Bush may forge new model for global peacekeeping

The US would "provide leadership for training of other countries' citizens" who would make up this "ready cadre of people," Mr. Rumsfeld said, either to intervene in conflicts or tackle post-conflict stabilization.

A striking aspect of his comments is the notion of creating and training such a force outside the purview of the UN or NATO - international organizations that have generally assumed these functions in the past.

"Even Donald Rumsfeld may not be certain of what he has in mind, but it's clear he and others are really looking at this," says Allison Stanger, an expert in US foreign policy and international relations at Middlebury College in Vermont.

One reason to skirt the UN and NATO would be to retain greater control of the force, and to avoid the kind of international debate and rejection of a potential deployment that the US encountered over Iraq.

But some experts warn the US should think twice before moving too far from experienced global peacekeeping institutions.

"The Bush administration seems to be rediscovering the wheel," says James Lindsay, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution. "The fact is that we got a lot of experience with peacekeeping in the 1990s."

Other factors may be spurring the peacekeeping rethink. One is cost. "You can read Rumsfeld's recent remarks a variety of ways, but one thing you can be sure of is that these guys are interested in cutting costs," says Professor Stanger. Last week, Rumsfeld told Congress that US activities in Iraq are averaging $3.9 billion a month - more than the administration had anticipated.

The Iraq force now has about 150,000 American troops, with foreign participants (aside from the British) only now trickling in. Even if an expected 20,000 foreign troops arrive in Iraq by fall, many of them, including those from Poland and several Central American nations, will be paid for by the US. At a cost that could exceed $250 million a year, employing foreign troops in Iraq is attractive on several fronts. It would free a stretched US Army for other duties, cut benefit and other costs, and possibly reduce US casualties.

The US employment of foreign troops in Iraq, plus the coalescing US-directed foreign force in Liberia, could be harbingers of US peacekeeping operations to come - not too different from the peacekeeping operations of other "rich" countries, one UN official notes. A developed country provides the "backbone" for an operation and others, generally developing nations interested in the cash income from farming out their troops, provide soldiers.

"We're going to be seeing more outsourcing in this, either to other countries or to private companies," says Stanger. That raises issues of accountability and even allegiance (would foreign troops be enforcing US policy, or some greater international good?) that have not been so problematic for UN operations.

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