Mr. Holbrooke's vision of professional peacekeeping runs against fears in Congress of an international army outside American control, and there is wariness in developing nations that a stronger United Nations military arm would allow big powers to run the world in the guise of peacekeeping.
The agreement represents a decisive response to a growing need for effective, professional, international peacekeeping in regions of conflict.
The mercenaries took over my home but in the end I was saved by the Licorne [French peacekeeping troops in Ivory Coast], with professional work with helicopters," he said.
The peacekeeping efforts need to be bolstered with military professionals, in New York and in the field, Mr. Holbrooke said in an interview reflecting on his first year as the United States representative to the United Nations.
Fiji's army is a professional one, with a good reputation for peacekeeping in troublespots around the world.
Its soldiers are regarded as highly professional and have served with distinction in many United Nations peacekeeping missions.
Moscow's current forces, built around tanks, bombers and conscripts, need to be replaced by a smaller, higher-quality, more mobile, professional military geared toward homeland defense, antiterrorism and international peacekeeping.
Secretary General Kofi Annan does not have the freedom to move staff members to augment the peacekeeping department of about 400 people, among them only 230 professionals and the rest support staff.
The professional Western warrior, whether a special forces operative or garrison soldier in peacekeeping mode, is a key figure of the post September 11th era, physically securing the West, and simultaneously securing its identity as the repository of virtue against barbaric threats to civilization.
Like many United Nations officials, he blames peacekeeping failures on the shortsightedness or hypocrisy of member states rather than on the professionals in the Secretariat; his lengthy indictment with regard to Bosnia, for example, includes not a word about the peacekeepers' own self-defeating culture of neutrality.
