Definition: Robber baron: a person who has become rich through ruthless and unscrupulous business practices
(originally with reference to prominent US businessmen in the late 19th century).
In the early nineties, the most wealthy and powerful countries in the UN sent their troops abroad to serve as peacekeepers. American, French, and British troops formed the core of peacekeeping missions. But whereas peacekeepers were once sent to act as a buffer between clearly separated armies with their consent, missions from the nineties to today involve decentralized conflicts where consent is tricky.
The dangers of these missions, in which peacekeepers can be seen as unwanted foreigners, drove wealthy, Western countries out of the peacekeeping business. The backlash against the deaths of American troops fighting as peacekeepers in Somalia, for example, as immortalized in the film “Black Hawk Down,” led to a system in which the wealthy countries of the Security Council design peacekeeping missions and then pay poor countries to provide the soldiers.
“While there are exceptions, U.N. peacekeeping is an activity mostly paid for by the rich world and carried out by troops from poorer states. The leading troop contributing states (TCCs) are Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Rwanda. The top funders are the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, and Italy. Combined, these countries cover well over 50 percent of the peacekeeping tab, while offering fewer troops than diminutive Jordan. The United States alone pays 27 percent but provides a grand total of 109 peacekeepers.”
https://priceonomics.com/the-uns-peacek ... rcenaries/