AH Challenge: UN Foreign Legion

Romulus Augustulus

With a POD anywhere after the UN's foundation, and attempting to preserve as much else as possible as it was in OTL, can you have the UN have a permanent military force, essentially a force of mercenaries, known as the UN Foreign Legion, with which it conducts peacekeeping operations in areas termed to be in need of such services and generally tries to keep the world sane and a better, genocide-free place, even though it often screws up, especially in Balkan-type situations? It should be essentially mercenary in character, and you're aiming for a force which is normally between 10,000 and 70,000 mercs in size...

For bonus points, can you have other major powers, besides the French, have large foreign legions they use for neocolonialist meddling in foreign countries?
 

Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy

Banned
I don't think they'd call it "Foreign". The UN is not a country, how can it view someone as a foreigner?

The Spaniards organized one in the 1920s, and it's still around - it has a nice records of people dying during training. I think more French influence in the latter half of the 19th century would do the trick - this would mean avoiding Prussian defeat at least for 2 decades. I can see Prussia imitating the model with Germans in mind, then Russia with Greek Orthodox people, then later Japan with East Asians. I suspect that the people who join the Legion expect to at least see foreign countries, so not any country could have a successful legion. A-H, the US, the UK also seem like countries that wouldn't adopt the system for other reasons.

I've noticed that I turned this into a pre-1900 post.
 

Romulus Augustulus

Well, can you have the UN have a permanent, mercenary-based military force, that's fairly respectable and has at least as storied a combat record as the French Foreign Legion?

It might be popularly known as the UN Foreign Legion.

And by UN I mean United Nations.
 

Straha

Banned
Somehow increase globalist sentiment when the UN is founded. not that difficult. The only impossible star is the "as storied as the french foreign legion part" That's not possible with the UN only having 60 years of history and the FFL a longer time than that...
 

Melvin Loh

Fellas, I did a thesis on the UN 1 of whose chapters covered this exact topic, so I'm pretty familiar with this issue. There are plenty of int'l law journals about the UN having its own standing army, including with the implementation of Art. 43 agreements (no country has ever signed 1, so it's all a dead letter) which allow the UN to have national armed forces signed over to fulfil the Charter's Ch. VII peace-enforcement purposes directly under its command and control, and other proposals under Art. 97 iirc for the UN to have its own directly-recruited military force, similar to the Secretariat, although such a force would probably only be speculated at approx 5,000-10,000. Such latter proposals, which included a 1993 article written by former Under-SG Sir Brian Urquhart (who had also been a 1st Airborne Div intel officer leading up to Op MARKET GARDEN) discussed the possibilities of hiring Gurkhas to fight for the UN, in the same manner as they serve the British Army, or to directly recruit individuals in the same manner as the FFL. Thus far, I believe the only time the UN has recruited its own armed personnel directly was with the lightly-armed 500-strong UN Guards Contingent in northern Iraq from 1991, who took over from the coalition Op PROVIDE COMFORT force providing humanitarian relief to Kurdish refugees.

Hmmm, maybe 1 viable way you can begin to have a UN standing army a la foreign legion, but not of course of the sizes you're mentioning, would be to have the UN from the early 1990s subcontracting private military cos. like EO and Sandline after seeing their phenomenal success in combatting war crimes-committing irregulars in Sierra Leone and Angola, and perhaps even if the SC had adopted ADL's 1994 proposal to employ private security guards to disarm the Hutu armed extremist elements in the Zairean refugee camps. There are BTW also many int'l legal journal articles discussing this concept.
 

Weapon M

Did you mean something like this?

EU to provide "Hit Squads" for UN

by Judi McLeod, Canadafreepress.com

October 13, 2004

With a commitment from the European Union to supply battlegroup "hit squads" in crisis situations for the United Nations in his back pocket, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is talking tough.

"You may not necessarily have to fight," Annan said in an exclusive interview in Monday's Irish Times. "You sometimes have to show force in order not to use force."

In some crisis areas, the inhabitants were intimidated by "local bullies" who would not stand up to an international force, he added.

Is this the same Kofi Annan who "When the first cruise missiles slammed into their targets in Baghdad, retired to his expansive 38th-floor office at UN headquarters, sat at his mahogany desk and slowly smoked a cigar?" (Independent, December 1988).

Annan once explained his private brand of activism to a reporter: "I'm not one of those people who believe you have to pound the table to be tough."

With promised support from the EU and the prospect of the participation of Irish troops, the UN's secretary general is morphing from mealy-mouthed bureaucrat to Mr. Tough Guy before the eyes of the global village.

About to highlight the EU "hit squad" concept in a major speech at the Forum on Europe in Dublin Castle on Thursday, Annan says, "I'm very excited about that prospect, in the sense that there are quite a few problems which you can either contain or nip in the bud if you are able to send in a force quickly."

Sending in forces quickly, Kofi Annan style led to genocide in Rwanda 10 years ago, and an ongoing powder keg in today's Darfur.

With a deadline of this December to report back to Annan, a high-level panel, is expected to urge changes in the concept of state sovereignty so that military action can be taken where states are committing genocide against their own citizens or failing to protect them from extermination.

Sources said the forum was the most appropriate location for Annan's speech because it would ensure that senior politicians and key civil society representatives understood Annan's viewpoint on the value of EU participation, "particularly military action", in crisis management operations.

There were implications also for the forthcoming referendum debate on the European Constitution as it would be clear that the EU-UN military co-operation was "not compromising our neutrality, but rather it is the EU assisting the UN," according to official sources.

The UN and the EU are in sync in promoting the United Sates as the bully superpower.

Annan has said that he considers the U.S. war in Iraq "illegal".

According to an EU exhibition launched in the heart of Brussels last month, the EU is posed to overtake America to become the premier superpower.

The pop-art collage, mounted in a tent outside the European Commission, narrated 50 years of EU history, projecting events into the future in what some called an unusually frank display of European ambition.

Segments stretched across 80 years of canvas predicted that the 21st century will be the "European Century" as the EU pushes its borders deep into Eurasia, North Africa and the Middle East and comes to dominate world affairs through its vast "legal" and "moral" reach.

Under the heading The Roman Empire Returns, it said the EU will be renamed "The Union" once it grows to 50 states over the next three decades.

The EU would then be prepared to defend the international order against the "American onslaught".

Hype aside, in the new EU-UN regime, one bully simply replaces another: "The lonely superpower can bribe, bully, and impose its will almost anywhere in the world, but when its back is turned, its policy is weakened."

Welcome to the international world of a two-headed bully.

Canada Free Press founding editor Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the media. A former Toronto Sun and Kingston Whig Standard columnist, she has also appeared on Newsmax.com, the Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, and World Net Daily. Judi can be reached at: letters@canadafreepress.com.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top