Many factors have been suggested to explain why NATO forces have arrested only a handful of the several dozen indicted war criminal suspects in former Yugoslavia, and why the great majority of them remain at large.  But there seems little doubt that paramount among them is that national governments have been unwilling to risk significant casualties to do so.  "Successful intervention," said The Economist  recently, "does not win votes; failed intervention loses buckets of them."   Nations, for the most part, dispatch their own troops only to situations where the risk of serious casualties seems low, or the stakes for that nation seem unambiguously high.  One of the few missions that would risk incurring even a few casualties - arresting war criminal suspects - thus far has yet to be undertaken.  For U.S. government policymakers, the Somalia debacle scenario perpetually looms.

   Former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali pleaded with leaders of nearly dozen states to contribute troops to a force to go into Rwanda and stop the carnage.  Estimates later concluded that only a few thousand of well-equipped soldiers early on could have quickly put a halt to most of the bloodshed - especially since the most horrific massacres did not commence until nearly a month after the conflict began.  But the attitude of most states then was expressed by President Clinton:  "We cannot dispatch our troops to solve every problem where our values are offended by human misery.  But we are prepared to defend ourselves and our fundamental interests when they are threatened."

   And Boutros-Ghali, of course, had no "UN troops" that he himself could dispatch.  No Secretary-General ever has.  The United Nations has no army of its own.

National Troops or UN Troops?
Much of the public is likely confused about that point. The past decade has seen a profusion of new UN peacekeeping missions.  But the collective security idea in the UN Charter itself is that national  military forces would be authorized by the UN to stop aggression.  The Security Council, according to Article 42, "may take action...to maintain or restore international peace and security...by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations."  The Charter says nothing about what happens when not a single Member is willing to contribute such forces.  As we now know, what happens is Rwanda.

A UN Volunteer Force
National leaders place national military forces at significant risk only to protect their own citizens and defend their own interests.  This, it would seem, virtually guarantees that mass violence which does not happen to sufficiently engage the interests of any outside state - however horrifying - will in the end go unopposed.  To prevent this, a different kind of military force is required.

   A permanent, highly-trained, directly-recruited UN Volunteer Force would be a military force with a different raison d'etre  from every national military force in the world.  Its purpose would be not to protect and defend the national interests of any particular state, but to serve instead our common human interest in preventing crimes against humanity and promoting a world rule of law.  While called here a UN Volunteer Force (UNVF), it could just as easily be called an Internaitonal Police Force to act as the law enforcement arm of the new International Criminal Court.

   A permanent UNVF would provide the international community with a tool for conflict situations where it appears the interests of outside powers are low and the prospect of significant casualties high.  For the first time, humankind would have an instrument formally tasked to put a stop to mass organized violence, not just because it threatened the interests of other states, but because it was the moral imperative of a human  community.

   Central to the success of such a permanent UN Volunteer Force would be that each recruit would have volunteered to serve in it directly and exclusively.  These would be women and men individually recruited for a military force that has noaffiliation with - and doesn't exist to serve the interests of - their own country.

An Integrated Rapid-Reaction Force
Equally critical to the success of the concept would be that our UNVF would be a standing force, in place, prepared for coordinated rapid-reaction around the globe.  All UN peacekeeping missions today are assembled on what H. Peter Langille has called an "ad hoc, conditional system requiring last-minute political approval  and improvisation prior to each mission."  "We always have to start from zero," says Major General Frank van Kappen, Military Advisor to the Secretary-General.   Slowness is inherent in having to assemble a multinational force from scratch each time a crisis erupts.

   A UNVF could arrest the perpetrators of crimes against humanity.  It could deploy rapidly,  immediately creating “safe areas” and secure humanitarian relief operations, and hopefully put a stop to the conflict itself.  It could, perhaps, even prevent the outbreak of conflict with a swift preventive deployment to a situation where the outbreak of violence seems imminent.