994
Mozambique 1992–1994 Haiti 1994
Advance Mission in Cambodia 1991–1992
Transitional Authority in Cambodia 1992–93
Observer Mission in Liberia 1993–1997
Observer Mission in Sierra Leone 1999–?
East Timor Transitional Administration 1999F IGU R E 20-3 UNPKOs Supported and Not Supported by Beijing
Sources: Bates Gill, James Reilly, “Sovereignty, Intervention and Peacekeeping: The View from
Beijing ,” Survival, vol. 42, no. 3 (Autumn 2000), p. 45. M. Taylor Fravel, “China’s Attitude toward U.N.
Peacekeeping Operations since 1989,” Asian Survey, 1996, pp. 1102–21.