Bring on the peacekeepers? By planning a global peacekeeping army, the Bush administration stays on course for a UN-dominated world.(Iraq)(George W. Bush)

To judge from the media's reaction, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's June 26th speech calling for a U.S.-led world peacekeeping army represented an abrupt change of policy for Washington. Addressing a group of defense contractors, Rumsfeld declared: "I am interested in the idea of our leading, or contributing to in some way, a cadre of people in the world who would like to participate in peacekeeping or peacemaking.... I think it would be a good thing if your country was to provide some leadership for training of other countries' citizens who would like to participate in peacekeeping ... so that we have a ready cadre of people who are trained and equipped and organized and have communications [so] that they can work with each other."

According to an account of Rumsfeld's speech in the June 27th Los Angeles Times, the world peacekeeping army envisioned by the defense secretary "would operate outside the auspices of the United Nations and NATO and would include thousands of U.S. Army troops trained for, and permanently assigned to, peacekeeping work."

An account of Rumsfeld's speech in the Sydney Morning Herald predicts that the proposal "would likely be opposed by the U.S. Army, which has resisted efforts to draw its troops into peacekeeping, especially now that it is stretched thin with operations in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan." But it's important to recognize that the Army--like the rest of our military--is stretched thin precisely because it has been transformed into a world peacekeeping force.

Girding the Globe

At present, some 370,000 soldiers--roughly 70 percent of the Army--are garrisoned in 120 nations around the globe. More than 150,000 of that number have been deployed in open-ended occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Roughly 20,000 U.S. troops are serving under UN/NATO command in the Balkans, and 37,000 more serve as part of a UN-commanded force in South Korea.

Most of the headlines generated by Rumsfeld's proposal pointedly describe it as an alternative to UN-led peacekeeping missions. According to the Australian newspaper The Age, Tom Schieffer, U.S. ambassador to Australia, maintains that "a United States-led international military force [is] needed because the United Nations [is] too focused on process to effectively counter the post-September 11 terrorist threat.... The ambassador insisted that the U.S. was not against the UN, but said it was outdated and too focused on process rather than outcomes to meet contemporary security challenges."

Curiously, however, Rumsfeld himself told reporters on June 27th that the arrangement he suggested "wouldn't be U.S. peacekeeping...." This suggests that the U.S.-created world peacekeeping army--comprised of both American and nonAmerican troops--would be commanded by a multilateral organization of some sort. And right now the only serious candidates for that position are the UN and its NATO subsidiary.