Now that the Iraqi conflict has evolved into a rather nasty
restructuring effort, costly in lives and money, and other world hotspots have become, if
anything, more worrisome, it might pay to look back and see what might have been done
differently had we used less muscle and more imagination.
It seems to have been overlooked by the news media back then, but there was one point
upon which there was absolute agreement among all the delegates who participated in last
March’s, United Nations debate on the proposed Second Resolution on Iraq: the
Russians, the Americans, the French, the British, the Syrians, etc. Paraphrased in one
form or another, the message was consistent and unmistakable. "Force must be the last
resort."
Unanimity among that many diplomats from so many places should have been a warning
call. They were, in my opinion, unanimously wrong. Force should have been the first
resort. In Iraq and in a dozen other bedlams around the world. If at first this seems a
brutish notion, I would argue that it could lead to a world considerably more peaceable
and secure than the one we are experiencing at the present.
Force as the first resort! The thought alone is enough to send cultured young ladies
swooning onto the nearest divan, United Nations delegates dispatching word to their
capitals of yet another trigger-happy American cowboy run amuck, and pacifists herding
their children out of earshot. Nor is it hard to imagine what responses such apostasy
might provoke in the media: "barbarous!" "insensitive!" "gross
disregard for human life!" "why the very idea is a throwback to the Middle
Ages."
On the other hand, were those who object to the notion of early forceful intervention
to glance out their window when a policeman happened to be walking past, they would see a
living, breathing vestige of the medieval bestiality they find so distasteful. Surely
there can be no argument that the police represent an instrumentality of brute force. At
their waist they carry a revolver, their squad cars contain more lethal weaponry, they are
equipped with radios that can summon as many similarly armed enforcers as necessary to
quell any opposition, and on their chests they proudly wear badges authorizing their
execution of fellow human beings. Moreover upon any outbreak of lawlessness, society has
delegated them to utilize whatever force is necessary to restore order—force that is
legally authorized and applied in overwhelming strength at the earliest possible moment.
Which raises an interesting question. Why do the United Nations delegates, who so
vigorously deplore the use of force internationally, permit—nay, encourage—these
police "bad guys" to roam their streets at home and present such an affront to
their peaceable proclivities? Why do they not, for example, insist that these uniformed
fear merchants be exchanged for roving bands of social workers trained to pacify evildoers
by such civilized, UN-approved, means as reasonableness, negotiations, and express good
will? The questions answer themselves. The fact is populations all over the world thank
their lucky stars that policeman are afoot and reserve the bulk of their complaints on
there not being enough of them. Had there been any doubts on this matter, I trust they
were dispelled by the events in Baghdad on April 11 and the days following.
Given that every nation on earth relies on law enforcement internally, why are these
same nations so reluctant to rely on it externally? Logic would seem to argue that, if
anything, the opposite were true. Internal rogues might be responsible for a score or two
of deaths, at worst, whereas external rogues might very well be responsible for millions
of them. In short, why is it the world’s diplomats not work towards a truly
functional World Police Force? The answer is, in my opinion, that there is no good answer.
There are, however, a number of bad ones.
1. A WPF is unnecessary. Since the end of World War II, there
have been some two-hundred and fifty wars throughout the world—over four a year on
the average. Sadly, there is no reason to believe that this pace will diminish given the
toxic mix of evils swirling around this sphere of ours: overpopulation, food and water
shortages, environmental degradation, and a tinderbox full of economic, racial, national,
religious, and ethnic resentments. Moreover there seems to be a never-ending succession of
nut-cake leaders striding onto the world stage by capitalizing on these issues—each
eager to contribute his own ingenuity to the horrific acts of his predecessors and each
more fearsomely armed. In short, as things now stand, future-armed conflicts and their
disastrous consequences are inevitable.
Assuming the above to be a fact of modern life, then the question is can anything be
done to interrupt this sequence of dire events? Depending on the United States to do the
job is a self-defeating proposition. Even if we manage to convince the rest of the world
of our noble intentions—in itself a highly problematic assumption—the cost, in
the long run, is simply too prohibitive for any one country to bear. Counting on the
United Nations, absent a WPF, offers even less hope for world peace. Reliance upon debate,
economic sanctions, and U.N. resolutions to halt a determined dictator may keep a
good-sized bureaucracy employed but, otherwise, has proven to be woefully ineffectual.
Resorting to non-violent means as a first resort is tantamount to the folly, mentioned
earlier, of substituting social workers for police; it doesn’t work. The only agency
that holds the promise of maintaining world peace is a World Police Force. It is vitally
necessary.
2. A WPF is unrealistic, Pollyanish. The personal safety
enjoyed today by the inhabitants of developed countries is a relatively recent phenomenon.
One doesn’t have to go back many centuries to a time when marauding brigands, local
feuds, and arbitrary rule made life itself for the average person a chancy proposition.
Gradually, in many parts of the world, populations learned to protect themselves by
setting up institutions at the local level, then regionally, and finally
countrywide—the governing principle being that scope of law enforcement be comparable
to that of the criminal activity it was assigned to overcome. Given that the threat to our
present safety includes international terrorism and nuclear armed ballistic missiles that
can be targeted anyplace on earth, it is clear that law enforcement must be international
as well. In other words, the creation of a World Police Force, rather than being
Pollyanish, would be no more than the natural culmination of an age-old self-evident
trend.
One could reasonably argue that, regardless of its merits, it is unlikely that WPF
could ever be imposed top-down upon all the nations of the world given the level of
distrust between them and the political ramifications involved. On the other hand, nothing
need prevent an unimpeded international convention, presumably under UN auspices, from
drafting a model, uniform body of law under which a future WPF might operate. And once
such a model code was in existence, various country groupings would, I believe, come to
find its promised advantages compelling enough to establish, in their particular regions,
police forces governed by the model code’s provisions. Hopefully, the success of such
regional forces would dictate their eventually being aggregated, in a bottom-up fashion,
into a truly international body.
3. A WPF would lead to a police state. Just the opposite. A teacher
might have a masters degree in education and a dozen credit hours in child psychology, but
if she cannot establish order in her classroom, she will never have a chance to put her
skills into practice. The same holds true in the political cosmos. It is anarchy that
gives rise to dictatorships and it is civil order that permits democracies to take hold.
Thus the argument for the application of legal force as a first step is likewise an
argument to enable peaceful endeavors as a second step—i.e., an international system
of justice, individual freedom, social justice, free markets, charitable pursuits,
protection of property, and the like.
4. A WPF would be ineffective. Under typical circumstances,
simply the threat of applying overwhelming physical strength, coupled with a WPF’s
moral authority, would induce compliance from criminal countries in the same way that the
very appearance on the scene of local police normally encourage felons to throw up their
hands.
And were immediate surrender not forthcoming, a WPF would be likely to encounter only
minimal resistance provided it got to the trouble spot at the first sign of trouble. No
more than a brigade of soldiers, for example, would have been needed to rout Saddam
Hussein from his seat of power twenty-four years ago when he began turning the Bathist
Party into the Bloodbathist Party of his dreams. Again local police provide the model. By
strictly implementing the law’s minor provisions—by nipping trouble in the bud,
as it were—they ensure that its major provisions are, for the most part,
self-enforced.
Even under the worst possible circumstances—i.e., when the perpetrator was
inadvertently allowed to go unchallenged long enough for him to consolidate his
power—a WPF could still be dominate enough to make short work of the job. The United
States Armed Forces brilliantly demonstrated the power of technologically superior arms in
Kuwait, Afghanistan, and now Iraq. Indeed, as yet another of history’s delicious
ironies, these recent US military campaigns may come to be seen as preliminary—albeit
unintentional—test trials for a World Police Force that will obsolete the need for
large standing armies altogether. Armies, unlike police, are essentially unlawful entities
and their eventual disappearance would be all for the good.
All such surmises as to the effectiveness of a WPF would be contingent, of course, on
its freedom to function autonomously. Any attempt to hamstring a WPF’s ability to
respond in a timely manner to violations of international law, would obviously cripple its
role. A police sergeant does not have to await a vote by the Board of Aldermen before
determining (1) whether the reported disturbance rises to a level requiring response (2)
what are the legal parameters within which he has latitude to act? and (3) what is the
appropriate force level to assure restoration of peace in the shortest period of time? The
administrator of a WPF would have to be free to proceed in a similar manner without being
required to await UN authorization.
5. A WPF would be unaffordable. On the contrary. By eliminating
the need for large standing armies and the arms races that attend them, the overall
savings that a WPF could achieve are incalculable. Add to that the worldwide peace
dividend that would result and anyone living in a post WPF era would have to wonder at the
inertia that delayed its benefits for so long.
6. A WPF would restrict national sovereignty. It depends on how
one defines national sovereignty. Certainly the formation of a WPF would curtail some
defense and state department activities that we have traditionally regarded as vital to
our security. But if we in fact become more secure as a result at far less cost than
before, then the tradeoff of symbolism for concrete benefits would seem to be ultimately
sensible.
Case closed!
Afterword:
"War in Congo Has Killed at Least 3.3 Million," (Headline in Wall Street
Journal, April 9, 2003) Day after day, we get a litany of reports of armed conflicts, the
threatened use of weapons of mass destruction, appalling instances of genocide, gross
violations of human rights, and so on. Our reaction? We have become so inured to tragedy
that we accept it as an inevitable manifestation of the "human condition." But,
I think it safe to say, that were a visitor from a truly civilized planet to survey our
world scene, he would be shocked, if not sickened, by what he saw. Rather than view our
disasters as inevitable, he would unhesitatingly pronounce them self-inflicted on the
grounds that they could have been readily prevented by a police force such as that enjoyed
by his own native planet. And when he noticed that there were, in effect, gated
communities within which privileged communities were shielded from the chaos without, he
would accuse, in the harshest terms his language allowed, those inside the gates of
unpardonable callousness for denying their civil order to the world beyond.
