Who Likes Solutions?

Citizens for Global Solutions is a great organization committed to a liberal internationalist approach to the world (the UN, multilateral nuclear disarmament, foreign aid, that kind of thing) and they put questionnaires out to congressional candidates and have posted the answers they got. Some of these candidates impress more than others, but of course the people you really need to worry about are the ones who don't bother to respond.

Comments

Those questions, with the exception of the specific Darfur one, were pretty vague and/or lightweight, and missed a whole mess of international issues. (But I'll give a pass on the first two, as being appropriate general philosophy questions.)

And I didn't know what UNEPS was before, but after googling, it is a absolutely terrible idea. The fundamentally flawed assumption it's based on is the only thing preventing crisis response is some sort of technical hurdle. If we just had the troops and support personnel at the ready, they would be able to swoop in and 'fix the glitch.'

First, there really aren't any technical hurdles to deployment that the US isn't already best in the world at overcoming. Any new force will be way behind the power curve, and for a long time.

Second, militaries don't operate in a vacuuum, at least the good ones don't. They need political leadership. You really don't want to have it any other way. So any UN force would require the UN leadership (and presumably the Security council). Which would mean you really don't have any change in how the system works, or does not work, now.

And if you want to give the Secretary General or someone else plenary power to use this force, well, that'll be enough to make me join the black helicopter crowd.

Posted by Kolohe | July 23, 2008 11:02 AM

I'd like to know which candidates returned the questionnaire shredded into confetti. Note that the person MattY's in the tank for has a bill similar to their poverty question.

Posted by TLB | July 23, 2008 1:02 PM

I too did some research into the UNEPS, and it probably confirms things the JBS was saying in the 50s. It would give the UN a standing army.

And, here are the candidates who support it.

Posted by TLB | July 23, 2008 3:14 PM