Grand Bargains Between the Left and Center-Left Posted by David Shorr

The more I talk to fellow Iowans, the more optimistic I am about the potential for consensus-building across the progressive spectrum, even on some difficult issues. If moderates and those with a more sweeping critique just take a step toward each other, they may be surprised to look down and find themselves on common ground.

The classic FDR quote about fearing "fear itself" used to sound like a historical echo, but now it rings in my ear with a today kind of relevance, every day. Those of us involved in the national security debate are positively spooked by the fears of our fellow citizens (or the fears we imagine them to have). How can we convince the fearful that we're worthy of their trust? In some of our more flinty statements, you can hear the clenched jaw, not because we don't mean it, but because we're trying too hard and leave out the leavening of wisdom.

And we're even afraid to talk to each other -- about military strength or international trade, for instance. But despair not...

Basically I'm picking up from Suzanne's stirring call for common cause and will try to give it some content based on a limited sample of conversations with flesh-and-blood non-wonks.

Job Exporter, meet Protectionist

Free traders and workers have been nervously eying each other, and their mutual suspicion has kept us from delving into some critical issues about the place of America and its workers in the 21st century global economy. Workers blame trade for their job insecurity, and supporters of free trade worry about protectionism and threats to the global economic system.

I know more economist jokes than economics, so I won't trot out statistics about the net effect of trade. My interest is in a policy agenda that responds to both sets of concerns.

The basis for consensus is neither radical nor especially complicated. Globalization must be managed to benefit more people and harm fewer. And trade is not the root of all corporate or economic evils. In other words, paying workers overseas pennies a day isn't cheap labor but servitude. Failing to provide a safety net, adequate training, or preparation for future industrial trends isn't a "flexible work force." At the same time though, global trade doesn't fully explain the stagnation of American wages or the erosion of our social contract.

What does this consensus require of each side? Champions of labor can't claim globalization serves only the interest of corporations -- not when it has lifted millions out of extreme poverty in China (or when they take advantage of "everyday low prices"). Champions of trade can't pretend that the invisible hand of globalization is delivering benefits for enough people.

The overall goal is a rising standard of living at home and abroad. So how do we do that? Trading partners and companies with the lowest wages and repressive workplaces must be pressed to raise standards. Pennies-a-day isn't going to raise any family out of extreme poverty or lift any nation into the global middle class. And if we're going to demand flexibility from our workforce, there need to be cushions for the affected and 21st century industries to provide good jobs. Meanwhile, what's keeping current employers from raising wages?

As I say, not radical. The near-dead Doha Round was supposed to focus on poverty reduction. The debate over adjustments, training, and industrial policy is old. But a refocused debate -- away from the free trader v. worker standoff -- would be a helpful first step.

War-monger, meet Pacifist

Here's another pair of progressives who don't trust each other. The ready-to-use-force wing resents the burden of the anti-war legacy and the ammunition it has given conservatives. Activists feel that for all their toughness, moderates don’t have the guts to resist America’s violent impulses and present a real alternative to conservatives. What may not be obvious is that a compromise between these wings can be a source of formidable political strength.

As with so many issues, the key is Iraq. The decision to invade Iraq, a precipitous war of choice with the feeblest of political rationales, as well as its implementation, are apt reminders of what not to do. And there’s also the contrast with Afghanistan, a war of necessity, also with pathetic follow-through.

So it’s hard to understand, especially with public opinion where it is, why a progressive should have trouble speaking forthrightly against an overaggressive US posture. But activists also need to appreciate why progressives can’t promise that peaceful means would solve all problems. From what I’ve seen, though, activists do indeed get this.

My prescription is that our arguments should follow a tough-and-smart formula. The words "tough" and "smart" are not useful, but a consistent structural form to our arguments could be quite powerful.

Here’s the idea. Every time we express that can "get the job done;" we should match that expression immediately (same breath) with what it means to do it wisely and realistically. Some examples:

• We need to focus on both the front end of terrorism -- groups planning attacks -- as well as the back end -- mass support. It won't do much good to just go after today's terrorists and ignore the political struggles that affect the recruitment of tomorrow's terrorists.
• We will maintain the world’s strongest military, not only to achieve the country’s aims, but also because a superpower can help support the international community with open sea lanes and the threat of force against major violators of global rules. We can regain that legitimacy.
• Our uniformed services are ready to do whatever we ask them to do. We keep faith with the troops not only by equipping them with the best, but also by choosing wisely the missions we give them.
• We will pay tribute to the honor of the military by respecting military honor. Warriors do battle according to ancient discipline, not ruthless savagery. The Geneva Conventions are not an obstacle to our military, but essential to their ideals.

You get the idea. Many of the readers of this site can choose better words, but I think this is what we need in place of "I’m tough too."

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

David,

I'm glad to engage in a discussion aimed at trying to build some common cause between the center-left and the left. But I am afraid that in order to do so we will have to come to grips with the reality of philosophical conflict. We can't just focus on matters rhetorical compromise and framing, as you have. To frame someting, we need to have some common understanding of what we are trying to achieve in the first place. And I'm afraid there is a deeper philosophical disagreement between the center-left and the left that is the root cause of most of the differences between them. This post, on the other hand, merely offers a pair of "split-the-difference" suggestions for rhetorical compromise.

The dominant political impulse of the left is an egalitarian one. Their political ideals tend toward visions of highly egalitarian societies. The ideal future state of affairs, for them, involves very high levels of equality within societies, but also equality among societies.

Those who are part of the modern national security establishment - including those who regard themselves of the center-left - show no such dispositions. For one thing, they seem almost genetically predisposed to seek and maintain dominance, hegemony, primacy, preeminence, etc. (The prefered terms vary, as does the tone and the choice of means, but the basic thrust remains the same.) That drive for domination and power, whether of the hard or soft variety, seems to be built into the very ideological foundations of the institutions they serve.

Nor do they indicate that they seek preeminence as only an instrumental good - a temporary means to the creation of an egalitarian world of the future. I have had many discussion with the center-left national security types, and offered that as a suggestion, but they never seem to take up the offer. No, they are committed to US primacy in perpetuity - even if they like to think it will be a kindly, benevolent sort primacy.

I wish I could say for sure what the centrists do seek, but they don't usually lay it on the table. As best I can tell, they are much more focussed on formal governmental and legal institutions than economic conditions and the distribution of power. Their ideal world seems to look a lot like 2006 America - or maybe 1997 America.

If that is true, then there is bound to be a lot of suspicion and distrust from the left. Leftists want to change America in some fairly profound ways. Those on the left don't see the contemporary US as a model for the rest of the world. The centrists seem to believe we already live in something pretty close to heaven - we just need to add a few strands to our social safety net - and they want to spread that heaven around the world.

This conflict comes out in the talk about democracy. For the left, a democratic society is a society that governs itself, and one in which each citizen participates equally in the work and benefits of government; it is a system in which each citizen's preferences count and no citizen's preferences counts more than any other citizen's preferences. The leftist also typically believes that wealth is power, and so it is absurd to contemplate a system in which equality of political power exists side by side with great disparities in wealth.

Leftists seek equality in the relations among nations as well as within nations. Anything that smells like imperialism, domination or foreign control strikes leftists as inherently undemocratic and wrong. But the centrists don't seem to mind domination as long as it is "benevolent" domination by an "exceptional" country. They believe in natural aristocracy, not democracy. So when they go on about "democracy promotion" or building the "democracy arsenal", I don't even know what they are talking about. Where are the proposals from the center-leftists for a more democratic world system?

I would like to hear a few of the centrists give a forthright account of the kind of world they want to build. Honestly, I have no clear idea about what their vison of the future is. What is the world supposed to look like in 10, 25, 50 or 100 years? How are the policies they support conducive to creating that world?

And for the centrists, it's always about striking the perfect balance and positioning themselves in the least inoffensive position through the use of language: not too much of this, not too much of that - something juussst right and down the middle. Along these lines, the centrists always seem to assume the debate is about means. They assume that their conflict with the left is about the manner of action, and not what that action is meant to achieve. And they love tidy little symmetric formulas: We must be tough, but tough with brains; Compassionate, but "muscular", etc. But these terms don't describe ends, thet describe traits. When the centrists talk about foreign policy, the focus is overwhelmingly on generically characterized practical virtues, and not nearly enough on the long term political and economic goals.

By the way, is "activists" the new euphemism for the left? I thought there were plenty of centrists and conservatives who were activists too.

[neruda]

Dan, it seems to me that your comment leaves very little room for a meeting of hearts and minds within the Democratic party.

There are clear philisophical differences between left and center left. And we have to build both substantial and rhetorical bridges. That means we must all entertain the idea that we may be holding onto some particular tenet too rigidly. Ironically that would make us conservatives.

Among these differences is the relationship between individuals and society. For example what do we envision greater economic equality to look like? Does it require that all people have the same economic means? Or does it require broad acces to opportunity? Can we at least begin this conversation by agreeing that we all believe the government must invest in physical and technological infrastructure, education, health care, child care?

[Dan Kervick]

I think the scope for compromise on the Democratic side in the domestic field is greater at the present time than in the foreign policy field. While there are big differences between the left and the center on domestic issues, the radical cultural and economic agenda of the Republicans is so repulsive to all of us that, yes, there is much of substance we can agree on, and many changes we all want to see.

But the conflict in the area of foreign policy is more severe.

When I read the centrists, the Truman Democrats, DLC-style New Democrats etc. one often gets the impression that they think the national security debate on the Democratic side is mainly between, as David Shorr caricatures them, "war-mongers" and "pacifists"; Ot is between "hawks" and "doves"; between those who are "ready to use force" and those who are "reluctant to use force"; between those who prefer a "muscular" foreign policy, and those who want a "gentle" forein policy.

In other words, they tend to assume that we Democrats "all want the same thing", but differ about the appropriate means to those common ends. They think it is only a debate about the proper scope for the use of violence in the international field.

Thus they think we can resolve the dispute by sensibly recognizing the appropriateness of different means in different circumstances, and by papering over our conflict by using difference-splitting language that balances off each strength or power-connoting expression with a compassion or wisdom-connoting expression. Of course, this isn't really a method for making intellectual progress. It's juts a quick-fix recipe for expedient political communication.

Temperamental difference in attitudes toward violence do indeed account for some of the differences among Democrats, around the edges of the debate, but I don't think it accounts for the heart of the contemporary disagreement.

Leftists and centrists differ in their political ideals.

I think those on the left would prefer to live in a country that strives to conduct itself in the international field as one member of a community of equals, and restricts its uses of force to self-defense and co-ordinated, collective action to maintain the peace. They view doctrines of imperial domination, national supremacy and perpetual military primacy as inherently undemocratic, and incompatible with the most fundamental American ideals. The left's political ideals are egalitarian, communal and universalistic.

The centrist Democrats, the other hand, the ones who dominate the elite, establishment institutions and foundations that form US foreign policy, would prefer to live in a country that carves out a special place for itself as an "exceptional" nation, and then builds on the pride born in that lofty self-conception to establish and maintain "primacy" or "hegemony". They are also willing to use force not just to defend the country and maintain the peace, but to spread something they sometimes call "democracy", but which seems under closer examination to mean something like "the American system of government and economic life." Yet even after the dreamed-of Amercanization of the world occurs, so far as I can glean from the writings of the establishment Dems, American primacy is supposed to continue.

These folks on the "center-left" are not democrats in the international sphere. They are chauvinistic nationalists, and end-of-history American triumphalists, who seek the perpetuation of a sort global aristocracy or authoritarianism. But no system in which one agent has far greater capacity than other agents to influence the behavior of the totality is a democracy - it is despotism, even if a wise and benevolent despotism.

As for the debate on equality itself: my own view is that the contemporary liberal notion that one can have a system in which there is genuine "equality of opportunity" without a rough "equality of outcome" is a naive illusion - a crock. The blessings which produce opportunity flow from the presence of wealth. Where there is more wealth, there is more opportunity. If you really want all people to have a roughly equal chance of thriving and flourishing in the world, you need to see to it that they are born into toughly equal circumstances.

[David Shorr]

You can look at it as a papering over of differences and "merely rhetoric." Or you can recognize it as a substantive consensus and communicating ideas that won't be taken the wrong way, which is a tricky business, and I'll try to get it just right every time. Obviously I view it as the latter, which leaves the question of who wants in and who wants out.

I'd be happy to redraw the political lines here and clarify because Dan raises some valid questions but also, I feel, blurs some boundaries himself.

Exceptionalism. The tent I describe doesn't quite pull in those who believe America is one of 191 equal nation-states. But the baseline beliefs that super power can be responsibly stewarded and America has something special to offer the world leave many questions, so let me draw some distinctions.

Democracy at the end of a gun also lies outside my consensus at the other end of the spectrum. I'd seriously ask how many in the center-left embrace this neocon fantasy.

If we've learned nothing it's that a) the impetus must come from within and b) republican governance is a political order for which there are many precursors. Oh, and along with that, the importance that political arrangements must reflect local history and culture. I have always talked about the Responsibility to Protect only being justified in cases of mass violence or displacement.

Two paths lead me to a valid purpose for the concentration of hard power. We have a serious legitimacy problem, and I don't want to be cavalier about the need to earn (and I mean earn) it back. That said, I can think of two clear public goods that US power provides: open sea lanes and a stable balance in Northeast Asia.

Second, we multilateralists believe in a system of rules. Okay, how are these enforced? You mention collective action to maintain the peace. The first Gulf War is an example. But if the US didn't have our (concentrated, disproportionate) military power, would there be any capacity to act? And setting aside the almight vengeant hand we currently have, can't we see the importance of the credible threat of force in other kinds of cases? I think we will continue to be more serious about enforcement, and should be. We just need not to be in such a damn hurry to bring the hammer down.

Dan's best question regards the time horizon for primacy. Looking down the road some decades hence, yes we may not need to maintain such military predominance. My strategic vision is for spreading and ultimately near-universal "stakeholdership." I wrote in an earlier post about the global law-abiding majority. If international consensus develops over time such that all significant powers -- and most everyone else -- is on the same page, we shouldn't need to spend half a trillion dollars on the military.

Now economics. I favor growing the global middle class. Extreme poverty is the moral challenge of our time. The growth of the domestic wealth/income disparities is also scandalous. We need the rich to pay their taxes and everyone else's income to rise.

But for the global economics, I favor a non-zero-sum approach. It's like the food your mom told you eat because of the starving kids in Biafra (for my generation). It's not that the kids weren't starving; it's just that the food on my plate wasn't going to them. If Americans suddenly stopped buying things, would the resulting global downturn help or hurt people elsewhere in the world? And should we give up the dollar's place as the world currency? I'm not sure.

[Dan Kervick]

David,

The most interesting part of your response, to me, is your comment on the time horizon for US primacy:

“Looking down the road some decades hence, yes we may not need to maintain such military predominance. My strategic vision is for spreading and ultimately near-universal "stakeholdership." I wrote in an earlier post about the global law-abiding majority. If international consensus develops over time such that all significant powers -- and most everyone else -- is on the same page, we shouldn't need to spend half a trillion dollars on the military.”

As I understand it, you see American primacy as continuing until everyone is “on the same page”, at which point there will be less need for current levels of military spending. I don’t think we can wait that long. People are never on the same page – whether the people in question are all living inside a single society, or distributed among different societies. Competition and conflict are inherent in human life. That’s why human beings need government and coercive force to forge a prosperous collective existence.

I agree with you that, given the tremendous imbalance of power that exists in the contemporary world, important jobs in global governance will not get done unless carried out by, or lead by, the reigning dominant powers.

But I see that as an inherently dangerous and sub-optimal circumstance, which it should be the aim of progressives to rectify – and rectify urgently. In any social situation, to rely on a single dominant power, or a few dominant powers, for governance and the force necessary to maintain the peace, is asking for trouble. There are several reasons for this incapacity in the modern state system:

First, modern states are not run by philosopher-kings. They are run by men and women who owe their positions to the constituencies that secured those positions for them. They are constrained by their loyalties, dependencies and institutional roles to defend the interests of those constituencies. Generally, the most important constituencies are those organized controllers of wealth who have the ability to purchase control of the state and select its leaders, and who expect that state to then act to advance their interests in the world.

The other important constituencies, especially in modern democracies, are mass movements of people, whose power is based on the sheer number of votes or voices they can deliver. Although large collectivities of human beings may contain a certain number of very intelligent and wise individuals, as a group their behavior is crude, short-sighted and impulsive. They don’t pursue their goals in a hyper-enlightened manner, with a coherent and disciplined long-term plan, but in spasms of assertiveness and retrenchment, and with an overwhelming focus on the short term needs and preoccupations of the movement and its key stakeholders. When their power to act is not checked by the intimidating influence of others, among whom power is broadly and effectively distributed, they tend to act in highly self-interested, short-sighted and aggressive ways.

Second, because states tend on the whole to pursue selfish interests, with only occasional gestures of philanthropy, their actions will always be the object of reasonable suspicion from others, and will checked and thwarted by those less powerful states worried about the motives and results of exercises of power by the dominant state. If the United States intervenes in Africa, for example, one can expect a lot of countervailing actions by other states and non-state actors who (i) suspect the US motive for intervention is strategic advantage and control of resources, (ii) are eager to take advantage of the vulnerabilities created by the projection of power in one place to attack or weaken the US on that battlefield, or to undermine US interests in other locations that are temporarily weakened by inattention or diversion of resources.

That doesn’t mean that the US necessarily shouldn’t intervene in Africa. But it does mean that we would all be better off, and the common global interests in security and governance better served, by potent, broad-based multinational institutions capable of doing this job instead. I fully recognize that such institutions don’t yet exist. But I would like to see the Democratic centrists to step forward with more consistent, vigorous and detailed proposals for the creation of such tools, rather than singing more paeans to American exceptionalism.

A third limitation on the capacity of a single state to carry out tasks of global governance has to do with the relationship of that state to its armed forces. Those forces themselves form a large and powerful constituency in the state. They are not the mere servants of the President, or the Council on Foreign Relations, or George Soros. Our soldiers tend to believe their job is to defend the country, and most Americans believe that is their job too. We Americans tend to think of ourselves as having a contract with the military – which is made up of our own sons and daughter - not to put them in harm’s way unless the risk of their very lives is needed to defend interests that our absolutely vital to the national life.

The ability to use the military for projects of global philanthropy, or as a police force for global governance, is thus limited. And persistent efforts of this kind are doomed to frustration and conflict. Hanging global governance on the leadership of the US and its military forces puts the world in the position of relying on US domestic propaganda - propaganda that over-hypes threats to US security, and sells threats to other peoples and countries as acute problems for Americans themselves, in order to generate the domestic political will needed to get our military to act. Once the setbacks occur, as they always do, the national debate will quickly turn to reveal the initial selling points were lies and exaggerations, and the project will be put in jeopardy. The peoples and countries in the area of intervention will ultimately be left high and dry, probably in a worse condition than before the intervention began.

This is not just an occasional problem of a failure of political leadership. It is a systematic problem built right into the misguided attempt to magically fuse the global interest to the interest of an individual country, by means of well-meaning but dishonest rhetoric. No matter how “exceptional” we are, the United States can never consistently play the global governorship role liberal nationalists seem to want her to play.

Many contemporary liberals seem to think the recent historical episode of self-seeking American assertiveness and aggression is some sort of anomaly. It is not. Power by its nature seeks more power. Only a balance of power, with built-in checks and balances, where the capacity to use force for the common good is distributed among many, can arrest and harness the natural temptations of power to extend itself without bound.

Again, I recognize that such a distributed system does not exist. So let’s build one. Returning to the issue with which I began this post, if there are more liberal centrists out there who see a “limited horizon” for US primacy, I wish they would speak out and articulate their long term global vision more clearly and forcefully. Frankly, most of what I have read from the exceptionalist camp is coy, at best, about this matter. Thus, I don’t trust them. I see most of the exceptionalists as eager to extend US dominance, and extend it indefinitely, rather than bring about the conditions for equipoise of US power with the power of other countries. They are nicer and loftier than neoconservatives when they speak of perpetual dominance, but no less committed to it.

If one is really interested in harnessing great power for the common good, one has to offer some proposals for doing so that go beyond “the reigning superpower is exceptional and can be trusted to responsibly steward itself, once this little jingoistic interlude blows over.” I have more confidence in the enduring empirical lessons of history, and what it tells us about human nature and human tendencies, than in a faith-based reliance on the uniqueness and wisdom of exceptional actors.

[David Shorr]

The question of whether view military primacy as a world-without-end-amen proposition indeed deserves more discussion, as you say.

My view of American power as a guarantor of the international system, however, doesn't mean we're "the decider" about how it's exerted for the common global good. This contradiction is at the root of the current crisis; everything my colleagues and I are advocating is toward a "new consensns" (see UN S-G's High-level Panel).

And yet. I've developed this new reflex for when I hear the word "institutions." I immediately ask "expected to do what - and how?" I will continue to carry the banner of multilateralism, but not mechanisticaly, only fully accounting for political will as the sine qua non.

[David Shorr]

Ooops, wasn't quite finished. Still not sure whether this gap over exceptionalism can be closed. I understand how power corrupts - our system of governance was designed to prevent its overconcentration. But I don't accept that America is fundamentally unable to exercise global leadership in a constructive manner. Whatever qualms I had with the Beinart book, it is a good reminder of a history of genuine American leadership in the world.

[J.S.]

Curious what you all think of my most recent foreign policy suggestions at:

http://voicesofreason.info

[Dan Kervick]

And yet. I've developed this new reflex for when I hear the word "institutions." I immediately ask "expected to do what - and how?" I will continue to carry the banner of multilateralism, but not mechanisticaly, only fully accounting for political will as the sine qua non.

I understand this reflex. My diagnosis of the source of this reflex is that while many American liberals claim to be in favor of stong international institutions, in principle, they lack the courage of their convictions and are afraid to advocate concrete proposals for the creation of such institutions. At the same time, the institutional framework of the post-WWII and Cold War era is crumbling. Thus talk of global institutions is increasingly little but a pious gesture in the direction of fond hopes.

Over the past couple of years, I have advocated three specific proposals that, it seems to me, would be steps in the direction of the strong internationalism most progressives claim to favor:

One is creation of a United Nations force that is commanded and staffed by a professional soldiery who enlist in that force, and that force alone. They would not be members of the armed forces of other states. They would not be lend-lease soldiers "tasked" to the UN, and liable to be snatched away. This force would be well-armed and trained, and responsible for global policing and pacification of a vigorous sort. They would also be responsible for apprehending war criminals. They would be under the direct control of the Security Council, responding to recommendations from a committee charged with identifying global policing needs and recommending missions to the Security Council. Permitting their nationals to enlist in such a force would be a condition of UN membership.

The second proposal is a Global Energy Transition Treaty. This would form a global regime for the management of the world's dwindling supplies of petroleum, a broad treaty-based set of global bodies charged with overseeing the transition to a post-petroleum economy. It would be negotiated to balance the needs of consumer-states, producer states, and developing states, to conserve and allocate supplies, to regulate prices, to funnel petrodollars into stimulating and promoting scientific research, and subsidizing technology projects that move us in the right direction. I see this treaty as providing the dominant organizing principle for global affairs and governance over the next several decades.

Juan Cole has an interesting post today that puts forward a comprehensive interpretation of current strategic maneuvering in the globe related to petroleum. Whether Cole's particular interpretaion is correct or not, we all know that something like what he depicts is occurring. We also know that if the global transition continues in the chaotic, competitive, subterranean form it has presently taken, then widespread global violence and resource wars, and probably even a world war, are virtually inevitable.

This is no time for free-trader, "third way" business as usual. The global billions need to do something to take our fate into our own hands, and arrest the fatalistic stumbling and bumbling of self-interested nation-states toward the future we know is coming.

The third proposal is Security Council reform. Both of the above two proposals, and others, will require more effective and dextrous Security Council management. We need a Security Council that is broader based, both more decisive and representive, and less hostage to the veto of single members. It is time to move beyond the 1946 world that no longer exists.

[Dan Kervick]

I understand how power corrupts - our system of governance was designed to prevent its overconcentration. But I don't accept that America is fundamentally unable to exercise global leadership in a constructive manner. Whatever qualms I had with the Beinart book, it is a good reminder of a history of genuine American leadership in the world.

Imagine if the founders of the constitutional system of checks and balances you reference had thought the same way in 1781. Suppose they had said "I don't accept that George Washington and the Continental Congress are unable to exercise national leadership in a constructive. We only need look at the history of the revolutionary war just completed to see an example of genuine revolutionary leadership in the nation."

The result would have been, in the end, despotic authoritarian government and endless civil conflict.

The unique bipolar circumstances of the Cold War - a grand alliance strongly unified by the turbulence of a great war, and by the common threat of a vast, rival global power - no longer exist. We are now in a more conventional system of a large number of rival great powers and emerging powers, engaged in competition for influence, riches and control across the globe. We need sensible government to manage this competition, not revolutionary unipolar leadership.

[Lane Brody]

There are many excellent reasons for the UN to have it's own standing force but leaving aside any reasons why it might not be a desireable situation it's simply not going to happen.

The nations of the world might be willing from to time to commit troops to specific UN sanctioned actions but they are not going to pay for a supra national army controlled by the UN or in other words a mercenary army. The UN is not a nationstate and with all the recent talk of non state actors not having armies the case for the UN having one is a tad weaker.

Frankly Kofi Annan being commander in chief of anything is rather horrific to contemplate. Forces under UN control are not known for good behavior in much of the world and creating a standing force is only one more UN institution open for bribery and corruption.

On a realistic note NATO hasn't managed to create a decent standing force for decades and at least most of those nations have a strong military tradition and a high amount of proffesionalism. A UN standing army would simply cost a fortune and where it couldn't be bribed it's actual military utility would at best be marginal. Not to mention the small matter of paying for it's transport and logistic needs and finding air and naval support.

Even today NATO has almost no strategic airlift and heavily depends on the USAF or leased Anatov's. A UN army without support is just about useless.

[Alena]

I will continue to visit enjoyed the reading thanks