The United States got out of Vietnam 20 years ago to the sound of helicopters taking off from Saigon airport. Last week the Marines slipped out of Somalia at dead of night to the buzz of attack helicopters hovering over Mogadishu.

In the case of Vietnam, they left behind the myth of American invincibility. In the case of Somalia, they have left behind the reputation of the United Nations.Make no mistake about it. The U.N.'s defenders may - justifiably - point to the successes of the organization in Angola, on the India-Pakistan border, in northern Iraq and to an extent in Cambodia.

But these are all peacekeeping operations. They depend on the acceptance of all the parties involved that they want peace and need a third party from outside to keep it.

The dream of the new world, and the stated objectives of Boutros Boutros-Ghali when he became U.N. secretary-general, were that the United Nations would move from peacekeeping to peace-enforcing. Cease-fires would be kept, whether all parties were in agreement or not, by the presence of armed and determined forces of blue helmets.

That vision now lies dismembered with the bodies of Bosnia, Rwanda and, most shamefully of all, Somalia.

Instead of enforcing peace, the United Nations has simply become entangled in the wars - at best, patching up the wounded, the earlier to return to the conflict as in Bosnia; at worst, actively inflating the prestige and the ambitions of the warlords, as in Somalia. Mohammed Farah Aidid has made a monkey of the United Nations in Somalia, much as Radovan Karadzic has played cat and mouse with UNPROFOR in Bosnia.

It's easy enough to argue now that it might all have been different. An airstrike in time saves nine. If only the United States had gone in hard and fast at the beginning, and given Aidid a bloody nose.

There are, equally, those who think it was not the U.N.'s role to biff the baddies but to work with them so that lives might be saved and food distributed peaceably.

By now, such arguments don't really matter much. The simple reality is that the United Nations has no credibility as a peace-enforcer and should withdraw from the role until it can be sure of carrying it out effectively.

The job is not impossible. It would be a doctrine of utmost despair to argue, militarily, that a well-equipped, supported force acting early enough could not have kept the warring factions apart in the main trouble spots.

The trouble, as any military man would argue, is that you have to have the political will and the men.

Neither has been in evidence in any of the crises of the past few years. The possibility of early action has been undermined by the necessity to obtain, first, agreement in the Security Council, and then, a multinational force financed by the voluntary contributions of the member states.

Even then, America's reluctance - and clearly there is going to be much resistance with a Republican majority in Congress - to participate in U.N. actions unless it retains independent control of its forces (as in Somalia) makes the whole operation even more difficult.

The obvious answer is to give the United Nations a mandate to call on a trained standby force of its own, with a proper, permanent military staff to run the operations. It is equally obvious that peace enforcement can develop as a role for the United Nations only if the Security Council is determined not only to express the wish but also to provide the means. Given the state of Russia, never mind American politics, this prospect is receding fast.

So does the world just throw up its hands in despair? It shouldn't and it mustn't. In the first place, whatever the disillusion with peace-enforcement, the role of peacekeeping remains vital.

This particular baby mustn't be thrown out with the bathwater - in Angola, Mozambique, Cambodia or anywhere else.

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Nor can the world afford to abandon countries such as Somalia where peacekeeping may be impossible under present conditions. The consequences, as one will see in Somalia and in Bosnia (if the United Nations retreats from there), are appalling in human terms.

They also leave a vacuum that is going to have to be filled. If the international community does not step in with at least some sense of commitment, then neighbors will. If communities of ordinary people are left to their fate, then older forms of community discipline will fill the gap.

It is no good Washington and Paris wringing their hands over fundamentalism in Africa or Afghanistan, if that is the only recourse left to people. There is no point in the world complaining about Chechnya or Armenia, if local troubles are exposed to the ambitions and might of neighboring powers.

Peacekeeping remains a great idea. Peace-enforcement is a good one. Somalia shouldn't be the cause of despair - just some hard rethinking.

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