Hi Folks,

Quote Originally Posted by Harry Phillips View Post
National interests outweigh international interests even at the Security Council. As a legislative body, the Council's inability to stop genocide points to the inherent challenges associated with competing national interests of Council members which in turn impacts on: the timeliness (or lack thereof) of decision making; issuing a mandate to protect via Security Council resolution; identifying member states to execute the mandate; and finally the actual execution by member states in support of a mandate.
Quote Originally Posted by redbullets View Post
What prevented it was national interst and lack of political will. That would seem to me to be a more important area to focus on - its a heck of a lot easier, IMO, to prepare military formations to respond in these situations than it is to convince our leadership that there is an imperative to do so, humanitarian or otherwise, in locations where compelling national interests are not easy to identify, if they exist at all.
I've got to agree with RB that they limiting factor is more political than pragmatic. It also strikes me that there is a rather thorny question that hasn't really been raised here, which is the question of what is the source of political legitimacy and authority for MARO?

Right now, there seem to be two, or possibly three, competing sources of legitimacy: UNSC resolution, alliance agreement, and/or individual national "authority". Under what political authority would MARO be operating?