PROSPECTS FOR A PERMANENT UNITED NATIONS MILITARY FORCE:
LESSONS FROM THE DEBATE ON THE FRENCH PROPOSALS AT THE
PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE OF 1919, 75 YEARS LATER

Seventy-five years ago, at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the French delegation to the League of Nations Commission made far-reaching proposals for putting military contingents at the disposal and under the control of the League -- proposals which closely resemble the provisions of Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. President Woodrow Wilson and other U.S. and British delegates to the Commission adamantly, and successfully, opposed these proposals.

The vigorous debate on the French plan provides a number of insights into the political and theoretical factors continuing to support and oppose the establishment of a more permanent peace enforcement capability for the United Nations,either through the negotiation of Article 43 agreements, or the creation of a standing Rapid Deployment Force. This 75-year history of discussion of the idea of an international military force suggests that the idea will persist, notwithstanding the current pessimistic atmosphere in the U.S. brought about largely by the debacle of Somalia. The French arguments for the idea also underline that it rests upon the logical position that effective implementation of international legal norms relating to non-aggression requires an efficient military enforcement mechanism that can act quickly and that possesses the moral legitimacy of the world organization itself.

At the same time, Wilson's determined resistance to the idea on the ground that Americans would never be willing to let U.S. soldiers die in far-away places for remote causes echoes the views of contemporary opponents of a U.N. force and suggests that these views will also persist. The Paris debate further brought into sharp focus the necessary limitations on sovereignty that creation of an international force would entail. In the final analysis, the debate of 1919 indicates that prospects for the establishment of a permanent U.N. force may well depend on whether Americans and others come to see the interest of the world community as sufficiently important to justify the necessary sacrifice of national control.