Text by Geoff Hinkley (View his comment)
After the India-Pakistan war of 2033 (the 'Seven Nuke War') it became clear that the United Nations was no longer able to carry its role of international peace-keeper. Over the next decade the United Nations debated extensively how best to prevent such incidents from happening again. In the end, it was decided that the United Nations would remain as an international diplomatic forum but its peace-keeping role would be passed over to a new organisation.
It was with this end in mind that the GSSA was mandated by the United Nations in 2044. The final outcome of this lengthy period of soul-searching in the UN was, as ever, a compromise. The European Union pushed for an agency that would enforce a bill of human rights whereas China and Pakistan stated that they could not support such cultural supremacism.
Whilst GSSA has not become the angel of vengeance and mercy that Europe desired, it does play an important role in maintaining world peace. Its mandate extends to preventing large scale conflict, maintaining the free trade economy and assisting world governments when an uncontested request is made concerning problems of a global scale. A complex system of checks and balances ensures that the GSSA does not overstep its limits. As Secretary Augustus Wilson put it, "We must be ever-vigilant and most of all of ourselves. The Agency has the power to rule the world but to do so we would abandon those ideals on which we were founded."
So far, since its inception the GSSA has done a mostly acclaimed job of preserving a delicate pax romana. Every decade since its establishment it has faced a singular crisis to which it has risen with strength and wisdom: the Sinking of Holland in 2054 and Deutsche Industrien's Internet monopoly of 2064. Now that the decade is up again, speculation has already begun as to what test the GSSA will be required to face next.
If the GSSA has had failures then, by its own admission, they are in the African situation and in the ever-growing foothold of the organised criminal networks in the Tachy-Capital economy. Whilst there are guerillas and terrorists operating elsewhere, mainly in the jungles of south-east Asia and South America and the Lunar Alps, none of these quite match the ferocity and viciousness of the tribal warfare in Africa. After a number of disastrous interventions, further complicated by legal contests from companies with interests in various factions in the African conflicts, the GSSA has settled on a policy of containment, securing those areas of Africa which have not been consumed in the desperate, sporadic guerilla wars for which the continent has become famous: South Africa, Senegal and, with the exception of Algeria, the Mediterranean coast.
These days the GSSA is more involved with taking on the corporations who attempt to dominate the Tachy-Capital markets. GSSA intervention is swift when their anti-monopoly policies are invoked, and deadly. Corporations, however, are taking to employing bio-enhanced mercenaries of their own to at least dissuade GSSA intervention and their expert lawyers are becoming ever more adept at pushing back the line. Many say that Deutsche Industrien was just a warm-up for an inevitable showdown between the GSSA and the masters of Tachy-Capital.
The text of this page is copyright © 2000, Geoff Hinkley
The page is is copyright © 2000, Despot_in_Exile
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