Registered: Sep 2000
Location: The Bottom of the Toyem Pole
Posts: 9454

With all the talk about US invasion/ occupying forces, legitimacy, the UN, etc, etc., I was thinking about some things that led me to write the following. It's rough and unpolished (and probably not very good to start with) but here it is. Maybe its worth discussing, maybe not.

Doomo,

Nute

quote:

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Originally by me

I don't really know about the structure of UN peacekeeping forces, so maybe this is already being implemented or these ideas are old news and have been chewed up and spit out by many. But just in case not, here is my idea.

How about a volunteer corp of America soldiers that operates not as US forces, but as a contingent UN peacekeepers? This would entail comparative contingents from other nations as well. The forces would be bound by special limiting ROE, perhaps akin to the rules governing the Japanese SDF. They would be led by independent officers who reported to the UN security council. Volunteers could come from any segment of society, perhaps many choosing to contribute to this field following their military enlistment.

These forces would then cultivate an identity as a multilateral force, not beholden to a government. Essentially they would be military employees of the UN.

It would most definitely NOT be a UN military.

What kind of opposition would there be to this plan? It seems that firstly people would cry foul at the United Nations having a military force. It would be explicitly subordinate in kind to national armies. It would be called up to enforce UN resolutions and peacekeeping missions and aid. National military planners would no longer be upset at having their troops subjected to being led by generals from other nations and governments would not be subject to domestic complaints about international interventions. Deployment of the troops would (hopefully) be seen as less imperialistic than currently seen.

Within this force, troops from one nation would not be given any special consideration or treatment dependent on their national origin: they would be equal in this regard. Their deployment would be purely under the unanimous (this is important, so all members of the security council, not just the big guns, have veto, which gives greater legitimacy to the conclusions) decision of the security council.

It may be important to make regional and local considerations regarding the presence of regional and local troops in any deployed force. In some situations, it may be important to include as many local representatives as possible while in others it is best to avoid having particular nationalities involved. Some people may not feel comfortable enforcing their own nation in some cases, but in others it would be important for issues of national independence, avoidance of resentment from having non-local troops on the ground, or other reasons. To use Iraq as an example, some have suggested that the Kurdish forces deployed in security arrangements throughout the non-Kurdish regions are inflaming local tensions; regardless of if this specific example is true or not, this type of problem is counter-productive in general. In most cases, a multi-cultural force is more likely to defuse resentment than not.

It may also prove effective to include local leaders in the peacekeeping more than in the past. It isn't always possible to do this, but because the appearance of an internationally imposed security arrangement breeds embarrassment and resentment that linger and malignantly manifest later on, it is imperative to build a system where the peacekeeping forces of the UN operate subject to both international and local control. Their role should clearly as possible be a supporting role, and not just supporting the government most popular with the United States (or any other specific country).

It is the external imposition of power and associated deprivation of sovereignty that breeds resent, anger, and hostility to even the most well-intentioned and generous attempts to fix bad situations. For better or worse, it was Arab pride that rebelled against Western pressures and led them to support Saddam Hussein, a leader with many acknowledge flaws but who stood against external (in this case, non-Arab) pressures. These pressures were imposed on the region instead of nurtured and supported from within.

It may not be easy to support and nurture change from within, from the ground up, but that is the only viable solution. Even when effective top-down strategies are available, they most typically are only effective in the short term and end up drawing up debts that are cashed in the future at significant losses to the debtor, in this case, the imposer.

It is impossible to make people believe a particular way. It is only possible to persuade them of a better way and let them make the choice. Just as some people believe that God gives us free will in order to impart value on the decision to have faith in him, the same pattern operates in the wholly temporal world.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: The Bottom of the Toyem Pole
Posts: 9454

My ideas are so good that there just isn't any way to respond to them.

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: USA
Posts: 24747

Yeah... That's what it is.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35656

I think that a broader-based conventional military alliance, preferably under UN mandate, would have ameliorated a fair number of these problems. I don't know quite how intransigent France and Russia were over Iraq; there were hints that if the whole thing were put back to Autumn 2003, that it might have been possible to pull more people in and even get something through at the UN (which clearly wasn't possible in early 2003, thanks to Chirac's promise to veto any prospective resolution authorising an imminent invasion even before he had read it, if nothing else). It seems to me that UN mandate clearly wasn't necessary for the invasion but that in the event of things post-invasion turning sticky (as they have) it would have been helpful to have, say, a large contingent of Pakistani troops there in Iraq. Additionally, the urgency of the earlier situation created a problem getting Turkey on board. It does seem that, because of the general arab suspiscion of the US and its motives that US troops were not the ideal choice for day-to-day security in Iraq and that this, coupled with the difficulties in getting Iraqi forces to a situation where they can cope adequately with situations that might arise, has made the whole thing more difficult than it might have been.

It isn't inconceivable that another Middle-Eastern state (say, Iran or Syria) becomes more deserving of an invasion than Iraq was and that the Iraq experience means that the US has to get UN mandate before acting, both because of 'lessons learned in Iraq' and also because the perception of the Iraq mission in the arab world has probably made it more difficult for the US to attempt something similar elsewhere. When people said: 'why Iraq, there are more dangerous places', they were attacking the internal logic of the Bush/Blair rhetoric, but it seems to me that that point is now more relevant because if one of those more dangerous places does come to our attention in the same way that Iraq did, taking them out and installing a replacement government more to our liking there may now be more difficult than it would have been (not to mention that the 'democracy and freedom' rhetoric now ties our hands in future Middle-Eastern adventures, unless we care to admit that that ambition was mistaken in the Iraq case, but that would be to take more political damage as regards the 'case for war'). I thought that at the time that Bush and Blair were playing the diplomatic game wrong, with respect to achievable objectives and also setting up the situation to make achieving objectives easier and I haven't changed my mind on that as yet. But that doesn't mean that it will go wrong in the end even if I am right, of course.

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