Here come the UN army & police: the Bush administration has helped build a fledgling UN military and police force, increasing the likelihood that the U.S. will eventually subordinate itself to UN authority.

The liberal media have long portrayed the Bush administration as hostile to the United Nations. Yet, Bush's State Department signed a document on September 15 that would result in an unprecedented militarization of the United Nations.

The 2005 World Summit Outcomes document would (among other things) strengthen the military "stand-by arrangements" already in existence with 80 nations (for the United Nations to call up troops from national armies) and would initiate a new standing UN police force. World Summit Outcomes stipulates: "We endorse the creation of an initial operating capability for a standing police capacity to provide coherent, effective and responsible start-up capability for the policing component of the United Nations peacekeeping missions and to assist existing missions through the provision of advice and expertise."

The proposed UN "police capacity" would be charged (at first) with keeping order in zones where UN forces have already been deployed. It's no great stretch, however, to see this gradually mutating into a de facto global police force enforcing UN mandates and arresting individuals for prosecution and trial by UN institutions. Along these lines, it should be especially noteworthy to American gun owners that World Summit Outcomes champions a favorite UN theme: the elimination of civilian ownership of small arms and light weapons. As we have reported extensively in past issues, the 2001 UN "Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects" left no doubt as to the organization's animus toward private ownership of firearms, making no distinction between criminals, terrorists, and law-abiding citizens.

The enhanced new UN "peacekeeping" army call-up arrangements would be roughly analogous to the U.S. National Guard system, whereby states maintain soldiers who can be called up by the federal government. In order to implement the world police and "world guard"-style global army, the document requires the United Nations to establish a Peacebuilding Commission that would be partnered with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

This raises the possibility that a standing UN army may soon be possible without the approval of national governments, even though our governments are providing the funding through the IMF and World Bank. The international banking system could loan the UNDPKO (United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations) funds to hire and equip their own army. The United Nations September summit specifically lauded the efforts of the European Union and the African Union to make such a rapid reaction force ready for the UN's deployment at a moment's notice.

The proposals to enhance the military capabilities of the UN--and to give it a standing police force for the first time--did not arise out of nowhere. Much of the content of the UN World Summit Outcomes was drawn from the Congressional Task Force on the United Nations and its May 2005 report, American Interests and UN Reform. The Task Force on the United Nations membership was composed of a "balance" of socialists/leftists who supported strengthening the United Nations, on the one hand, and Bush administration-style neo-conservatives such as Newt Gingrich, Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation, and Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute who also agreed that the United Nations should be strengthened. Some balance? The guiding hand above and behind all of this was the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Most of the Task Force members (including the two co-chairmen, Newt Gingrich and George J. Mitchell), as well as a large number of the individuals assigned to help as their "experts," are CFR members.

The CFR, which has accurately been called the "invisible government" running America, has been one of the most potent elite forces pushing for world government for the past eight decades. Thus it is not surprising that the Task Force document called for more funding and power for the United Nations, including endowing the UN with a ready-made army using precisely the methods described in World Summit Outcomes. The official UN Outcomes document also follows the Task Force recommendation that "member-states must substantially increase the availability of capable, designated forces, properly trained and equipped, for rapid deployment to [UN] peace operations."

The real concern for the American people should be that President George Bush already has gone even further in pushing for a world army and police force than did the UN in its World Summit Outcomes report. As we have reported here previously, the Bush administration publicly proposed the creation of an immense UN military force in April 2004. The Bush proposal, named the Global Peace Operations Initiative, pledged some $600 million--mostly from the cash-strapped U.S. Defense budget--to train and equip roughly 75,000 foreign military personnel in peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations over five years. * In other words, our own president is on record in favor of stripping resources from our own military in order to use them to build a military force for the United Nations, an organization composed largely of regimes run by terrorists, criminals, deadbeats, and dictators who despise us.

* THE NEW AMERICAN published a cover story warning against this Bush administration initiative in our June 28, 2004 issue. That article, entitled "'Hat in Hand,' on 'Bended Knee,'" is available online at www.thenewamerican.com/focus/un/