Continuing with the Eclipse Phase setup for the mini-campaign set before the events of the Fall, we'll be looking at the United Nations and why they went from a largely toothless legislative body to an organization with a paramilitary force like the Peacekeepers.
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In the years between the present day and the time just before the Fall, the global political environment shifted significantly, with the least developed nations slowly collapsing into war-torn tribal states, with refugees streaming away from climate disasters and would-be warlords fighting over the limited resources of these regions. The more developed nations attempted to help as much as possible, although the more militaristic and insular societies resented even the handful of refugees they deigned to accept.
The more observant megacorps and the first hypercorps, augmented with the latest smart systems to analyze events, foresaw the collapse of even the most developed nations from the destabilized regions if nothing was done to prevent it. As a result, they began a number of initiatives to stabilize the least-perturbed regions, purchasing ravaged stretches of land and using nanotech to swiftly assemble entire buildings dedicated to producing cheap supplies and housing in a seemingly selfless humanitarian effort.
In practice, it gave the corps an in-road to build defensive installations, which they quietly used to pacify the more violent warlord with assaults by autonomous squads of war machines, resulting in several carefully concealed atrocities. They followed this up with establishing refugee cities outfitted with swiftly manufactured basic amenities, carefully spread over the endangered areas and linked into increasingly powerful mesh networks. The corps, once a solid cordon was established with their work, contacted the UN and, as a gestalt bargaining force, offered the UN a deal: they would support the creation of an international paramilitary force under UN control in each country they were based in. They'd even supply this new force with military-grade armament.
In exchange, the UN would recognize each involved corp as an independent sovereign nation with a seat and a vote, a move that would render the organization almost half actual countries and half corporate structures. Refuse, the the corps would consolidate their own council and take the matter of dealing with the destabilized areas into their own hands. The UN, aware that a few atrocities that hadn't been covered up thoroughly enough, agreed to the offer.
Backlash was swift; several prominent nations - the United States being the loudest but far from the only - withdrew from the UN in protest of such an international force existing. The end of the backlash was almost as swift, as the corps refused to sell their goods to the countries that protested, causing them all to back down and rejoin the UN by the end of the second month.
The formation of the actual Peacekeeper force took almost a year, as candidates from sources all over the globe were either invited to take the tests or applied on their own initiative, hoping to do some good or at least prevent the Peacekeepers from becoming the strong arm of a totalitarian regime. Some post-Fall scholars point to this as the moment where the military forces of countries like the US began work on the projects that ultimately led to the TITANs, in a fearful attempt to stay a step ahead of the Peacekeepers.
At the time of the game start, the Peacekeepers have been in operation for well over a decade, working hard to bring peace to the more violent areas of the globe, taking out warlords and deliering shipments of humanitarian aid to those driven from their homes. Overall, the force has been a success, with no known repeats of the atrocities that preceded it at the hands of the corps who now outnumber the actual nations at a 2:3 ratio.
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