Kofi Annan once put the order of threats that the UN deals with into 6 clusters (his order, from The Economist, December 2004):
[ol]
[li]Economic and social threats, including poverty and infectious disease[/li][li]Inter-state conflict and rivalry[/li][li]Internal violence, including civil war, state collapse, and genocide[/li][li]Nuclear, radiological, and biological weapons[/li][li]Terrorism[/li][li]Transnational organized crime[/li][/ol]
Now, what order of importance would you put these things and why?
Or, to ask the question another way…
What is most pressing to the world community and why?
The United Nations is most effective as a forum where communication can take place between various nations to prevent those things from happening. It doesn’t always work out that way but there you go.
Well yes, all these things are bad, and I’m very aware of this. I’m asking what order you’d put these things in, in rank of importance. Then, explain your order.
Internal violence, including civil war, state collapse, and genocide
Economic and social threats, including poverty and infectious disease
Terrorism and Transnational organized crime (not the same thing, motivated respectively by politics and by profits – but best dealt with by the same means, as a policing problem as opposed to a military problem)
As for Nuclear, radiological, and biological weapons – well, if its most powerful member states refuse to give them up, what’s the UN supposed to do?
Interesting, BrainGlutton, seeing as how the UN was originally founded to stop all wars, you’d still say that their purpose hasn’t changed.
The problem you allude to is also a very serious one. Having big weapons is a deterrent. Talking all these big countries into giving them up, or into arming every stable nation with one so there is nuclear equality would be a large task.
And no, I don’t mean to insinuate that you’d be for equalizing the playing field by giving every nation one nuclear weapon, either. I just threw trhat in for good measure. Don’t mean to put words in your mouth, ya know.
Personally, I’d rank inter-state conflict behind internal violence. Poverty would be a close third to inter-state violence.
Nukes, terrorism, and organized crime would follow up in that order on my list.
It seems that when you rank these things, it seems that you end up saying “Okay, if THIS problem gets solved, others seem to/would tend to follow.”
It’s about finding the problems that aren’t immediately interconnected and then working with the nuances amongst them.
What MGibson said. We don’t hear about the war that never took place.
My list:
[ol]
[li]Nuclear, radiological, and biological weapons[/li][li]Economic and social threats, including poverty and infectious disease[/li][li]Inter-state conflict and rivalry[/li][li]Internal violence, including civil war, state collapse, and genocide[/li][li]Transnational organized crime[/li][li]Terrorism[/li][/ol]
Any reasons as to why you have nuclear weapons first? I assume it’s because the nuclear scare’s aftermath will result in total annihilation, but that’s just speculation.
Only because it would take some hegemonic state or megalomaniacal conqueror to pull it off all at once. But if the UN (or, once again, something like it – see this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=339251) were to evolve into a world government by stages, the way the EU evolved (and is still evolving) into a continental government, that would be both workable and desirable, and “national sovereignty” be damned!
I am not sure you would be as thrilled with the results of this as you think you would be. It is difficult enough to manage the democratic process in the U.S…I can’t imagine what a mess it would be with all peoples & countries of the world involved. I think all involved would be wishing their national sovereignty back from the damned.
In answer to the OP…If I thought the UN was a good idea at all, I guess I would put it in the following order:
Nuclear, radiological, and biological weapons
Terrorism
Inter-state conflict and rivalry
Economic and social threats, including poverty and infectious disease
Internal violence, including civil war, state collapse, and genocide
Transnational organized crime
The thing about saying “I don’t like the UN” or “I think the UN isn’t a good idea” is that it’s kind of ludicrous, really. The world’s sovereign nations have to have discussions and talks and means of cooperating. What the UN does is going to happen, whether voters in the U.S. heartland like it or not. At least with a single United Nations you can hope to have some degree of legitimacy to it, as opposed to having rival blocs of competing organizations, like if you had some sort of super-NATO squaring off against the Arab League and the Organization of States Run By Megalomaniacal Nutbars.
The United Nations is, basically, a forum for international discussion. If you get rid of the UN tomorrow, it will simply come to exist again in whatever luxury hotel they hold the next international conference. Except you’d then have to reorganize UNICEF, UNHCR, WHO and UNESCO and any number of UN organizations that actually do a lot of good, at great trouble and expense. There seems to be this pervasive belief among a lot of people that the United Nations only exists to run up parking tickets in Lower Manhattan and give France the opportunity to thwart the plans of Jesus’s agents on Earth, but in fact the majority of the UN’s efforts are dedicated towards real, honest work helping people.
I would agree with Brainglutton’s general belief, which I think he holds, that the current system that the world is organized by - individual, ultra-sovereign states defined by geographical boundaries - is not going to work forever. It hasn’t worked that way forever, and there’s no reason to believe it’s the best or last way to run things.
On the other hand, the idea of the UN being a “World sovereign government” is equally limited in imagination; just the term “sovereign” sounds preposterous in that context, as if Ming the Merciless will run the world in opposition to the governments of Mars and Ganymede.
Well, I guess we just see things differently, because I don’t see a need for a single forum for international discussion. Besides that, the UN and its proxys has spent trillions of dollars to solve the worlds problems and has not seemed to make much headway. As far as the “honest work” they have done, I’m suppose the oil for food scandal and the sex trafficking scandal MAY be exceptions to the rule (although involvement went nearly all the way to the top of the UN organization), but I have my doubts.
I should clarify why I don’t see a need for the UN as a single forum for international discussion. I believe that there are countries that are clearly committing horrendous human rights abuses within their own borders. The UN has obviously felt the need to pander to these countries, an example of which is placing Cuba and Sudan on the Commission for Human Rights. Additionally, when it comes to actually accomplishing anything on the world stage, it is useless…every member of the Security Council has veto power, essentially ensuring the complete political impotence of the UN as a governing body. So…what exactly is the UN doing so well?
It helps if you know what they are actually doing.
A slight hijack, the Kennedy administration, in 1963, predicted that by 1970 there would be 10 nuclear powers, growing to 15 to 25 during the 1970s. Similar conclusions were reached by the Johnson administration. The world has 9 today. While not necessarily a UN thing, since the end of WWII diplomacy has prevented 21 states from acquiring nuclear weapons or made them hand over existing arsenals. Not that bad, is it?
I’m just envisioning something that bears (very roughly) the same relationship to nation-state governments as the U.S. federal government bears to the state governments. You might or might not believe that can work, but why is the word “sovereign” a preposterous one to apply to such a situation?
If you don’t actually know what sort of things the United Nations has done, you need simply look them up. This isn’t a matter of opinion; the facts are easily found. You don’t have to necessarily count on Sean Hannity for the full story of the United Nations.
As to the first point, I still don’t think I am being sufficiently clear. It doesn’t matter whether or not you think you “need” a single forum for international discussion, although to be honest I don’t understand why you’d think that; it’s that there WILL be a single forum for international discussion. Tear down the UN tomorrow, and they’ll just end up meeting in a hotel. There is going to be a United Nations, under one name or another, unless you can find a way for the various nations to live on different planets.
First of all, every member of the Security Council does NOT have veto power, so at least learn how it works. Permanent members have veto power, and since they all have nukes that’s just an acknowledgment of reality. The other members do not. (Have veto power, that is.)
There is more to the world than the military aims of the United States of America, amazing though it might seem. I mean, aside from the fact that the UN did, after all, save the nations of South Korea and Kuwait through Security Council action, the stuff that doesn’t appear on CNN on a daily basis includes:
The World Health Organization, which among other things was the agency primarily responsible for the eradication of smallpox, and which has saved millions of lives,
UNICEF, which isnce 1946 has been perhaps the single greatest driving force in the world for mass immunization, as well as creating education and health programs for children,
UNHCR, which has been working to ameliorate the conditions of refugees since 1950, delivering tremendous aid and relief…
…I could go on, actually, but won’t. It’s too late and I’m too tired to get into detail about how UNESCO helps people. Really, if your entire picture of the United Nations is just when the Security Council prevents the U.S. from bombing someone, I’m not sure I can help.
You’re obviously missing the point. The UN is not The Gathering of Free Nations, it’s first and foremost a forum to resolve differences between states. And much more.
Anyhow, on second thought I don’t think it will do much for the debate citing incidents of good and bad, whether it’s the presence of Sudan on the Commission for Human Rights (AFAIK, member states take turns), oil-for-food scandal (let’s not mention the name of the nation wasting 20 billions of that money), and so forth.
It’s the big picture that counts. But no, I hope the UN will never be a world government.
Yeah, I don’t get what the hangup is either, Sarafeena and I don’t wanna start/join the pile up.
I fail to see how having the UN around, even as simply a place for international relations, is detrimental to anything. Biding by UN decisions isn’t an anti-American (or anti-whatever country is being ruled against) thing, it’s more of a pro-world, thing.
