[Essay]Should the United Nations have a standing army?

[Kilroy_x]

Ok, basically this is all I can think of in response.

I haven't studied the UN, so I'm not sure exactly how it works. It seems there are member nations, but that the UN considers itself to be in a position to intervene even in the affairs of non-member nations.

Problems: This paper advocates UN military intervention in circumstances of great conflict, but rejects the legitimacy of US military intervention. Now, the UN may represent a larger portion of the earth, may be less biased towards any one perspective, and my function somewhat democratically, but what does this make UN intervention except an instance of tyranny of the majority rather than a minority such as the US (assuming the nature of the intervention remains the same except for the party engaging in it).

Secondly, the methods the UN military would employ are questionable, as are the possible effects of organizing the military along the lines of UN ideals. This latter part you pointed out yourself by suggesting in the event of intervention against a member nation, soldiers in the peacekeeping forces from that nation could pose a problem.

Basically, and this is getting a little abstract here, the use of interventionary force against any party cannot be justified by conceptions of "legitimacy". Power tends to be something many Philosophers, Economists, etc. think of as a neccessary monopoly. However, from an Anarcho-capitalist perspective such as that of Rothbard in Power and Market, this isn't the case. Here is a quick rundown of how the UN system compares to Rothbards ideals of power distribution:

* To the extent to which UN member nations accept the use of the UN in intervention within UN member nations, including themselves, this represents a somewhat voluntary form of subscription to the services the UN provides. The main difference and problem comes from the fact that it is the governments of these countries which are in the position to deal with the UN, and these governments themselves, even when operated democratically, do not maximize economic utility because not all citizens would willingly subscribe to these services. This means that there is some number of discrete units of demand not met.

* Interventionism stands in direct opposition to voluntary contract. Now, the criticism to this is "no ****", but this is a kneejerk response made in ignorance of the bigger picture. The use of force will almost always represent a violation of the will of the person it is used against, and thus it stands in contrast to voluntary contract; however, the point of using voluntary contract in determining distribution of force is that it minimizes infringement upon voluntary contract.

Getting back to the point at hand, it is true that at least in the case of member nations there is a fair degree of permissability of intervention within their affairs by the UN (See first bullet to see where the gaps come in). Nations and peoples external to this system though shouldn't neccessarily be subjected to it. Now, the response to this usually takes the following course:

"A system which would permit acts of genocide and wholesale slaughter is impermissable. Even if the use of interventionary force also represents violence and coercion, it represents a minimization of such."

I have two responses to this. The first response, which is perverse in the eyes of most, is that human rights are deontologically negative. They exist only where something could be taken away from a person (their life, property, etc.); they only include the right to have things not happen to you. I don't think most people would take issue with this statement, but it's the next part they would find perverse.

Provision of defense, being a service, is not a negative right. The idea of providing force on the basis of negative rights is a failure in language, because this provision is an assumption of a positive right. That something is entitled to be given. There's an intersection here of both emotion and conception, so I don't blame people for getting cross-eyed, but nevertheless I am of the belief this doesn't hold up.

Response two, which is likely more tolerable, consists firstly of pointing out the failure of the UN to actually intervene when things such as Genocide take place. There are sadly current examples of this today. It consists secondly of pointing out that a free market system of providing for police services could easily respond to things such as genocide. There isn't a thing in the world that more demand exists for than safety from death. In acts of genocide, each individual who is being killed has this demand. Now, it certainly is true that in places like africa, these people are extremely impoverished. However, that's no barrier to provision of services. An advancement of services could be made, to be payed off at a later date. In cases of genocide it would likely be easier to pay this off because you're dealing with a consolidated group.

Yes, this way of contextualizing provision of services will also likely strike some people as perverse, but the fact is it would work, and it would likely work better than any existing system. I'd hope most people would agree that salvation at the hands of selfishness is better than death under the auspices of charity.