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It will come as a surprise to many that the UN Charter does not include the term "peacekeeping". To be sure, the Charter is completely silent on general operational guidelines on how the Parliament of man should act in concert when it chooses military intervention. The closing decades of the 20th century attests to the often insurmountable challenges faced; when member-states were charged under UN resolution with reviving war-ravaged communities. None were more surreal and chilling than those which coalesced with the Clinton White House and its euphemistic "humanitarian interventions": Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo, Mozambique, Somalia and the genocide in Rwanda. This brings into question the ability but more so the desirability - of a single actor; such as the US military, even in a non-combative configuration iens is unus.

This is not to say that there have not been successes. The 1947 Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of war-battered Europe channeled some $13.3 billion of US capital in an unprecedented economic-infrastructure resuscitation of the Continent. From bullets-to-bread, it was a stunning success, forever enshrining the legacy of President Harry Truman. Ambitious not only by its sheer geographical coverage but in personal, plant and equipment: "The Army, under a US military governor, quickly turned its few remaining infantry and cavalry units in Germany into gendarmerie". (Priest 391) Likewise, in the Pacific theater, the erstwhile yet distinguished General Douglas MacArthur undertook pro-consul duties: rebuilding thermonuclear-ed Imperial Japan; advancing the course of democracy, before his dramatic dismal by the same president. In this era, the role of the military as aid to the civil power was well-practiced and understood. In the political climate of post-Cold War preoccupations, such a role for the military has been largely eschewed, while some of the arts associated with winning hearts and minds were sadly forgotten.

Diplomat, polemicist and 16th century Italian political raconteur Niccollo Machiavelli in his celebrated (and sometimes maligned) treatise, The Prince (1513), aptly describes the hazardous nature of introducing a new civil order in war-battered communities: "[T]here is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, no more uncertain in success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things". In the same tome he would also counsel his masters' and the political elite of the day to his strong opposition,

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