[Update note, 2007-08-16: The idea of an International Rescue Command, or "Mercy Force", is ever more worth considering. This article appeared 15 years ago*; in recent times we've had the Asian Tsunami, Pakistan earthquake, Katrina, and currently Darfur, floods in North Korea, India, Bangladesh,--the list goes on--all of whose rescue actions have been likewise admirable, but ad hoc and insufficient.]
Why should international rescue action be merely a goodwill by-product of military capability?
We need a military alliance against mass disaster. It would field a world-scale Rescue Command, in constant readiness for world-class catastrophes: famines, floods, and earthquakes; artificial, natural, and nuclear calamities. Call it a Mercy Force.
There have been many improvisations. The 1970 Peru earthquake belatedly saw military relief contingents from Canada, Cuba, Sweden, the USA and the USSR, among others. A multinational medley of military and civilian elements helped in Armenia after the 1988 quake. The 1985 Ethiopia famine called forth much Live Aid and military logistics.
But horrendous famine again stalks Africa. Is there now anything which remotely equals the Berlin Airlift?
Berlin aside, the inadequacy of international rescue efforts, however, praiseworthy, is common knowledge. Countless donors and relief workers have done their best: AmeriCares, Medecins Sans Frontieres, the Red Cross, UNICEF, Mercy Corps, World Food Program, to name a few. Yet help is always tardy, ad hoc and insufficient compared to the need. And compared to military resources.
Consider the 1970 megadeath cyclone in Bangladesh. Within three weeks, the USA sent six helicopters. Six? Out of 12,000! Having already lost another 6,000 in Vietnam?
In 1991, the U.S. task force Sea Angel brought 28 helicopters, plus amphibians, trucks and water-purification equipment. A big improvement over 1970, but a far cry from what could be done in such cases.
In 1959, Life magazine proposed a U.S. "great white fleet" of six vessels, including a hospital ship and helicopter carrier for world mercy missions, but the idea sank, except for the privately financed S.S. Hope, which served from 1960 till 1974.
In 1969, a two-page ad in Newsweek for the giant C-5A transport plane was headlined, "People Starving. Send Help." Is there a C-5A and AN-22 rescue fleet now ready for Africa?
In 1960, the late Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall urged Britain to promote an International Rescue Organization, with three airborne brigades of 10,000 men and women each, deployed on three continents.
Today, we need more ideas like that, and much bigger ideas. Not six ships, but 60. Not six helicopters, but 600. Not 8,000 homecoming Marines diverted to Bangladesh, but 80,000 regulars in a world Mercy Force for rapid response anywhere, any time.
Its political parent could be the United States and/or Canada. Or the U.N. Security Council. Or a "Humanitarian Alliance" of countries which would rotate air, land, sea, and logistic units for duty periods with the Rescue Command.
Its treaty would set a two month cap on each operation. A panel of Nobel Peace Prize laureates could declare any state of emergency requiring Mercy Force action (with or without approval by local warlords).
The essential principle is that all Rescue Command missions and servicepeople be ostentatiously unarmed. The Mercy Force mystique would be ever to give life, never to take it.
As Col. Harry Summers often reminds us, the purpose of the military is to "kill people and destroy things." Not always. A world Mercy Force would share the motto of the U.S. Air Force Air Rescue Service "That Others May Live".
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*Adapted from my USA Today op-ed of 1992-02-24, "Big Human Needs Cry for Big Answers"; reposted at http://www.genekeyes.com
See also Daily Kos Diary "On A New Mission, Or, How About a Peace Ship?" by fake consultant, and "Floating A Message of Comfort" at Huffington Post by Colleen Turner, USAF Reserve Lt.Col. (ret.)