A real proposal for fixing the UN from the inside

One of the US Presidential candidates you're probably not hearing much about is New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. Part of the reason for this is that he has been squeezed out by all the soft money and media adulation poured on the 3 main candidates: Hillary, Obama and Edwards. The other reason is that Richardson hasn't performed as well as he might have in the Democratic debates, despite the edge he has in diplomatic and executive experience over the other candidates.

This is somewhat disappointing because Richardson has the potential to inject some sound ideas into the debate. One such idea, which he floated during the most recent Democratic debate, was the establishment of a permanent UN peacekeeping force.

Contrary to how it is often measured and criticised, the UN was never intended to play the role of world policemen. It’s primary task, before every other consideration, is to prevent multi-year global conflict, and despite all its other failures, in this it has been remarkably successful.

Despite this, it cannot be denied that the UN is more impotent than it needs to be. The UN never achieved even the limited hard-power capacity that was envisioned for it through the Military Staff Committee. To this day, the UN has no standing army, and depends on member states to provide manpower and logistics for even the most basic operations. This situation creates many problems. Not only is the UN peacekeeping and collective security programme effectively hostage to the politics of nations states, but the burden of the work on the ground tends to fall to poorer nations, whose soldiers are often ill-equipped and trained to be wearing blue helmets, as we have seen in the Congo and elsewhere.

Richardson’s proposal is not the only one of its kind, but he’s one of the only mainstream candidates talking seriously about the issue. In saying that, I deliberately exclude the faux reform agenda of people like Giuliani, on the Republican side, who is being advised by notoriously pugnacious, UN reform pretender John Bolton.