This is a truly terrible development.  Suicide bombers used white cars with UN markings to gain entry to an AMISOM base in Mogadishu.  Dozens of people, including 17 African Union peacekeepers and the deputy force commander were killed in the attack.  AMISOM is a force of about 5,000 troops from mostly Burundi and Uganda, which is the only international force trying to bring a semblance of stability to Somalia. 

Here is Ban Ki Moon's statement:

I am shocked and outraged by the reported suicide attack against AMISOM Force Headquarters in Mogadishu today. The attack has reportedly killed or wounded a number of AMISOM troops including at the command level.

AMISOM is in Mogadishu to help end the conflict that has ravaged the country for the last 20 years, and for a better future in which all Somalis can live in peace and security.

We – the United Nations – remain committed to continuing to work with the Transitional Federal Government and the Somali people to facilitate reconciliation and the political process, build Somali security and rule of law institutions and provide humanitarian assistance. The United Nations stands by the African Union and AMISOM and will continue to support AMISOM's deployment and operations. UN resources from neighboring peace operations are on standby to assist the African Union to respond to the incident today as required.

I condemn in strongest possible terms this entirely unacceptable attack on those who are there to help foster peace and I call upon all Somalis to renounce violence and to work with the Transitional Federal Government towards national reconciliation.

I express my sincere condolences to the families, the contingents and Governments of those who lost their lives and my sympathy for those who have been wounded.

In a meeting at the Security Council yesterday, Susan Rice announced that the United States had officially paid off it's arrears to UN Peacekeeping.  From a Louis Charbonneau in Reuters (in which the Better World Campaign is given a nice shout-out)

"The United States is now in a position to clear all peacekeeping arrears accumulated from 2005 to 2008 and to meet our obligations in full for 2009 -- currently estimated at approximately $2.2 billion," Rice told a U.N. Security Council meeting on peacekeeping.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations said the 2005-2008 arrears amounted to $159 million. Revising earlier information, she said the 2005-2008 arrears were included in the total $2.2 billion owed to the U.N. peacekeeping department. 

Susan Rice has consistently said that strengthening UN Peacekeeping was one of her top goals at the United Nations.   American debt to UN Peacekeeping, however, called into question the United States' real commitment to this goal. The debt also did actual harm to an organization that was already cash-strapped.  '

Paying off US debt to peacekeeping both lifts a huge burden from peacekeeping and is a symbolic show of American support for UN peacekeeping and all that it can accomplish when given the right backing. It's nice to see the United States putting its money where its mouth is.  

Ambassador Rice is set to testify in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee this Wednesday.  We'll be there, tweeting and live blogging. If you just can't wait, look to her remarks in front of the Security Council in late June where she delineated U.S. commitments on UN peacekeeping.  The highlights:

First, we will seek mandates for UN peacekeeping operations that are credible and achievable. We will urge the Council to continue to weigh the full range of responses to a given challenge. Poorly armed and disorganized gangs, rebel groups, and others outside a peace process should not be allowed to thwart a peacekeeping mandate or block a UN deployment.

...

At the same time, we recognize that UN peacekeepers cannot do everything and go everywhere. There are limits to what they can accomplish, especially in the midst of a full-blown war or in the face of opposition from the host government. Peacekeeping missions are not always the right answer...These lessons have guided our approach in a number of instances, most recently Somalia, where conditions are not yet appropriate for successful UN peacekeeping. But it is a country that still urgently needs sustained, if not increased, international support.

More after the jump.

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Second, the United States will intensify diplomatic efforts to give new momentum to some of the stalled or faltering peace processes in areas where UN peacekeeping operations are deployed, starting with Darfur and Sudan’s North-South peace process.

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Third, the United States will strengthen its efforts with the UN and other partners to expand the pool of troop and police contributors, for both current and future UN peacekeeping operations.

The United States, for its part, is willing to consider directly contributing more military observers, military staff officers, civilian police, and other civilian personnel—including more women—to UN peacekeeping operations....Let me single out one immediate priority: we will assist with generating the missing forces and enabling units required for UNAMID, MINURCAT, and MONUC to better protect civilians under imminent threat of physical, including sexual, violence.

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Fourth, the United States will dedicate greater attention to Security Council discussions on the renewal of existing peacekeeping mandates. We will seek more comprehensive assessments of the progress that has been made and the obstacles that remain. This includes carefully considering the early recovery and peacebuilding activities that enable peacekeeping operations to depart successfully, such as demobilizing and reintegrating former combatants, reforming the security sector, and strengthening the rule of law. We will use these discussions as opportunities to take stock of the ways that U.S. assistance can accelerate the transfer of responsibilities from peacekeepers to the host country, in success.

Sounds like a plan to me.

In his Financial Times column today, Gideon Rachman makes the argument for a "United Nations army." His test case, interestingly, is Somalia, where offshore piracy has galvanized international cooperation, but 18 years of onshore violence and instability has rumbled on unchecked. Would it be easier, or any more advisable, to send UN peackeepers to Somalia if there were, as Rachman proposes, "a proper UN force on permanent stand-by?"

Maybe, but many of the same problems with deploying UN personnel in Somalia would still apply: militants would be all too eager to turn their violence onto UN blue helmets, the presence of foreigners could inspire radical nationalist sentiment, and the ensuing deaths and difficulty would only make countries more skeptical of contributing their troops to UN peacekeeping.

And herein lies a problem that Rachman does not consider. In his view, the chief obstacle to creating a "UN army" is a general wariness, primarily on the part of conservatives, to cede such power to an internationalist institution. He cites the proverbial UN "black helicopters" synonymous with world government and counters conservative skepticism by quoting the Gipper himself:

Even perfectly sane American conservatives regard the idea of a permanent UN force with horror. They might be surprised and enlightened to learn that the hero of the conservative movement, Ronald Reagan, once spoke approvingly of the idea of “a standing UN force – an army of conscience – that is fully equipped and prepared to carve out human sanctuaries through force”. And, of course, to take on the Martians, whenever they finally invade.

But a problem possibly even greater to overcome than (conservative) discomfort with the idea is the reluctance of UN member states to contribute troops. The mission in Darfur has been short on personnel for over a year and a half, and its counterpart in DR Congo can't even muster a requested addition of 3,000 troops. However one conceives of this "UN army," the soldiers would have to come from somewhere, and countries that don't contribute troops now (ahem, the United States) wouldn't be likely to sign on to a permanent deal.

Rachman's Martian example -- that fighting an alien invasion is a perfect example of when a global UN force would be appreciated -- is also revealing. For as I've argued before, UN peacekeepers are not invasion-repellers. They are peacekeepers. So I'd hope that the powers that be on Earth would be smart enough to only deploy them after a peace has been reached with these hypothetical invading Martians.