Global Policy Forum

By Michael Hirsh

Citing the recent peacekeeping disasters in East Timor and Sierra Leone, Newsweek correspondent Michael Hirsh argues that neither an underfunded U.N. nor an unwilling United States can successfully play globo-cop. Instead, the world should turn to regio-cops--regional forces backed by U.N. authority--to intervene in today's ever-growing ethnic and religious conflicts. The solution is not perfect, but it may be the only workable way for the international community to stop the atrocities.

[I]n a globalized world dominated by Western mores, people ... simply do not want to see slaughter on their TV screens. ... [T]hey will usually demand that their governments do something about it-usually something fast and easy. ... So intervention will continue. But if we stick to the present system, this intervention is doomed to remain amateurish, late, and woefully under-resourced, as the experiences in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone have shown.

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