STRENGTHENING THE UNITED NATIONS

XVIII.

The Role of Force

The million and more people who must activate the coming world revolution will logically be required to take innumerable measures. In every case, the question arises: "How must this event be made to occur?" Perhaps in five out of ten cases, the action can be generated out of consent, from the spreading consensus, and the techniques of persuasion and propaganda. In four of the ten cases, organizational and economic measures will produce the intended result. But what of the tenth case? What is the technique of the tenth case? And the answer is "Force."

In the end, then, if not in the beginning, reformers must admit that force is vital to their enterprise, and that their pacifism, if carried to an extreme, will destroy the very world we would pacify. Whether the skill in coercion is found among civilians or the military is not important; it is more important that the expert on force know when and how to decide upon compulsion, and how to do the job efficiently. And the military must also plan for useful employment to occupy its resources of personnel and machines when off the field of physical force.

Rainbow Units of the United Nations, held in leash invariably, none the less useful, are not comparable to a fully integrated, clearly missioned and decisively directed World Armed Force. With a World Armed Force, an eclipse of large-scale violence could be expected in cases like Somaliland, Lebanon, South Africa, Ethiopia, the Sahara, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, the Falklands, Afghanistan, Cyprus, Bangladesh, Panama and Northern Ireland. A weighty factor would be the neutrality and universality of the uniformed force of the Union; many hostilities are provoked by the presence of armed forces serving one of the parties to a quarrel.

There have been only half a hundred days of worldwide peace since World War II; violence is not diminishing over the years, and where technologically advanced arms and tactics are thrown into the fray by one side, the response usually turns to guerrilla warfare and terrorism, with destructive effects upon the economy and human rights. Such fratricidal mania would be less likely against a true World Force.