WHAT’S NEXT REPUBLICANS?
Part 10
By: Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army,
December 12, 2022
This series has intended to answer President Biden’s question, “What are the Republicans for?” His point being, at the time he said it, the Republican Party does not stand for anything.
The intent for the Republicans in the House should be to move quickly with a legislative agenda that will highlight numerous national issues that can be/should be solved during the 118th Congress. This will also begin framing the Republican Platform for the 2024 presidential campaign.
Part 1, How to fix education and race relations and a plan for immigration reform.
Part 2, Election reform.
Part 3, A plan for fixing a dysfunctional Congress.
Part 4, Taking on the bloated bureaucracy and uncontrolled spending by the Executive Branch.
Part 5, Terms of office and term limits.
Part 6, Campaign finance reform.
Part 7, Cleaning up the primary election mess.
Part 8, The IRS and tax reform.
Part 9, Universal service for America.
Part 10, (herewith) World Peace, is the final part of this series.
Presumptive Speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy speaking:
Russia invades the sovereign nation of Ukraine, in February 2022. The world watches, in real-time, levels of destruction not seen since World War II newsreels that would be shown in movie theaters.
Ninety-eight percent of the world’s population of 8-plus billion have no personal recollection of the WWII destruction in Europe. Therefore, this ongoing invasion is a game changer invoking questions like, how could this possibly happen today? Why have we not stopped it? What can we do? How can they deliberately target women and children? Who can help? Should some collective group of countries join forces and counterattack Russian forces? What should NATO do? Should the EU put together a counter-offensive force? Who would/should lead such a force? Can Ukrainians ever rebuild the thousands of destroyed structures? If the invasion ended tomorrow, where would the returning refugees live? Who could/should finance rebuilding Ukraine? Where will they find food and clean water? Where will they work? Will there be electricity?” etc. etc. etc. The questions are almost endless because it is an understatement to say, this is unprecedented. We need answers and actions.
The daily media dose of reality has touched nearly everyone’s heart and mind with feelings of disbelief, distrust, disgust, and anger towards Putin and his forces; empathy, sorrow, and compassion for the millions of in-country displaced Ukrainians, out-of-country refugees, those mourning killed or missing family members and what the Ukrainian people face in the foreseeable future.
The international after-action review must not be a thousand-page bureaucratic study published a couple of years from now which would be worse than worthless. What it must be is a succinct accounting of three simple, but essential, questions:
First, what, collectively, did we, the world, do well?
Second, what should we, could we, the world, have done better?
Finally, and most importantly, how can we institutionalize a faster, better, more organized, more aggressive, and all-inclusive plan for preemptive actions that would preclude this from ever happening again?
Let me emphasize the word preemptive because the world watched Russia mass forces and equipment for months and did nothing. That question leads us to a discussion of Russia, Ukraine, the United Nations, world peace, and the uprising.
BACKGROUND leading to a proposed solution:
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS:
With technically-advanced machine guns, tanks, and chemical warfare, World War I was optimistically referred to as the war to end all wars. January 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson outlined an idea for an organization that would be charged with resolving conflicts before they exploded into bloodshed. In 1919 the structure of The League of Nations was laid out in Paris and the Treaty of Versailles went into effect in January 1920 with 48 member countries. The U.S. Congress failed to ratify our membership in the League. Between 1920 and World War II there were numerous opportunities to act, but it never did. The League of Nations was abandoned during World War II. The League was not necessarily a bad idea, but numerous times, when actions were required, European countries found it too difficult to put together an effective united front against an aggressor to include the rise of Germany, pre-World War II.
THE UNITED NATIONS:
In June 1941 representatives from thirteen nations (the U.S. was not included) met in London and signed the Declaration of St. James’s Palace expressing a vision for a postwar world order. The next step was the Atlantic Conference in August 1941, at which President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill laid out a more detailed form of the alliance called The Atlantic Charter. The final step was the Yalta Conference, in February 1945 when Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed on the establishment of the United Nations as well as the structure of the Security Council.
Despite having endured for 77 years, generally speaking, the UN is a weak-intentioned bureaucratic mass that is involved in everything and accomplishes very little. Case in point, did the UN respond to the Russian invasion? Yes, and for the UN it was remarkably fast. On March 3rd, one week after the invasion, they voted overwhelmingly for a resolution deploring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called for the immediate withdrawal of its forces. Wow, that must have shaken Putin to his core.
The UN is an established international organization perfectly positioned to be a greater force for the greater good of the collective world. But in its current condition, it is incapable of deterring or bringing to a close a conflict such as exists in Ukraine today. We need to completely rethink this issue, right now.
THE UN TODAY:
To understand what must be fixed, here is a short-hand view of what is wrong. The UN consists of six principal organs:
· General Assembly
· Security Council
· Economic and Social Council
· Secretariat
· International Court of Justice
· Trusteeship Council (currently inactive)
Of these, the General Assembly and Security Council are the dominant pieces.
THE SECURITY COUNCIL:
The Security Council consists of five permanent members, the U.S., China, Russia, France, and the UK (allies during WW II), and ten elected members. The presidency of the Council rotates among the fifteen members, each serving for one month. Is anyone surprised that Russia was president in February 2022 when they attacked Ukraine?
Under the United Nations Charter, the principal function of the Security Council is to:
Ensure international peace and security. There it is in black and white, ensuring international peace and security as its number one responsibility. Additionally, the subset authority allows the Council to:
ü Investigate any dispute or situation which might lead to international friction.
ü Recommend methods of adjusting such disputes or the terms of settlement.
ü Formulate plans for the establishment of a system to regulate armaments.
ü Determine the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression and recommend what action should be taken.
ü Call on Members to apply economic sanctions and other measures not involving the use of force to prevent or stop aggression.
ü Take military action against an aggressor.
Right there in the Charter are the elements necessary for world peace. Given these clearly articulated responsibilities and authority, we can conclude that the UN in general and the Security Council, in particular, have been abject failures for almost eight decades.
First of all, can you imagine a large international company CEO having fifteen Executive Vice Presidents, each allowed to lead the company for a month every fifteen months; thereby allowing each to bring his or her biases and priorities to the forefront? It’s insane. A perfect formula for failure.
A UN INITIATIVE FOR WORLD PEACE:
How is world peace possible? In a word, deterrence. In the mind of any potential aggressor, that is fear of rapid retaliation by a superior force. It is possible for the United Nations to establish and sustain a world military force to deter and, if necessary, bring to bear on the battlefield the collective military might of the other 194 member nations? Here is an outline:
Every member nation would agree to contribute to a worldwide deterrent force that can be deployed anywhere in the world within seven days. Every nation will contribute according to its capabilities. Some examples:
The U.S. has the greatest capability in the world for worldwide force projection. For example, the world watched in awe in 1990 as the U.S. deployed an overwhelming force to the Gulf War and, in two days of fighting, defeated Iraqi forces which had invaded Kuwait. One U.S. contribution to the UN force could be our entire air-cargo fleet to fly directly to various countries and transport their force contribution directly to the targeted area. Another critical U.S. contribution could be our fleet of about 650 aerial refueling tankers; by comparison, the remaining countries have about 250.
Countries with few military resources (36 nations do not have a defense budget) could provide field hospitals, portable field surgical units with doctors and nurses, aircraft maintenance capabilities, truck drivers, border patrol personnel, etc.
Nations with only small maneuver organizations could provide, for example, man-portable air defense and anti-tank teams and snipers. There would be a very long list of non-combatant rear-area support requirements.
