Michael Rose (above), former head of the UN's peace effort in Bosnia, argues that Nato bombs did not bring the Serbs to the peace table in 1995 and are unlikely to do so now.

By firing cruise missiles at Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, and now once again in Kosovo, we are creating a culture of violence based on the false belief that intractable political problems can only be solved by military force.

Since the end of the cold war, the nature of conflict has changed. The prospect of conflict between the major powers now seems remote, while regional conflict has become more likely. Of the 35 major conflicts in the world today, 29 are civil wars. Each year in these conflicts, a quarter of a million people are killed, half of them children. Some 36 million people have become refugees. Yet the civilised world seems incapable of developing any coherent response to human disaster on this scale. The military is likely to continue to be required to play a significant part in attempts to bring peace to the world. But military force can only be effective within a credible political and social framework.

When we analyse the changed circumstances that face peacekeepers at the start of the next century, it is important that we understand the legal and moral basis according to which nations have the right to intervene in another's internal affairs. The principle of non-intervention under Article 2 of the United Nations Charter - which establishes the equal sovereignty of all nations - remains central to international law.

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Yet today the international community seems increasingly to be opting for a policy of military intervention, usually under Article 39 - on the grounds that where nation states no longer exist, or where civil wars are in danger of spreading, or where there are gross violations of human rights, the UN has a duty to intervene. These are ill-defined criteria, and I am not at all sure how they justify the current air bombardment of Serbia by Nato forces.

To which crises should the international community respond and which should it ignore? I do not suppose that the British would have been pleased to see the blue helmets of the UN deployed in the streets of Belfast in 1969. Nor must we allow the media to determine our policy. Former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros Ghali once referred to there being 16 members of the Security Council - the 15 national representatives and the television news network CNN.

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The UN peacekeeping mission sent to Bosnia was the largest that the world had ever seen: 36,000 peacekeepers were deployed in an operation that cost billions of dollars. Yet when 3,000 soldiers were called for to go to Rwanda, to stop what was a genuine genocide in which at least a million people died, the world failed to respond. What is the moral basis for such inequality?

The international community must develop a more reasoned, morally based decision-making process that is beyond national self-interest. The emotional response of "we must do something" is an inadequate mission statement for a commander in the field.

A clear mandate is something that all military men ask for, but it is rarely forthcoming. When I entered Bosnia in charge of the UN force in 1994, I had to pluck from the often contradictory UN resolutions my own mission statement: to sustain the people of Bosnia amid a three-sided civil war; to try to bring about the conditions necessary for a peace deal; and to contain the conflict to Bosnia.

If judged against these tasks, the mission succeeded. We sustained 2.7 million people, the casualty rate dropped from 130,000 in 1992 to 3,000 in 1994, we halted the genocide, created the conditions for peace and contained the conflict within Bosnia. That the opportunities for peace were ignored by Bosnia's leaders can scarcely be blamed on the UN.

One of the most incorrect and dangerous lessons that is still being drawn from our experience in Bosnia is the assertion that Nato delivered the Dayton peace agreement by bombing the Serbs in 1995 - the inference being that bombing would work in Kosovo. Nothing could be further from the truth. Dayton was delivered over a lengthy time by a combination of political and military events.

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Will the bombing of the Serbs in Kosovo stop Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic's terrible policy of the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians from Kosovo? Of course not - he will merely change his tactics. Will the bombing help the 250,000 refugees living on the mountainsides in Kosovo? Quite the reverse - as the aid organisations have had to leave. Furthermore, the effect of bombing will have dire consequences in Bosnia and Macedonia and on the West's relationships with Russia.

My belief is that, once it was clear that the deal following the peace talks at Rambouillet would not be upheld by Milosevic, Nato, rather than rushing in with bombs, should have sealed the border between Kosovo and Albania. This would have allowed some control to be exercised on the Kosovo Liberation Army as well as sending a strong message to Milosevic that Nato would train and arm the KLA if he did not accept the plan.

Nonetheless, it is certain that the role of organisations such as Nato is likely to become more important in peacekeeping operations. Nato's contribution in Bosnia was invaluable. It protected the peacekeepers, helped preserve the total exclusion zones for heavy weapons around Sarajevo and deterred attacks by the Bosnian Serbs against safe areas.

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Yet there were problems. The UN had a humanitarian mission, whose long-term aim was to create conditions for peace. Nato is a military organisation, whose mandate was to use force to bring about a political solution. Ultimately it was the reluctance of Nato to act impartially as a peacekeeper which led to the UN's withdrawal from Bosnia. This was graphically demonstrated by the failure of Nato to be even-handed. When the Bosnian Army invaded the demilitarised zone in violation of a Nato ultimatum, Nato did nothing. From that moment on, the Serbs regarded the UN as having taken sides in the war. The use of force should be even-handed and impartial. What is vital is that war goals are never pursued by peacekeeping forces. You do not go to war in white painted vehicles.

If the international community is going to respond better to future emergencies, the UN will have to redefine its peacekeeping doctrine. Above all, it needs to be able to respond more quickly. Some countries have established a standby brigade that can be sent quickly anywhere in the world. Just how far we can go in terms of earmarking specific peacekeeping forces remains to be seen.

I end with a plea. In the future, we should give as much thought and money to preventive deployment of peacekeeping forces as we do to peacekeeping. The road to peace is costly, but as President Truman once said: "If you do not wish to pay the price of peace, you had better be prepared to pay the price of war."

General Sir Michael Rose was the commander of the UN Protection Force in Bosnia-Hercegovina. This is an edited extract from a lecture delivered at the University of Essex.

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