Bob Schroeck Wrote:Yes and no. The IST has always been -- for me -- something like Starfleet: part military, part civilian, and which part is in ascendance depends on the needs of the moment.
It is as military as it has to be in order to fulfill its mission as a peace-keeping and enforcement force. It is as civilian as it has to be in order to fulfill its other mission of being ambassadors -- of the world, to the world. The balance is a hard one to strike, and is different in different embassies, depending on the nation and culture around them. In most of North America and Europe, it tilts considerably to the civilian side. Other places, not so much. This is one reason each team has effectively two leaders -- the field commander for military operations, and the team admin for all other functions. A well-run embassy/team can turn on a dime and go from grim special-ops anti-terrorist action to sparkles-n-flowers P.R. with kids in minutes, without whiplash.
As for the nature of the Academ(y/ies), my concept is closer to Rob's than Mark's, but partakes of both. The Academy is a service offered by the IST, and its coursework for supers is not structured so much to produce metahuman soldiers as to produce well-balanced metahumans comfortable and skilled with their powers, who may be inclined to join the IST afterward, but are in no way required to. It's a bit more military-style than Xavier's school, but not by much. It's more like, um, a boarding school with combat training to the level you're comfortable with. Hogwarts with decent Defense classes.
I do like the idea of AA teaching ethics in her retirement; I'm definitely going to throw that in.
So if I'm understanding this correctly, the IST is much more "Japanese Self Defense Force" or "United States Coast Guard" than it is "French Foreign Legion" or "United States Marine Corps"... and even the JSDF or the USCG are too focused on the armed-conflict side of the picture to be accurate points of comparison.
Which suits me fine. After all, it was one of my countrymen who got a Nobel Prize for the modern concept of peacekeeping - seeing that attitude present in the IST makes the group seem (to me, at least) to be more international than a straight-up combat force would be.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012