UN 'Legion'

<p>A fresh examination of the origins evolution and future of proposals for a UN 'Legion' - a permanent military force recruited trained and deployed by the UN. </p><p>This new book shows how this idea has grown re-emerged and evolved in direct connection with the development of UN international military forces. The legionnaires have been seen as the future representatives of a modern constabulary international police or humanitarian chivalry. They have also invariably evoked the idea of mercenaries and resurrected fears of supranational government and a 'world army'. Such a force has been unattainable when needed not needed when attainable revealing the deficiencies of the international system in the perspective of a particular task. The idea highlights the inadequacy of the means as compared to the objectives and the limits of the UN's capacity to adapt itself to new challenges. </p><p>This study examinmes how the project of a UN 'Legion' is conditional on the viability of the original Utopia and vice versa. It also argues that the extreme polarization of the debate may reflect a tendency to negate the inherent contradictions of reality reminding us of the historical dimension of the building of an international organization a 'work in progress'.</p>