majority of initial troops would come from the great powers. However, there were numerous disagreements as well. The Soviet Union demanded forces only be based in their nations and favored a more limited authority. The United States favored a larger force and comparable strength, whereas the Soviets proposed a smaller force with equal contributions. Mediation attempts repeatedly failed. The nations could not agree on leadership of the force, where bases would be located, and whether the MSC would be able to fight wars. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office noted in December 1947 that ”an unusual feature of this part of the work of the MSC is that agreement appears to have been brought, by normal standards of United Nations progress, unusually close. The prospect of success is however, more apparent than real. All these discussions presuppose agreement on the General Principles and such agreement remains remote.” By August 1948, after conflicts such as the Berlin Blockade and 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état, and despite efforts at compromise by various people including US Secretary of State Dean Rusk, the MSC was essentially defunct. Dormancy and reform efforts United Nations peacekeeping began as early as 1948 under the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization. The MSC was not considered to command troops in the Korean War, though it was fought by troops under the United Nations Command. In 1992, the United Nations Department of Peace Operations was established “to provide political and executive direction to UN peacekeeping operations and maintain contact with the UNSC, troop and financial contributors, and parties to the conflict in the implementation of UNSC mandates." The United Nations Department of Field Support was established in 2008. Such organizations in the United Nations Secretariat supplanted the MSC's role, and it currently functions in an advisory capacity to the UNSC. In 1982, Colonel Norman L. Dodd wrote that "the Committee still meets once a month but the representatives of the Chiefs of Staff are of Colonel rank and nothing of substance is discussed or ever agreed." British naval historian Eric Grove describes the MSC as "a sterile monument to the faded hopes of the founders of the UN". Proposals for reviving the MSC have been presented. Grove wrote in 1993 that the negotiations the MSC underwent in 1947 and 1948 provide "a starting point for considering the possibilities of the UN Charter operating as it was originally intended" and "the specific