UN "Peacekeepers"

I saw a poster this morning posing the brain teaser: "The UN: Peacekeepers or Imperialists?". To any citizen of planet earth who can register a response on an EEG, the answer is painfully obvious: neither.

The UN as an organisation has been broken for a long time, though recent events serve to highlight its ineptitude. When Israel responded to Hezbollah's cross-border raid in July, it took the UN a full month to broker a cease-fire - and the last troops only just left. The 'peacekeepers' needed to restore order had to be squeezed from unwilling member countries, who didn't want to put their troops in harms way! (They're soldiers, that's their job) While the issue of the invasion of Lebanon is a complex one, the over riding message sent by the UN was: Nations are free to invade whoever they see fit and have at least a month before any international action is taken. Not a great precedent to set in modern times.

The other obvious examples of UN bungling are the continued genocide in Sudan and Iran's unchecked progression towards nuclear weapons. In Sudan, the UN have insufficient political clout to get the government to co-operate (hardly imperialists) and the land itself is strategically insignificant enough to not arouse the interest of its permanent members. Articles are written, Hollywood actors lobby and UN resolutions are debated, but no action is taken. Much has been written about Iran too, but the bottom line there is that the UN policy of placating rogue nations (or at most, writing them softly worded letters) continues to be a failure and not offending Muslim sensibilities has become too high a priority.

When I become President, my highest foreign policy priority will be to overhaul the UN and make it a functional entity (Obviously making the international community care what Australia says will also be a priority). For starters it needs a permanent standing army at its disposal and the ability to deploy them with meaningful mandates. The army should be drawn on a rotating basis from member nations, proportionate to their size and trained specifically for peacekeeping - a very different sort of training to that given to US marines, for example. After the first few successful interventions the new UN may find that there are less wordy resolutions to pass and that the peace is easier to keep.