Evil Empire: Peacekeeping is not a commodity

By Alex DeMille

Somalia. Bosnia. Rwanda. These are nations whose names have come to mean more than places on a map. With them come haunting memories of war and slaughter, desperation and despair. They have become tragedies, not countries. And they have one other thing in common: they are the sites of the last decade's greatest United Nations (UN) peacekeeping failures. So when, on Fri., May 5, hundreds of UN peacekeepers were taken hostage by rebel forces in Sierra Leone, it became one failure too many, and an idea long considered taboo became a topic of serious discussion and debate: the use of hired mercenaries to carry out UN peacekeeping missions.

SARAH ENGLAND/YH

That's right. If World War II taught us that the nations of the earth needed to band together in order to prevent another international bloodbath, today's New World Order seems to have taught the citizens of Earth that peace can be sold to the highest bidder, but only if the folks pulling the triggers are hired professionals.

Mercenary groups are privately run armed units, often managed by retired generals or military specialists. They are professionally trained and paid for their work. They are also outlaws, grouped—by a UN committee—under the same category as terrorists and drug traffickers. There are many such groups employed by African governments. Executive Outcomes, one mercenary firm, operates in Freetown, South Africa. In the Congo, a British firm called Defense Systems Ltd. was hired to protect the country's mining and petroleum installations.

According to Mercenaries: The Future of U.N. Peacekeeping? [FOX News, Mon., Jun. 26] voices of support for such a preposterous idea come from both the left and right. Ivan Eland, a member of the conservative think tank Cato Institute, assures nay-sayers that mercenaries would be a safe form of peacekeeping with this gem of insight: "You've got the profit motive in there," he said. "[Mercenary groups] aren't going to be rehired if they don't do a good job." Mr. Eland seems to think that international peacekeeping missions are no different from corporate luncheons—if the caterer isn't any good, hire someone else next time. Except when caterers don't do a good job, you wind up with cold hors d'oeuvres; when peacekeepers screw up, you can reignite a tribal war or fail to prevent genocide.

Liberal pundit Michael Kinsley throws his own brand of cynicism into the mix with his support for the use of mercenaries: "Suppose there was a volunteer corps explicitly devoted to `humanitarian' interventions. Suppose its members could even pick and choose: Rwanda, yes; Croatia, no. Would these soldiers be mercenaries? If so, so what?" Kinsley fails to realize that it is such an attitude that allowed the Rwandan genocide to occur in the first place. It was an ugly mess, little was at stake (other than a few hundred thousand human lives), and no one wanted to put in the money or resources to go in and control the situation. Would the introduction of mercenaries make it any better? No, it would make it worse, because if mercenary groups were going down their list of international "hot spots," they would clearly vote "no" to Rwanda. It's a risky, strategically unimportant area. Thus, the UN allots little money to hiring a mercenary group for that area. Result: no mercenary group takes up the measly offer, and more Africans are left to die amidst the backdrop of international silence.

That such an idea could even be proposed indicates more than simple frustration over recent UN peacekeeping failures like Sierra Leone. It is the beginning of the slow, ugly process of total globalization and the eventual downfall of the nation-state. In essence, the corporate mentality has seeped into some of our most sacred beliefs about humanitarian intervention and international justice. Corporate-minded weasels, whose minds work only in terms of profit motive, are now trying to stake the fate of nations on the human drive to make money. With mercenary groups, there is no public representation. Whereas a conventional UN peacekeeping force has to answer to the nations whose armies they hail from, mercenaries answer to no one but their boss. They represent nothing and no one. Public accountability has been taken out of the equation, and with it, morality and justice.

I suggest that supporters of mercenary action show their true colors with a far simpler plan for peacekeeping: give multi-national corporations like Coca-Cola and McDonald's a financial incentive to raise their own mercenary armies to launch peacekeeping missions. Then, once a certain country or region is under control, they can go in and throw up their plastic arches and cola factories. Presto. A whole populace of peaceful natives who can be bred to become ideal consumers! And if market surveys show that the people of Sierra Leone don't really have a taste for Big Macs, the army of AT&T can go in instead and entice them with low monthly cell phone rates.

If this sounds a bit far-fetched, it really shouldn't. Governments are weakening as corporations expand. National borders all over the world are becoming blurred just as phrases like "corporate loyalty" become more and more common. If the UN buys into the plan of mercenary peacekeeping, it will not only have ruined its legitimacy as an organization founded on morality and humanitarian beliefs, but it will have given credence to the mercenary mentality of expanding corporate power.

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