To make this possible, the United States needs a radical innovation in recruiting policy. We should create a genocide prevention division in the U.S. Army -- a Peace Corps with guns -- with individuals enlisting specifically for this purpose. There would be risks in such a venture, to be sure. But they are manageable and tolerable risks. By contrast, the Darfur genocide is unacceptable, intolerable, and a blight on our collective consciences.
Even if somehow this force proves unnecessary in Sudan -- an unlikely proposition -- there will be other conflicts for which such a force could prove very useful in the future.
The notion is this: of all those well-intentioned and admirable Americans rallying to call attention to Darfur and demand action, ask for volunteers to join a genocide prevention division for two years. They would begin their service with roughly 12 weeks of boot camp and 12 weeks of specialized training -- and then go to Darfur next winter. They would receive the same compensation and health benefits as regular troops, given their age and experience; other incentives such as educational assistance would be made roughly proportionate to their length of service.
This is not a new idea. Retired Col. Austin Bay notes,
What he’s doing is recasting the “peacekeeping brigades” concept from the early 1990s as “genocide prevention.” I wrote a War College sub-course paper in 1997 advocting the creation of two peacekeeping brigades. ... Thepeacekeeping units were MP and engineer-heavy, but had a strike capability. (Again, this is not a new idea.)
The first time I heard of this idea was the early 1980s, and it was not new then, either. But there are some conceptual problems with the idea of a genocide-prevention force such as Hanlon proposes.
As a practical matter, however, despite our professed revulsion at genocide and the “never again” pledge taken so solemnly after the Holocaust, the international community has more-or-less ignored genocide or near-genocide at will. Granted, most of them have been in the context of at least a nominal civil war and none have been quite so systematic as Adolf Hitler’s.
Further, I would dispute the notion that we have a “duty” with regard to mass slaughter elsewhere, regardless of whether it rises to the level of genocide. Humanitarian intervention in the case of famine, drought, and natural disasters is arguably a “duty” and regardless something I tend to support. Stopping other cultures from butchering one another in civil wars, however, falls outside the realm of reasonableness. Stopping the slaughter in Burundi, Zaire/Congo, or Rwanda in the 1990s would have been great but were not vital national interests worth the sacrifice of substantial American blood and treasure. Ditto Sudan now.
Coupling humanitarian motives with national security objectives also makes sense. Would it be worth the commitment of tens of thousands of American troops to establish democracy in a random country in the world that is currently led by a bad guy? Nope. If the bad guy has been a repeated nuisance, is funding international terrorists, and threatening to destabilize a key strategic region? Yep.
Which leads directly to the question I commented on James's post, quite simply, "And just where would we stop?"
Attention is rightly being focused on Darfur and the slaughter there, but let's not kid ourselves that mass killings are not taking place elsewhere. The North Korean regime continues to kill its own subjects with vigor, killings that have been taking place for more than 50 years. If we truly do have a duty to intervene in Darfur, do we not also have a duty to liberate North Koreans from their own murderous oppression?
The answer is, of course, that intervening in Darfur would be "easy" compared to North Korea. At least, that seems to be a subtext in O'Hanlon's proposal, which is why he thinks Darfur could be secured with mere semi-soldiers. But liberating North Korea would mean real war.
Not long before the invasion of Iraq someone asked me whether we should also topple the regimes of all the other dictators in the world - remember that red herring? "If we're going to invade Iraq shouldn't we also invade Iran and North Korea and this place and that place?"
To which I replied, "Yes, we should. But there is a great gap between what we ought to do and what we are able to do or what would be wise to do. The moral considerations are not the only ones."
Yet it is also true, I continued, that simply because we cannot act everywhere that deserves it, we are not therefore paralyzed from acting where we can. So what are the criteria for acting? What makes Darfur deserving of the expenditure of American blood and treasure and not elsewhere?
(Matthew Yglesias and Jane Galt debate the imperative of a Darfur intervention, worth reading, but that specific question is not what I'm writing about.)
If the United States were to form such a force as O'Hanlon proposes, I hope we form it without taking his advice on what it would be like. A "Peace Corps with guns," as he puts it, is a recipe for many American body bags. As others have noted (sorry, can't remember who), the use of military force is normally a matter of last resort but in halting genocide it is necessarily a matter of first resort. After all, when a building is burning, you call the fire department, not debate what less energetic means can be used to halt the inferno.
This means that genocide prevention will almost always require what military planners call "forced entry" into the operational area. For the plain spoken among us, it means breaking in and fighting our way in. In other words, invasion. If the perpetrators of genocide could be merely persuaded to stop, there would be no need for a Peace Corps with guns.
This initial phase, plus the stabilization phases to follow, requires real soldiers, not semi-soldiers who "would begin their service with roughly 12 weeks of boot camp and 12 weeks of specialized training," then go to an operational area. As any soldier or Marine can tell you, boot camp/basic training does not make you combat ready.
O'Hanlon says that limited support from regular military units would be needed, but he's referring to combat power. He's wrong because if you're going to fight your way in - and you are - why would you send in a third-string outfit rather than the first team? Right away it's obvious that the initial-entry force will always be Army or Marine regulars.
But let that pass for now because what O'Hanlon never mentions is logistics capability of his proposed genocide-prevention units. Will they have their own helicopters? Personnel carriers? Trucks? Landing craft? Will they have their own maintenance and supply units? Command, control and communications specialists?
These are crucial questions; as military officers like to say, "Amateurs talk about tactics. Professionals talk about logistics." Any intervention such as O'Hanlon envisions will require long-term logistic support. Where will it come from? Who will command it (which is another way of saying who will "own" it)?
If the Defense Department is not to be logistics provider, then we would wind up duplicating DOD's massive log capability, at least in part, with a parallel structure. That would mean another fleet of aircraft when Congress isn't funding the Air Force's needs now, and perhaps cargo sea vessels. Maybe we're rich enough to do that, but it won't help the budget deficit. It would be more cost efficient and more effective simply to add on to the services' existing logistics capabilities, proportionally to the anticipated need to the size of intervention units.
But that begs the question: Why not authorize greater strengths for the Army and Marines to take into account this kind of mission? There is no "specialized training" O'Hanlon envisions than that already done by the services, with such units and espertise already in place. As a commenter on Austins Bay's site observes, "I think this is called Civil Affairs, and clearly we don’t have enough."
It might be objected that wresting these units away from DOD to use for humanitarian missions rather than "real military" missions would be a bureaucratic nightmare. I say not. First, the units would be inherently under DOD control to begin with. Second, a directive signed by the president of the United States solves the problem. After all, there was no bureaucratic infighting when President Bush ordered the Navy, Air Force and Marines to conduct very large-scale humanitarian assistance in the days following the genocide-scale tsunami disaster of December 2004 in the Indian Ocean.
In sum, if the United States is to establish a permanent capability for the kinds of interventions O'Hanlon describes, it should be placed within the Defense Department, fully funded, trained, equipped and staffed, including additional logistics units and personnel. Additional combat units should be authorized for the initial phases and security troops (Austin bay says military police units) for stablization operations.
Halfway measures with halfway troops won't cut it.
Good post. I agree that creating a duplicate logistical system would be completely insane. And whoever owns the logistics owns the force.
See also Thomas Barnett's SysAdmin force.
I think we're on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand our hearts go out to the people who are being murdered and assaulted. But on the other we're not the only people in the world.
Before we create such a new force I think that we ought to exert substantial efforts on the diplomatic fronts (both public and private) and the economic leverage fronts on the other middle class and wealthy nations of the world.
Consider, for example, this post from ComingAnarchy on French, Dutch, and Italian deployments outside their borders. We certainly value the work that they're doing but it's ridiculously small relative to their resources.
Why do we treat the nations of the new middle class including China, India, and Mexico as though they were poor relations? They're ready to shoulder some responsibilities, too.
The answer, of course, is that
- we don't want any other countries to get too powerful
- much of the rest of the world is composed of amoral shmucks
- much of the rest of the world will be willing to behave like infants as long as we're willing to treat them like infants
If we're going to undertake the sole responsibility for preventing genocide (presumably only in countries that are too weak to put up much resistance), we should hoist the Jolly Roger, formally abandon the charade that the UN has any say whatever in the use of military force by sovereign nations, and be prepared for the consequences.
And, also pretty obviously, if we don't take the responsibility a lot of people will be killed in a lot of places that we could have saved and we'll have to be prepared for the consequences of that, too.
I do think that anyone who sincerely favors the creation of additional units so that we can undertake more of these responsibilities should also step up to the plate, explain how we're going to finance it, and demonstrate how that's politically possible.
Mark Steyn's recent essay New coalition of willing needed in Darfur is bracing background reading for this discussion.
Something from this post that makes me shudder:
Hanlon should try talking to a cop about why handling domestic disturbances is easy compared to other situations. Or perhaps he should read "Black Hawk Down."
"Peace Corps with Guns" intervention in Darfur will be interpreted by many as Crusader Imperialist American Go-It-Alone Aggression Against Indigenous Muslim victims, and It's The Oil as well. That a portion of the American Left can, for the moment, prospectively, view the idea favorably is nice, but hardly key.
Once the evening teevee news is filled with cheap but compelling shots of American body bags and the weeping widows of Black and Arab Sudanese felled by American bullets, will Hanlon still stand up for this policy, or will the inevitable missteps mean that it has become "insupportable," at least as implemented by The Current Administration?
Seems we've been there before.
Certain cases of genocide fit the strategic and theological imperatives of certain interested parties. For that matter, you could add that qualifier to the definition of genocide. It doesn't just happen, it's made to happen and actively promoted from within and from outside. The Janjaweed will fight on the strength of their beliefs, and their supporters will back them to the hilt.
And I wouldn't count on much long-term gratitude from the Darfur victims our armed Peace Corps would be working to rescue. To make that assumption belies a profound lack of understanding of the terrible straits that the survivers would face, even after the most successful anti-genocide actions.
Hanlon says:
True enough. Like George Clooney, I'm not against Western action in Darfur and elsewhere. But policies that are proposed in willful ignorance of both geopolitical realities and human nature are destined to fail.
Slightly off topic: I used to think I was on the same page with some acquaintances who shared my disapproval of an unbalanced situation where America's military is insanely over-powerful in relation to what other civilised countries have.
After 11 September, 2001, I discovered the difference.
I wanted us all to take a bit less of a free ride on the Americans, pull our weight more, help stabilise the globe (and do more to relieve the immediate crisis of American security), and earn the right to be consulted more, reducing America's freedom but first and more importantly its need to act unilaterally in a crisis. I summed up my proposed alteration in the balance of military power as: "A coffee break for Atlas!"
I hadn't understood that for others "America is over-powerful in relation to other civilised countries" meant "France is right: the hyperpuissance needs to be knocked down a few pegs! And a united European force, with the power to balance against America [that is: pointlessly obstruct America] will be a good thing." This was with the fires of the World Trade Centre still burning deep below the wreckage of it all.
That ended those pseudo-friendships. We had been on the same word - on different pages in different books.
It's kind of disgusting to realise that for a lot of people "Blame America!" is a perfectly adequate solution to security problems, including the problem of genocide. It wouldn't be, if they cared at all about the victims.
Sorry, you're on your own for the time being. Your allies like taking the free ride, and that won't change.
The people with dreams of greater military power are either not your friends and unwilling to pay for their dreams anyway (France), or willing to pay and really, really not your friends (China).
I do not think you can do very much better than you are doing.
Re: consequences
We might be paying closer attention to some of the recent speeches by Putin. Our willingness to intervene can be pretty disquieting to those who pretty apparently consider themsselves potential intervenees. American adventurism (regardless of the benignity of the motive) may be creating a Coalition of the Unwilling.
One potential problem: issues about what really falls under the mission definition of the force. For example, some might think that it could reasonably be deployed in Iraq, given Saddam's genocide against the Kurds, but "progressives" who enlisted envisaging things like Kosovo and Darfur might feel that this is not what they joined for...
Ironicaly enugh, Sadam's treatmentof the Kurds was more of a genocide than what happened in Kosovo.
Unarmed Peace Corps? Truth, Peace, Justice should be champing at the bit.
Secondly, when you have a unit with a big GENOCIDE label on it, the location of that unit on the map will be a constant source of controversy. What is it doing here, and why isn't it over here? (The leftheads, of course, will immediately demand that it be sent to the West Bank.) Deploying troops in foreign countries is a tricky diplomatic process which often demands that the reason for deployment be vaguely stated, concealed, or even lied about. If you send a "genocide prevention" unit to an Arab country, that will be taken as an insult to all Arab countries and they will oppose it - whereas ordinary military forces might have been perfectly acceptable.
The whole blue beret concept is wrong-headed to the core, and the dangerous elements of the world have learned to treat it with contempt: In Egypt, in Lebanon, in Rwanda, and in the Congo where UN Peacekeepers were forced to surrender to an army of French and Belgian mercenaries. This idea is just as bad, or worse.
What isnt being considered here is the objectives of such a force. Are you simply guarding the victims or are you eliminating the source of the genocide? Or Both?
#10, I'd say that's the very crux of the problem. "Protecting the victims" means putting yourself between the murderers and their targets; what happens when you leave after a few years without removing the murderers, or their intent to murder (or without evacuating the victims)? You basically build in a self-entraping system that permanently ties down forces all over the place, while simultaneously making them targets for the thwarted genocidial thugs.
"Eliminating the source of the genocide" is, I think, what Sensing was referring to when rejecting a force of debaters with guns. If elimination is your objective, send in the world's current leader in targetted elimination: the US Marine Corps. Why settle for anything less? (Oh, and don't forget to hire a media-saavy front man too, cause you'll be spending the next 4 years explaining to lefties why it's not "imperialism", without hope that they'll get the point.)
I do think that anyone who sincerely favors the creation of additional units so that we can undertake more of these responsibilities should also step up to the plate, explain how we're going to finance it, and demonstrate how that's politically possible.
I'm not particularly sincere, but --
Invite the Roman Catholic Church to do it. Let them accept american volunteers and let US monetary contributions be tax-deductible.
If it works out other NGOs might start other genocide-prevention military units that might sometimes do cooperative ventures with the catholics and might sometimes go it alone in things the catholics stayed out of.
There are various advantages to this. Better if it isn't part of a government or controlled by a government.The priests have done a lot of complex thinking about fairness and just war and such, which might come in handy. And next time somebody asks how many divisions the Pope has, it wouldn't particularly hurt if the answer was two or more.
Give Sandline or Blackwater a cost-plus contract.
PMCs also have various types of medical and civil affairs capabilities, or can put them together.
Define the contract as the regime no longer wants to mess with Darfurians--either because the regimesters are dead, intimidated, or retired--the gangs ditto, and minimal infrastructure is in place.
This is hardly a situation to jib at what the PMCs do to or with the bad guys.
Give Sandline or Blackwater a cost-plus contract.
Oh. My. God.
I thought I was being outrageous, but you have by far outdone me.
This is hardly a situation to jib at what the PMCs do to or with the bad guys.
Don't define the job by the first client. In general when we go into an ethnic-cleansing operation and we pick which side is the Bad Guys, we are going to mess up. Lots of ethnic-cleansing situations have a long complex history, without any particular good guy. In the balkans multiple sides were using the same techniques -- we decided that the most successful of them were the Bad Guys. They fought harder because they had no assurance we would protect them when they turned into the weaker side; they were looking at taking what they'd dished out.
The usual case is that they're all bad guys and the job for interventionists is to find ways to protect them from each other and somehow persuade them to live together in peace. You don't do that by picking one side to be the Bad Guys and declaring them fair game.
Palestine is the obvious example. Sure, the israelis are treating them pretty terribly but few americans would argue that the palestinians are the Good Guys. There aren't any good guys in that conflict, it's all bad guys. Sure, palestinians need somebody to protect them from israel but it's way oversimplified to say we musn't jib at what the foreign forces do to the bad-guy israelis. That's just way too simple.
Don't the Green Berets have the best capability in this area already? They aren't specifically genocide prevention, but since they would be training folks to fight back effectively, wouldn't that more or less take care of the problem?
What is in Darfur that is worth the life of a single Mississippi teenage paratrooper?
There have been a number of wars and genocides and slaughters since the Holocaust, particularly in Africa. How has the rest of the world been affected by the deaths of all these people? In what way would the world be a better place if all the victims were still alive? In what ways is the world poorer for their demise? It is heartless and cruel to be so blunt, but maybe all these people were not rescued because the cost to the potential rescuers was not considered worth the reward.
If sovereign states don't have the right to monopolize the use of lethal force and kill their own citizens when they deem it necessary, who does? I prefer a sovereign United States and reject foreign interference in our internal affairs. If we do away with national sovereignty, we are left with global government or global anarchy.
Once we have established the precedent that the Anglosphere is morally bound to respond to all genocides, then the enemy need only scatter our forces to the four winds by massacres in diverse places.
We have finite resources. Some tasks, no matter how noble, will have to be taken up by someone else, or left undone.
I like the idea. But then again I recently proposed the creation of the American Foreign Legion for use in peacekeeping missions.
If sovereign states don't have the right to monopolize the use of lethal force and kill their own citizens when they deem it necessary, who does?
I hope you're joking. If you're not, are you American? Hope not.
If we do away with national sovereignty, we are left with global government or global anarchy.
As Thomas Jefferson said:
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
I don't think he was a big supporter of a powerful state, especially genocidal 'national sovereignty'
We should abandon the idea that the international community or the UN care about fighting genocide. They don't and they won't.
Independent international NGO's funding private security groups are the best way to currently deal with this sort of thing. If states aren't willing to defend people, then people have to work together to defend themselves. Giving Sandline or Blackwater a cost-plus contract is the best idea out there.
Who are the bad guys? Well, the government supported al Qaeda. They also support the janjiweed. They sound like the best candidates.
The independent contractor solution is working for these people, who have basically hired their own navy. How many billions of dollars are we wasting on the UN and their pacifist NGOs in the Sudan? That money could be put to better use.
The idea of using private security companies for any such operation is a complete impossibility.
Between the United Nations hostility to "mercenary" forces and several international treaties virtually criminalizing same, there is simply no way that private security companies could provide such forces without being subject to treatment as war criminals across the world - but especially in Africa.
Actually, it has been done, in Africa. Successfully. And the international treaties have a very limited number of signatories.
No, mary, I'm not joking, and I am proud to be an American.
Do the police in your town carry guns, mary? Local, state and Federal law enforcement officers are usually armed, and empowered to kill people, legally. That's what I mean by a monopoly on the use of deadly force. Americans allow agents of their governments to kill people all the time. Our police are much more professional than the Janjaweed militia, and they must justify their shootings and be held accountable, but not to the Sudanese, or the Euroweenies.
Does the state you live in have the death penalty, mary? Many states do. Let us say for the sake of argument that your state does execute convicted murderers. Does some coalition of Belgian anti-capitalist activists have the right to organize a force to invade your state to stop the executions?
Whatever the US and it's partners do to Sudan on behalf of the Darfuris sets a precedent. Failed states and rogue states challenge the whole concept of national sovereignty, but if we decide to do away with it, how is the world to be run?
Canonner, this is going to be a little free form for me.
Monopoly is the stickler for me. The sovereign doesn't have the monopoly on violence in the US. Self defense and Second Amendment. In fact in the Sudan, I think a little healthy competition in the market of comodified violence is absolutley neccessary.
In the Sudan, the national government isn't the monopoly on violence either. It's a Sudanese ethnicity (Arab) that has the monopoly, privately and publicly, to go after other Sudanese who are absolutlely stripped of that right (Dinka, Copts, Darfuri Muslims), to publicly go after Non Sudanese (assassination attempt on Hosni Mubarrak in Addi Ababa in mid 90's) and even to privately go after non Sudanese (coup attempt in Chad).
The players in the Sudan aren't national players, and they don't recognize national conventions. They are the breakown of national recognition. They are hypertribal. They are ethnic.
What about what the French Foreign Legion and British were doing with the Chadanians against Libya? There was a network of supply (Milan anti tank missiles and Toyota trucks) and training.
In fact, the British had an excellent system: Soldiers of the Crown. They would "retire" an officer for two years or so and send him as a private citizen to a hot spot. He would do whatever he felt was neccessary, protecting the national interests pretty faithfully, and in two years he would return and be reinstated and then promoted as if he had never left.
Government is not the sole purveyor of violence. That is not what I mean by monopoly. You, if, in the exercise of your Second Amendment rights, kill someone, face an entirely different accountability than a law enforcement officer who does the same thing. A SWAT cop can put a bullet in someone's brain from 100 yards away, someone who poses no threat to him, who isn't even aware of him. Your marksmanship may be up to that task, but your lawyer probably isn't. Government agents who kill people in the line of duty have a presumption of legitimacy that armed citizens who kill people do not.
Governments, local, state and Federal, can use deadly force on non-compliant citizens, and get away with it, because the law says they can. Every nation-state in the world has agents and police and Interior Ministry troops and armed bodies of men empowered to kill their fellow citizens in the service of the state.
The janjaweed militia are a paramilitary body indirectly controlled by Khartoum. Any "peacekeepers" would require the cooperation of Khartoum, which is unlikely.
If the West was serious about relieving the sufferings of the Darfuris, Chad would be encouraged and assisted in annexing Darfur and defending it from Sudanese counterattacks, but what's in it for Chad? What's in it for the West?
Blair,
Toyota Wars may interest you.
on 2 January 1987, near Fada: during a short battle, a whole Libyan armored brigade was decimated: 784 Libyan troops were killed, 92 T-55 MBTs and 33 BMP-1 AFVs were destroyed, while 13 T-55s and 18 BMP-1s were captured and 81 Libyans were taken POW. All of this in exchange for 18 dead Chadian troops and three destroyed Toyota trucks!
If sovereign states don't have the right to monopolize the use of lethal force and kill their own citizens when they deem it necessary, who does?..No, mary, I'm not joking, and I am proud to be an American.
Your statement indicates an attitude that's somewhat more authoritarian and stasist than Mao. Giving the state the power to commit genocide was not a goal that America was founded on. Most of us still pretty much object to the concept.
Whatever the US and it's partners do to Sudan on behalf of the Darfuris sets a precedent. Failed states and rogue states challenge the whole concept of national sovereignty,
Given that our current system of of national sovereignty mixed with a pacifist UN seems to have led to a plague of genocides, maybe we should realize that the concept is flawed. If it's not working, we should fix it.
but if we decide to do away with it, how is the world to be run?
Let's find out.
I am neither particularly authoritarian, nor statist, nor Maoist.
You do not seem to understand the power of life and death the state has over you. Ask the Branch Davidians. Ask Randy Weaver.
I actually prefer genocide in obscure corners of Africa to New World Order global government.
Let us not find out how the world would be run without sovereign nation-states. The Unites States finds it hard enough already to deal with non-state actors
Thanks for the compliment on marksmanship. SWAT can't shoot with impunity, though. There has to be a threat to someone, and there are rules of engagement to ensure for appropriate force. The Janjaweed are effectively acting with impunity. They have no rules of engagement, or if they have rules, they are so scant as to be nonexistant. I don't even think they are legally sanctioned by the Sudanese government. So they are defacto agents if not dejure. Our resons for involvement in this case would not be hampered by considerations of sovereignty, I think.
One point that has been pointed out by folks in the area is that most of this is noncommercial. They don't need slaves since the Sudanese economy is swimming in labor. They aren't even stealing the land since they are spiking the wells with corpses. This is an attempt to wipe out a people for pure murder. And they're willing to cross borders to do it.
Incentivize Chad to wallop the Sudanese. That's the best option presented. Economic aid? Investment? Where is Chad on the continuum of sane vs. crazy?
I'll confess to have entertained the notion that the Janjaweed aren't entirely militas, but are the Arab League's Condor Legions in a live fire exercise, Dafuri villiages playing the role of Guernica. They seem to be perfecting their form.
Nice link on Toyota Wars! Thanks.
I actually prefer genocide in obscure corners of Africa to New World Order global government.
The UN's global government PLUS death-dealing nation-states are the cause of the problem. There are other choices out there.
The Unites States finds it hard enough already to deal with non-state actors
..because the traditional nation-state + the UN as "protector" pardigm isn't working.
I'll confess to have entertained the notion that the Janjaweed aren't entirely militas, but are the Arab League's Condor Legions in a live fire exercise, Dafuri villiages playing the role of Guernica. They seem to be perfecting their form.
I think that's what's going on too..
Three different people have agreed on cost-plus contracts.
Think about that. Paying mercenaries to maximise their costs. Any second thoughts?
This is an idea way past its shelf-life. Its use-by date should have expired some time around 1953 or earlier. But somehow there are people who still take it seriously. Like it got fossilized in amber or something, and the bureaucracy is still stuck to it.
The first time I thought he was joking. But two people responded like they were serious. This is a more subtle, more profound threat to the republic than support for the iraq and iran wars.
Mercenary cost-plus contracts. Paying mercenaries to maximise their costs. Think about it.
i think the question of the relationship of a US peacekeeping force to the regular military should be seperated from the question of intervention to stop genocide (despite the existence of such a force perhaps making the latter easier)
We need SOMETHING like a peacekeeping force, or sysadmin force, quite apart from the issue of genocide. Oxblog raised that some time ago. Yes, there are problems, such as the issue of how much organic fighting ability it should have, and where its logistics support comes from. But there are problems with using the USMC and Army in that role, which involve overdeployment, lack of specific capabilities, and wearing away of the focus on "breaking things". As Oxblog raised, there may well be young people whod be interested in a peacekeeping force, and willing to accept a high pace of depolyment, who arent interested in the regular military.
Is expanding the Civil affairs units a better idea? maybe. But its worth debating.
Meanwhile, we need to figure out what our approach to genocide is, quite apart from how we organize our armed forces.