What do you think about it? Good, bad idea?

The thread about a "coming world government" had me thinking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_...rld governance (different than government) and how the UN has changed throughout the years. Obviously, the Military Staff Committee was paralyzed and is essentially a casualty of the Cold War. So what if an independent task force was set up to deal with emerging threats or crises? Is it too dangerous to give the Security Council, or the Secretariat, a small international armed force? Or is a good idea, given the tragedies that have unfolded and are unfolding in the post-Cold War era?

__________________
No man is an island...
Each man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in Mankind.
And therefore, never send to know
For whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
—John Donne

well, do they really really want one? I am of the mind that they speak a big game but frankly would be at a loss in how to deploy such a force and when....and would not be ready to take the ultimate responsibility for its actions.

I really don't think its workable...for instance, look at darfur....they have problems getting folks to go, keeping them their etc..command and control etc....in Rwanda, a Dutch Col. ( I believe he was dutch) warned the UN man responsible for their mission that the Hutus were caching arms and what they intended to do with them, where they were and asked to be allowed to take them out...the UN sat on its hands and well, what happened happened ......would anything have changed? The bureaucracy in the UN needs to evolve before this type of force is given to them, even if its doable.

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We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile....

I think the idea has potential, and I think anyone who would like to see the UN do its proposed job wouldn't mind seeing this reform either. It would be made up of volunteers of member states--in other words, volunteers from pretty much all over the world. I haven't done much reading on the actual proposals, but I believe that these volunteers would have a duty solely to the UN, and would not be caught in some limbo between duty to the UN and to their own state. The UN Secretariat and Security Council would have no where to point their fingers, except at each other--and either way, it would reflect poorly on the UN and not some other organization or state. Also, the UN probably has the most experience in nation-building and maintaining stability; while there are failures on their resume, I don't think we should solely highlight the failed missions. They should be taken into account and learned from, of course, but not used to shoot down potential reform. Besides, if the UN doesn't take the lead in securing failing states or managing crises, who will?

I do agree that reform is needed, for this sort of arrangement to be possible. Funding would have to be altered, the Secretariat's bureaucracy made more efficient, and it would have to be decided who had ultimate authority over this military force. If the Secretary-General had authority, then it seems the Security Council's role would be undermined. If the Security Council had authority, the military force would likely never be used due to the stalemate politics of the Permanent Five. Perhaps some joint committee could be established in which all of them were limited in power, but that made compromises so that the military could actually be effective.

__________________
No man is an island...
Each man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in Mankind.
And therefore, never send to know
For whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
—John Donne

I have to say it is probably a bad idea. In my opinion, the bigger a government bureaucracy is, the more corruptible it is. That is why I fight for smaller government. I think we have seen that over the last few decades in this country very well.

We already have agreements where troops can move under the UN banner when needed from member states. Why do they need a permanent army that serves the will of the UN?

The last thing those crooks need is an army. I think we should get rid of the UN completely.

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"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to
change it." -- Barack Obama

Music to my ears

Well since the UN either ignores or just plain fubar's anything that matters...I would not expect them to do anything different with an army.

Annnd - perhaps you haven't noticed that America's economy stinks to high heaven right now - we can hardly finance a UN army - cause as much as the rest of the world might like the UN to have more power - they are not the ones who finance the UN.

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The capitalist will sell us the very rope from which we will hang them...in time. - Josef Stalin

It's a good idea, on paper anyway. The problem is when you have a military, you have a hierarchy and that puts this force in the same potential ballpark as many of those countries like Myanmar, where a handful of generals took over the government.

If such a military was large enough to actually do anything, they would be a formidable force for other nations to fight should there be such a takeover.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

I still think having a UN "legion" or two or three would not be a bad idea.

Simply having an engineering component could solve for some of the issues of infrastructure development (roads and aqueducts) in current anarchies.

Once that infrastructure was in place, market friendly activity could be fostered more easily.

This same scenario could be accomplished in any third world country where the US has more political interest than humanitarian interest in providing for the general welfare of any red states external to itself.

I don't think that would work. We already give quite a lot of humanitarian aid to these little dictatorships and the people's lot in life hasn't really improved.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

The UN badly needs reform. So does the organisation of UN troops. It happend too often that the forces that had been send on UN missions have shown not to be ready for the job. Of course most countries aren't really keen on providing well equiped and trained forces for UN missions. Not to talk about the financial effort.

But the whole UN needs reform. The only problem is, that especially those five countries who are calling the shots now just talk about reform, but are basically unwilling to agree to major changes.

I think such a force is impractical and would be ineffective. There are some major questions that would have to be addressed with such a force.

1. How would it be recruited?
2. What standards would those recruits have to meet?
3. How/who would fund it?
4. What sort of ROE would it have?
5. Would it just be an army? Or would it also have an air force and navy?

and many, many others.

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Success is measured in blood; yours or your enemy's.

I don't know if a bigger bureaucracy makes it more corruptible or not--but I'd definitely say that the bigger it is, there are more resources and time wasted, and possibly lives lost when it comes to the business of commanding troops and peacekeeping.

A permanent army would bypass the need for the Secretary-General to lobby member states for troops and equipment. It would also bypass the concern of placing one's troops under the command of someone else--these international volunteers wouldn't really be "American" or "Danish" soldiers any longer, but "UN soldiers."

__________________
No man is an island...
Each man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in Mankind.
And therefore, never send to know
For whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
—John Donne

For what purpose? Would you want anything to replace it, or would you like to return to the international order that spawned the last two World Wars?

__________________
No man is an island...
Each man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in Mankind.
And therefore, never send to know
For whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
—John Donne

ditto