That’s interesting. Can you give a cite for that? How many failed, how many succeeded, and if there is a correlation between success and US participation?
The UN has had over 50 peacekeeping missions. For the most part, the US hasn’t participated much. There have been many success, a few dismal failures, and some missions that are ongoing. If you want to check personnel commitments for various countries, month by month, check here http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/contributors/index.htm.
The most dismal failure was probably Somalia, and it also happens to be a mission that had a large US involvement.
The most recent success story is East Timor, where they UN mission had 8000 troops deployed. Do you want to guess how many US military personnel were deployed to East Timor? I’ll give you a hint, it’s a very round number. The roundest of numbers. “0”
I’m a big fan of the UN and was opposed to the foolishness of invading Iraq, but the rub is that quite a few nations have broken the UN charter and invaded other sovereign nations in the past 58 years. There’s a list of past wars here and current ones here. When the UN takes steps, it usually amounts to a strongly worded resolution using “calls upon,” “condemns,” “deplores,” “expresses,” and “declares,” but has no actual actions behind it. Other permanent members of the SC have invaded sovereign nations in the past and faced no consequences in the UN: China in Tibet and Vietnam, the USSR in Afghanistan, Hungary and Czechoslovakia… as I see Grey has already pointed out. Where the UN really shines is in providing a framework for reestablishing and securing peace once the belligerents have decided to quit.
Those lists are very misleading as they are just conflicts, many of them internal. I would like to see the list of times that a country (a) invaded another country without provocation and (b) was not somehow condemned by the UN. I am not saying it has not happened, I just want to see the list of times this has happened because I believe it will be an extremely short list.
Then a list of countries which were found to be in the wrong by the ICCJ in The Hague, like the USA was in the mining of Nicaraguan harbors, and refused to comply, like the USA did. How many countries have been in a similar situation? Maybe some but not many.
What else is there to do, though? Declare war on the U.S.? No, even if the U.S. military is stretched so thin that the rest of the world might win, you don’t deserve to die for Bush’s mendacity. Besides, it’s against the rules.
Do nothing? That’d just encourage the Bush Administration. We don’t need another China/Tibet situation, one is enough. Besides, I thought the U.S. was supposed to be morally superior to China. “Well, they do it too!” didn’t wash with my parents when I was eight years old, why should it wash with what they tell me is the greatest country on Earth?
Cut off the U.S. lifeline? I must admit to some personal satisfaction in the idea of keeping our oil and wood and wheat right here at home. Or charging incredible prices for them. Highly impractical, though.
I guess there’s nothing left to do but wait it out. Not my first choice, I must admit.
Well no they’re not morally superior. They’re a nation state. The idea of a nation state having a personal morality is nuts. It’d be nice, but not about to happen.
For the same reasons that Rhode Island doesn’t have as much say in the US House of Representatives as say… California.
It’s ridiculous to think that a country of 3 million people and $26.5 billion GDP should have equal say as a nation of almost 300 million people and $10.4 trillion GDP.
Uruguay is about .25% of the US GDP and 1.15% of the population of the US.
Hell, many US states have bigger GDP and population than most countries in the UN! Texas has a $818.94 billion GDP and roughly 22 million people.
I don’t see how it is misleading, and I think you somewhat missed the point. As I said when the UN takes action it is almost always a strongly worded resolution without any teeth at all, exactly the b) in your criterion, though you do have my apologies for not finding a list of conflicts solely between two or more nations. Even that is somewhat squirrelly, as internal conflicts become conflicts between two entities once one successfully splits off, as with Bosnia, Croatia, Eritrea, etc. If you would like to do a comparison of wars to SC resolutions, there is a list of them here. I already gave a short list of SC members who have evaded even an SC resolution due to their veto status in my prior post. To my knowledge, the only UNSC resolutions that gave the authorization for force were with regards to Korea in 1950 and Iraq in 1991.
I’d say that it should be left up to the member nations to determine how their representatives are chosen- some may want to appoint them(makes for a unified national voice), some may want to elect them and have UN electoral districts, etc… Either way, it should be up to the country.
Grey makes some very worthwhile points, the most important of which is that the UN is not, and needs to become democratic. The fact that the governments of several deomcratic states opposes a given action should give pause; the fact that “Libya” opposes something means that it’s probably a good thing, since its just the will of one criminal.
The devil is in the details, though, and Grey’s ideas are worth trying to shoot.
Bias against poor countries. Making it GDP per capita is a double whammy, as punishes poor, large countries (India) at the expense of small rich ones (Belgium). In just population or GDP, India is undeniably more a important nation.
The only way out I see is a tri-cameral system. One by a one-state one-vote, one by GDP, one by population. But now it’s becoming entirely unworkable. And who calculates the GDP and how? Isn’t this a bias against agrarian societies?
And you will quickly have a situation in which a UN ambassador is of a different political affiliation than the government he/she represents.
Who determines the status? Are we to believe that political considerations would not enter into this? The Arab world would have Israel kicked out and Syria enshrined in a heatbeat.
Here again, someone’s always going to be getting the short end of the stick. What if Pakistan wanted to keep India out? I daresay they could get a sizable number of Muslim nations behind them.
Never ever gonna happen. National governments are not just going to willy-nilly give up their power, for a hundred different reasons.
You can’t just say “full legal weight” … do UN resolutions override national contitutions? If the UN wants to ban “hate speech” (as the EU has) does that override the first amendent?
And ultimately comes down to is enforcement: who is going to make it stick? Much as people might want to live in happyland where signing a law makes it so, the truth of the matter is enforcing laws still comes down to who holds the monopoly on violence. If I want to break a law the cops will keep coming until I submit (unless of course, they decide it’s not worth the hassle). If my whole town refuses to obey the laws of Florida, the state can apply increasingly onerous penalties, up to and including sending in state militia. If my whole state refuses to obey, the US Army will come in. The fact that the whole system carries the veneer of civilization, that we manage to get things resolved before it does get ugly, does not change the fact that in the end, the final say goes to those with the biggest guns.
What happens when a UN resolution runs counter to the will of a local population? Would the UN have the ability to force its edicts? Not unless they had a standing army, primarily loyal to the UN, sufficient to take on all comers. And that ain’t gonna happen.
The best chance might be smaller, regional alliances such as the EU … but look where that ends up: the bigger nations like France and Germany can break the rules repeatedly and just tell Brussels to stuff it. What are they gonna do? How many divisions does Valery Giscard D’Estaing have?
The UN is very useful for things like trade disputes and the WHO and international postage, and as an international forum. But when you propose that it’s laws be binding on all members and that it have the right to control who can go to war and when, you’re essentially advocating the end of the whole sysytem of nation-states, and that ain’t gonna happen.
Want to make it energy use per capita? The second house idea is to provide the established economies with a vehicle to restrain Asssembly motions that could seriously impaire them. Hell, I’d throw in a “if the Assembly vote 75% then the Senate must vote 90% to prevent it from passing…”
I do understand the potential problems here, however the idea is to de-couple the UN from national agendas right? The placement of an appointee simply extends the governemtn of the day into the UN. By allowing elected representatives using a common election procedure you’ve removed to som extent the “UN is a puppet of XXX”. At least until business interests show up.
I suppose 3rd party NGOs could be able to provide the basic benchmarks. Reasonable?
True, I still like the vehicle of Assembly accepting members. Full members bestow full membership, full and partial members bestow partial membership, etc. etc.
Nation states subject themselves to various supra-national bodies like the WTO, NAFTA etc. The idea of actual point of specifically incorporating the idea of UN motions being law would be to allow the UN body itself to sue offending governments within their own legal systems.
Measured how? What about countries like Canada that export power?
Well, maybe for you it is, but I’d regard that as a fool’s errand, akin to saying you’re going to “get the money out of politics” or telling people they ought to never think of their own interest in voting.
If the goal is to have a more relevant, more useful UN, then we must accept the validity of national agendas, and think of the UN as a place where they can be discussed, and if we’re really lucky balanced. If the goal is to eliminate or supercede the nation-state and establish a one-world “utopia,” count me out.
Sure, if you buy the myth that NGOs are neutral. But the reality is they’re not. Even if they don’t have a particular bias for or against one government per se, they do have agendas of their own that they wish to promote, which will at times match up with one nation or another.
Which is why they wouldn’t let it happen. Again, look at the mess the EU has gone through trying to set up a standardized bureacracy that covers just Europe – can you imagine trying to write a legal code that works for the whole planet?
Maybe I am missing something and maybe you can explain it better so I may understand it. I asked for a list of instances where a country had started an armed aggression against another country and the UN had not condemned it in any way. Your response was
(a) the links do not answer the question nor even come close to answering the question, in fact they are quite unrelated to the question and (b) I did not ask for links, I asked for named concrete instances. Please name those “quite a few nations” which have invaded other sovereign nations and have not been condemned by the UN. Some people are making it sound like this happens every tuesday and every friday during the summer months and every wednesday during the winter months so it’s no big deal if the US does it. I want names of countries and years not obfuscation and handwaving. I want names so I can condemn those actions just like I condemn the invasion of Iraq by the USA. I am tired of people telling me I only pick on the USA. I want to pick on other countries now. Please give me names or give me cheese.
What mess? European politics are no worse on average than American politics and some times a lot better. Or do you believe all American politicians and voters agree on everything? It bothers me that American politicians spend so much energy trying to discredit the EU and that so many Americans believe that nonsense. The EU my have its flaws, just like any other human endeavor, but it is being a huge success beyond the dreams of anyone a few decades ago. The idea that nations with different cultures and languages which had fought wars for centuries could form this type of political union would seem near impossible and yet it is happening. While American naysayers scoff at the idea that it is possible, the EU is expanding and getting stronger. It is a phenomenal success and the fact that some Americans do not like the idea of having such a strong competitor does not change it. I remember many predictions that the Euro currency would be a dismal failure. Well, it’s not happening. rather, it is becoming a strong competitor to the dollar.
Nobody is advocating a single world government but it is possible and desirable that countries freely unify, standardrize and cooperate in as many areas as possible through treaties and other mechanisms. The UN and its agencies are a very good example of this.
I’d also point out that there is a large body of agreed to international law. The issue seems a) enforcement and b) a judicial system to supply precedents for future legal developments.
My ideas were simply thrown together over the course of a slow morning. I’m sure you could arrive at a useful definition for the Senate seat, using multiple NGO’s and specific criteria (free elections for 15 years, basic human rights enshrined in precedent or constitution). The point was if you wish to make the UN legitimate to the world it needs to serve the world not national interests.
Personally I’d assume that appointed representative would remain until popular pressure forces a more representative approach. Evolution not revolution.
Yes, you are missing something. The links provided by me on current and past wars are quite clear on the cause of them in the second column, whether they are ethnic strife, civil war, invasion of another nation, etc. There was no intention on my part to deceive or mislead.
You might want to calm down on the handwaving yourself and actually read my prior posts, as well as note the facts that:
I never claimed the invasion of Iraq, which I did not and do not support happened every Tuesday and Friday.
I never said you could not condemn the US for doing so.
I never said that you only pick on the US.
I gave you a list of nations that avoided UNSC Resolutions due to their veto status.
You might also note that UN condemnation was all that said countries got if you bothered to look at the UNSC links provided by me. Enjoy the cheese, or take it to the pit. Believe it or not, I think the US probably deserves the usual UNSC action-less condemnation for invading Iraq.
Whoa, there, Sailor, take a deep breath. Nobody here is attacking the EU; you protesteth too much. I don’t know of any politicians who have tried to discredit it; like most Americans, I don’t really care that much unless it affects us. The jury is still out, however, on whether or not it’s going to work, and many europeans still oppose it.
All I said was that creating it had been “a mess” i.e. very difficult. My whole point was that to do the same thing on a global scale would be a legal nightmare with no guarantee of success.
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Sure they are. I think it’s a terrible idea, but there’s intelligent people who disagree.
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“Cooperate,” sure. “unify,” and “standardize” I want the details. I value diversity.
I apologize for not mentioning the success in East Timor, but basically it was still a rich Western nation riding to the rescue, was it not?
I’ve also never heard an American politician mention the EU one way or another.
Maybe familiarity breeds contempt in some cases. The diplomats, some from very poor nations, tend to live very well in New York, and fluff stories about their reckless driving and parking and the drunks from Islamic nations make their way into the less serious newspapers regularly and make the giant, architecturally dated complex on the East River less a Shining Hope of Mankind like it seems to be for other countries and just another bunch of bureaucrats and responsibility-dodgers.
Does the world need a place like this? Well, sure, I guess. But with their internal problems and their singling out of Israel while letting Libya chair human rights commissions and all the parking tickets…they don’t earn the automatic respect pass from many Americans.
