A Standing Army for the United Nations?

Should the United Nations have it's own standing army?

For those of you who are unaware, the UN doesn't actually have it's own military. It has it's Blue Helmets, but they're national soldiers voluntarily given from the armies of it's member states as they're needed to deal with each new conflict in which they're deployed.

UN is too inefficient right now to create an army, and even if they managed too, the way the Security Council works would make it nearly impossible to use it in any conflict.

I'm wondering if this could end up abused by sec. council members anyway. I don't think so; the UN has generally been a restraining hand on the shoulders of the great powers, albeit an ignorable one.

Security Council is ridficulously badly designed - every permanent member can veto a resolution. Basically, it's not only impossible to abuse it but also nearly impossible to use it

And yet there are dozens of successful peacekeeping operations under the organization's belt and numerous ongoing operations across multiple continents. And all that was while underfunded and under-staffed.

But on the whole I agree. A standing army isn't all the UN needs. Peacekeeper mandates need some serious poking at. I wonder if you know what their standard ROE is. At least with the security council you know who's fault it is for vetoing what.

No. The current structure and the behavior of the various nations involved makes it an impossibility. Funding would be a huge issue. that and no nation would be dumb enough to fund rival military force that might possibly include enemies or rivals in creating a standing army.

edited 3rd Jul '11 3:47:50 AM by TuefelHundenIV

Given how spectacular some of their failures have been when it really counted (Rwanda, Bosnia, Democratic Republic of Congo, and others) and the Blue Beanies were more than just a convenient camouflage for a US-led coalition (like it was in the Gulf War), I can't say the idea of giving the UN a dedicated military force fills me with joy, to put it mildly.

And that doesn't even get into the issues of accountability for deployed troops. Under the current peacekeeper system, how many people got sacked or imprisoned for stupidly restrictive rules of engagement that allowed over a million people supposedly under UN protection to be killed? How often is there more than token punishment for peacekeepers who sexually abuse those they're supposed to be protecting? At least in theory those performing illegal acts are ultimately accountable to the source government for the troops, though obviously the practical application is something of a mixed bag. What happens when the only accountability is to a UN that rarely does more than simply make some noises about "reform" then back to "business as usual"?

edited 3rd Jul '11 5:13:54 AM by Nohbody

Funny thing about UN operations, the ones that actually happen never seem to be against nations that the security council members have any interest in.

I'm being sarcastic, we can all connect the dots. At least if all the security council members were friendly to eachother they would have a united front and could get shit done and we would be well on our way to a one-world order.

Why the fuck is China a security council member? I mean really? At least Russia sort of earned it because of their part in WW 2 and the fact that as a major rival to the US they could have just told the UN they wanted no part in it, but China? I suppose the only benefit to this is that the intentions of sending in Peacekeepers tend to be pretty pure because the 3 biggest superpowers in the world all had to agree with eachother that it was a good idea in the first place, and they are all rivals.

Agreed that the security council would essentially make a standing UN force identical to the current mission system, since in the time it takes the security council to decide something an ad-hoc mission force can already be mustered. More money and troop commitments from members, however, might make it worthwhile to set up a force small enough to be fielded in global rapid deployment, kept on standby for such transportation.

I sort of think that for the most truly severe problem areas, they need to be caught early, and that means regional forces like African Union and Arab League peacekeepers in the world's most wartorn countries, most of which are horribly underfunded and underequipped. Perhaps larger numbers of foreign UN troops could be regularly rotated through them, to keep UN member militaries sharp?

Yeah GDI is not a real possibility because of that. (Which when you think about it makes you wonder. The Chinese in CNC were marked as Nod sympathizers so why would they not veto GDI at every opportunity?)

They'd have to retool how the U.N. works and make "donation" of soldiers mandatory for this to work and that seems like to much effort for a lot of nothing.

Considering the UN track record of putting countries in charge of things they shouldn't be, like Libya and the Human Rights Council, the thought of the UN having a military force gives me nightmares.

Regarding the UN's military screwups, can anyone honestly state someone else is much better? Peacekeeping is a messy, nasty, corruption-prone business.

For what the UN do, they do better than anyone else could. At least they're not as corrupt and inefficient as the League of Nations. Remember them?

edited 3rd Jul '11 8:39:44 AM by Inhopelessguy

Maybe so that there's a member that isn't Euro-American on a security council for an organisation that ostensibly covers the entire world (Russia is a bit iffy on that count I suppose, being Eurasian, but after the Second World War there was no way it wasn't going to be on it). I suppose it's worth remembering that China's seat used to belong to the Republic of China rather than the PRC.

The UN is a voluntary and advisory body. Giving it its own Army would be counter-productive to that as it would become more of an authority.

No country would really want that, as they prefer their own autonomy. Which is why the permanent members get their veto, because that way they can just say no.

It wouldn't make a difference. The UN's primary problem is that the Security Council can never agree on anything and a permanent standing army would get even less done than the armed forces of individual members.

Part of the problem with that is that many of the members of those organizations really don't like each other, as in "have traded gunfire" levels of dislike. You think there's problems from the various "proxy wars" the permanent members of the UNSC have been involved with? Try it with people who didn't have the "proxy" luxury.

Also, more than a few of the folks in those areas have little to no qualms about simply taking something in the name of "peace" (they also tend to have rather substantial "MiniTruth" infrastructure to help spin things the "proper" way) if they think they can get away with it, as it is. A lot of why they don't currently is because while their militaries are doing that, some of their other neighbors may well get "grabby" about territory.

"Don't make stupid Rules of Engagement that effectively make peacekeepers carrying guns a waste of effort" would be a good start. If you're going to offer a safe haven for people about to get sodomized by a bunch of armed assholes, don't just stand by and let said assholes tear through the innocents. About 800K Rwandans and 200K Bosnians believed the promises of protection, and it cost them their lives. Like I said above, who got sacked or imprisoned for that complete failure to perform their purported job?

edited 3rd Jul '11 9:19:02 AM by Nohbody

Oh dear NO

The UN is corrupt and anti-freedom as it is. Imagine giving it the power to use actual force instead of surrogate force if surrogates agrees to it...

edited 3rd Jul '11 9:22:54 AM by deuxhero

What for? The Chinese would veto human rights-based interventions anyway. It'd be random pork barrel spending.

Nowadays, if the Security Council doesn't veto, odds are one or more major powers are gonna intervene anyway, and they've got the resources to do the mission on their own.

edited 3rd Jul '11 9:25:46 AM by SavageHeathen

As a fan of the UN, I have to say no. A standing army doesn't do anything the current system doesn't do already. Except costing more due to (permanent) organizational overhead. They will only be deployed when the security council agrees anyway, so what would it actually accomplish?

China got the seat cuz India (who was offered it first for their role in the Burma campaign of WWII) wanted to be magnanimous.

Sometimes I really gotta hate Nehru.

Honestly, the security council seats should be divied up by continent/region and have each of said continent/region in a rotating presidency. The current security council members wouldn't have to really worry because each is a big player in their region and thus could still influence (though not directly control unless they hold presidency) the votes.

A standing army is too much of a jump from what it is to what it would be regardless though. A better bet would be to reactivate the council that handled the Mandate territories. It already has authority in its charter to govern within that framework. Failed states should then be put under that mandate and be allowed to raise a security force (without capabilities to attack another country) for the territory in question made up of volunteers and given a reasonable ROE. Funding would come from funds volunteered by the UN, but mostly from the resources of the failed territory in question. The mandate will be given an absolute, non-extendable deadline that (if needed) could be extended only by going through the whole process again and with a different set of soldiers/mercenaries/countries to prevent some power from continuing to extend their rule and turning it into a colony.

India gave up a UN Security Council seat?!!

On the scale of political bungles that ranks right up there with "selling off the gold standard" and "deciding those windswept rocks off Argentina would be easy pickings"

Not really, for India, a Security Council seat would have been a white elephant. First, they proposed it at the expense of China. So that'd be no good for India. Second, it would have forced India into a role of having to have involvement, and not just effective neutrality.

It really did not align with their political interests.

It is Hilarious in Hindsight. India is a burgeoning economy. Soon it could join the OECD.