By Ankita on Mar 12, 2009 | Reply

Since there isn’t global agreement on what constitutes a global standard for “crime” it would be dangerous to create a global policeman. Whenever the U.N. gets involved it appears to act as a GP but actually depends on individual states for staffing and usually winds up being ineffectual ( e.g. Rwanda, Darfur et al ) and subject to individual sovereignty, anyway ( e.g. Egypt’s Nasser demanded that UN “peacekeepers” leave the Sinai stations in 1967 in order to attack Israel…and they left! ) The U.S. often acts as global policeman and gets little thanks and a lot of opprobrium ( and blood and treasure ) for doing so. Note what happened in Somalia in 1993. Even enforcing UN resolutions as in Iraq in 1991 and again in 2003 cost a lot and didn’t get “us” much credit. Better would be to deploy US military only in areas where American interests are involved (although the Middle East DOES significantly involve U.S. interests, certainly a helluva lot more than acting in Bosnia-Kosovo).