“I can only protect you. I cannot fight a war for you.” – Jedi Master Qui Gon Jinn, Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace
“You must realize, there are not enough Jedi to defend the Republic. We are keepers of the peace, not soldiers.” – Jedi Grand Master Mace Windu, Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones
In May of 1999, the long-awaited prequel to George Lucas’s beloved Star Wars trilogy arrived in theaters. Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace has left a complicated legacy, to put it mildly, but right from the start it was clear that Lucas was trying to say Something, if not Some Things, about the soon-to-be-21st century world around him. While the “original” Star Wars trilogy had highlighted the flaws of fascism and the efforts required by normal people to resist it, this new series of films would interrogate how institutions crumble, and how apathy and yearning for personal security can result in tyranny. That is not to say that the new movies did not have heroes; indeed, the scattered and nearly-extinct Jedi of the classic films were now an Order, thousands strong and dedicated to serving the Galactic Republic and denizens of the galaxy in general. How that Order would behave, however, would prove very different—and in some ways, would mirror the actions of certain international bodies in the recent history of our own world.
In 1977’s Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope, the aged Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi explains to main character Luke Skywalker not only Luke’s own heritage but the history of the galaxy, saying that “for over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic.” Here, the Jedi of old sound suitably like the heroes of fantasy, the explicit use of “knight” conjuring up images of knights errant, ever vigilant in crusading against the forces of evil. Much of that characterization has been adopted into supplementary materials covering the distant past of the Star Wars galaxy, but in the Prequels, we see something else. Onscreen, the Jedi are not only a formal organization with a grand headquarters temple on the galactic capital planet, a governing Council, and clearly-defined rules, protocols, and training, but they are officially a member of the government. As an arm of the Galactic Republic’s Judiciary branch and under the oversight and direction of the head of state (Supreme Chancellor), the Jedi act like a heightened combination of law enforcement and diplomatic envoys in our world. When there is a criminal or dispute or disaster too big for local authorities to handle, you send in the space wizards.
In a galaxy of trillions, however, a few thousand Jedi, many of them not yet fully trained, can never be enough for any but the most sensitive, important missions. Multiple times in the Prequel films, Jedi remind others (and the audience) of this fact, saying that they “cannot fight a war” and that they are “keepers of the peace.” This last phrase is an interesting one, and one often misinterpreted by some fans (and one in-universe Jedi character in the animated television show The Clone Wars) to mean that Jedi perceive themselves to be pacifist. This has never been part of the definition of peacekeeping, and in fact one can look to the history of the second half of our 20th century world for a key example: the Peacekeeping Missions of the United Nations.
Along with all its other roles in working toward global harmony and preventing the outbreak of war and human tragedy, the United Nations has since its founding in 1948 embarked on specific missions to countries torn apart by conflict in order to assist in building a framework for future peace and prosperity. This peacekeeping can take many forms, from economic development to facilitating peace negotiations to police actions and enforcing agreements. As such, many UN peacekeeping forces are comprised of detachments from the militaries of member nations and do have authorization to use force, often within specific parameters, when necessary to accomplish their goals.
It is interesting, then, that Lucas should choose such a specific turn of phrase to describe the Jedi in his Prequel films, then, especially as the 1990s saw an explosion of UN Peacekeeping Missions—and on balance, not in a good way. A combination of naive or wishful thinking, reluctance to fully believe the reports of agents on the ground, and desire to spend as little money and other resources as necessary led to numerous missions where peacekeepers unwisely exceeded their mandate and found themselves in serious danger, did not have the capacity to meaningfully affect events around them, or even actively made matters worse. In Somalia in 1992-3, the US element of UN Forces that were there to assist in preserving law and order and distribute aid during a famine launched an expedition deep into uncontrolled Mogadishu that went haywire and resulted in the famous “Blackhawk Down” incident, with two pilots killed and one service member captured by local militia. In 1993, after receiving less than half the men he had thought necessary to prevent genocide, General Romeo Dallaire and his men were forced to watch near-helplessly as the Rwandan Hutu-dominated military engineered and prosecuted the mass slaughter of Tutsis—as well as a squad of their own Belgian comrades in a move calculated to freeze UN authorities and make them reluctant to commit any further soldiers. And in the mid-1990s, UN forces gathered Bosnian Muslims into safe zones to protect them from the rampaging, genocidal Serb military during the breakup of Yugoslavia, but with orders that didn’t provide for conducting an adequate defense or even directly resisting the Serbs, all that the safe zones ended up doing was concentrating Muslims into death traps that were ultimately captured and “ethnically cleansed.”
These events (and there were many others, as well) of the decade leading up to The Phantom Menace don’t sound very Jedi-like on the surface; even on the brink of their downfall, Lucas’s warrior monks are unfailingly heroic, idealized versions of the best individuals can be and more often than not succeed beyond any reasonable hopes. Yet the larger framework of their galaxy and the government they serve certainly offer some intriguing parallels. Many of the missions that Jedi are sent on seem desperate, even suicidal, to begin with. In The Phantom Menace itself, a sovereign corporate entity has blockaded and invaded another (largely pacifist) world and fellow member of the Republic as a protest against taxation of all things, and all the Supreme Chancellor can do is. . .send two Jedi to try to negotiate a settlement? In the second Prequel film, Attack of the Clones, a large strike force of Jedi embark on a rescue mission for two of their own and a Republic Senator who’ve been captured and sentenced to death for espionage; while they succeed, the battle that ensues quickly spirals out of control and, in its earlier stages, seems reminiscent of Mogadishu as large numbers of Jedi are killed. From a wider perspective, even the Galactic Republic itself might be compared to the UN in some ways. While elements of the fall of the Roman Republic and critiques of the Bush administration and a deadlocked American Congress are the most noticeable commentaries contained within Lucas’s screenplays, one could also suggest that a body wherein the perpetrators or indirect supporters of international crimes have the power to obstruct and even veto effective redress is one that bears the most resemblance to the state of the United Nations in the wake of the Cold War (and perhaps during it, as well).
It should be said that, unlike with other elements of Lucas’s creations that are well and explicitly attested to, these here are essentially products of my own musings—and therein lies so much of the nigh-unlimited potential for enjoyment that such beloved franchises and fandoms bring. I like to think that they’re food for thought, though, both in how more recent history has influenced modern storytelling and as a mirror for how we wish to move forward in governing our world as we close the third decade of the twenty-first century.