I’m pretty familiar with the UN because my father worked there in a variety of roles from 1946 to 1975. I was in the Congo from 1961 - 1962, and have read some diplomacy books on it also. From a selfish American point of view the US, which had more influence in the UN back then than it does now, used the UN to help keep the Russians out of the Congo. Losing it to them would have had serious consequences because of the minerals mined in Katanga.
I was not thinking of Suez, for the reasons you give. What I was referring to was the set of UN peacekeepers between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai, who got forced to leave right before the 1967 war. My father was up for being sent there in the late '50s until they figured out he was Jewish. They did a good job keeping the peace in a delicate situation until the Egyptians got antsy.
I don’t give the UN direct credit for stopping WW III, but I think that it kept the Soviet Union from becoming isolated, and that maybe helped. Remember that Stevenson showed the pictures of the missiles in Cuba during the crisis, and I think that helped world opinion support the blockade. As for minor diplomacy, the UN offers a place where adversaries can talk to each other without any publicity or preconditions. You can sit one table away from a delegate from a country you don’t have diplomatic relations with in the Delegates’ Dining Room. I don’t know how much conflict has been averted this way, but I suspect at least some.
One big problem with American perception of the UN today comes from those who think the organization is worthless unless we always get our way. Administrations who think this way tend not to do well on the diplomatic front. Perhaps if Bush had paid a bit more attention to the UN they could have rounded up a majority in the SC about Iraq. There was none of the crap with Bush the Elder, and he did a great job in getting diplomatic support for his war.
I attribute peace since 1991 to a mixture of things. MAD certainly has a part, especially in situations like Pakistan and India. The fact that most industrialized nations have turned away from war helps, it’s hard to imagine Japan or Germany being the aggressor in a war these days. Even China is reasonably peaceful, they’ve been relying on soft power to gain influence. Plus, lets not forget Pax Americana. While the US does have it’s Iraq moments, there’s a reason it translates to ‘American Peace’. I don’t want to sound like a rabid patriot the US is perfect rah rah type, because I do realize the US has many flaws in it’s foreign policy, but even so we are a world power who is not interested in conquering the world. We will actively use our power to prevent other nations from even trying though.
A fair point. I was trying to not make this sound like a right wing ‘the UN must be abolished’ sort of thing. I’m not actually against the UN. I like the idea in general, even as I wonder if the organization has made much real world difference.
When Rome conquered Gaul, they stayed and ran things for roughly five centuries. Yeah, that totally compares to America promoting self governance in Iraq after seven years, and withdrawing as fast as the security situation will allow.
I won’t defend everything the US has done, but there is no way Pax Americana is like the Roman empire. Hell, our policies don’t even equal a British empire.
Which is getting off the point. The point was that I believe the (relatively) peaceful events since 1991 can be attributed to things other than the UN.
The UN pretty much is the direct successor organization of the League. The absence of the US wasn’t the original group’s only weakness, and wouldn’t make an all-or-nothing difference to the new one either.
The UN is looking for a new lease on life, as a story out of the New York times, suggest that many countries are eskewing the UN in favor of the G-8 or G-20 conferences, even if they are not a direct participant.
With the G conferences, you get the nations that usually matter the most with the least amount of drama.
BTW this is the Rand report which Jas09 mentioned (pdf file). It makes for fascinating reading and points out the strenghths and weaknesses of both the UN and US approach to nation-building. Ultimately the two are complementary and UN missions tend to be more successful when they have the backing of first-world militaries; for example in Sierra Leone with the British and East Timor with the Australians.
The UN is not a world government and it has no standing enforcement powers, by design. It is completely reliant on members for enforcement power. Again, this is by design. And its potential enforcement power can be blocked by any one of the permanent Security Council members. Once again, by design. It was set up as a framework for international relations (despite whatever aspirational goals might be in its charter) and from that standpoint it has been quite successful.
So, for example we have a bunch of treaties that govern international intellectual property issues. The UN manages a number of aspects of these treaties. The UN didn’t unilaterally design the treaties. The member nations took the lead on that (and quite a few of these treaties predate the UN). But once the treaty regimen was in place, someone was needed to administer it. Who does it now? The UN. The UN certainly isn’t the only international organization dealing with this issue, but they play a major role in administration.
As for non-proliferation, I think anyone looking at the UN as a failure really has unrealistic perceptions. After the USSR and then China got nukes, there was a real fear that lots of countries would have them in short order. The NPT probably helped with a number of countries not pursuing nukes who easily could have. Short of invading any country which wanted a nuke, what exact method would the naysayers propose to attempt non-proliferation? Yeah, it didn’t prevent proliferation 100%, but what is the alternate system which could? I’ll also point out that since neither India or Pakistan are NPT signatories, the UN was not authorized to prevent them from getting nukes. So, once again, we have a criticism of the UN for not doing something it’s not designed to do.
If you want to suggest improvements to the UN, go for it. Any institution can be improved (although, given the design of the UN, the kind of improvements that would solve the OP’s issues would be difficult to implement). But this idea that the UN isn’t effective because it doesn’t do things it was never designed to do isn’t valid criticism, IMO.
The question was if there is anything the UN was effective for. Not asking for explanations of why it’s ineffective. The examples I provided in the OP are all things the UN has tried to do, and failed at to some degree or another. Which is perfectly valid criticism, if the UN wasn’t designed to do certain things then maybe it shouldn’t try doing them and fucking everything all up.
And I’ve already told you where they are effective. They are quite effective within the framework of their design.
Please. Your examples are merely things which are difficult to do within the UN’s current design or which aren’t even in the UN’s purview. For example, you seem to think the UN has failed at non-proliferation because it didn’t prevent India and Pakistan from getting nukes. As I’ve already pointed out, since neither India or Pakistan are signatories to the NPT, their nuke issues are not within the UN’s purview.
Even as a defender of the UN I have to admit that this is a colossally lame riposte. No offense meant. The NPT is utterly pointless unless, in fact, it inhibits the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Just having SOME countries agree not to build nukes, the vast majority if not all of whom wouldn’t have built them anyway, could be pretty reasonably argued to be a useless gesture - nobody was worried about the Icelandic nuclear weapons program to start with.
Again, I ask, what is the alternate method to prevent nuclear non-proliferation? How would you do this outside a treaty regimen? Sanctions? If you can point to NK as an NPT failure, then you can also point to NK as a sanction failure. Invasions? There are only so many countries you can invade.
And pointing to Iceland is an even lamer riposte. Most of Europe, post WWII, certainly had the capability of building nukes, and I don’t see any reason to think they wouldn’t have in the absence of the NPT (with the exception of the Warsaw Pact countries, which basically had their nuke programs controlled by the USSR). Plenty of Asian countries had nuke-building capabilities post-WWII and even perhaps a couple of S. American countries. Right now, we live in a world where nine or possibly ten countries have nukes. What makes you think that in the absence of the NPT we wouldn’t be living in a world where 50 countries had nukes? What is your basis for believing that?
You are assuming that the vast number of countries wouldn’t have built nukes anyway in a non-NPT world. I don’t see any reason to assume that.
And finally, the fact that India and Pakistan have nukes can be debated as a failure of the NPT or a failure of nuclear non-proliferation generally. However,it is clearly not a failure of the UN, since the UN isn’t responsible for India and Pakistan’s nuke program. It’s like saying that someone committing a robbery is a failure of the patent office.