posted
Hmm. It just occurred to me that when the UN was founded, there were not as many sovereign nations in the world as there are now. Forget all the 30 or so African nations; that was Liberia, Ethiopia (Italian-occupied), plus European colonies. Forget India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh; all under Britain. Remove any number of various Pacific microstates; colonies. Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, the Middle East except for Iran: Colonies. So what does that actually leave? Perhaps 25 European nations, 10 or so in South America, China, Japan, South Africa, and Australia. India in a few years since the British knew they'd be pulling out. Total maybe 50, with almost all the economic power concentrated in the top 5 or at most 10. Manageable.
What have we got now? 187 nations, is it? And while economic power is still pretty concentrated, there are just too many little two-bit states to bribe them all, and as a bloc they do have a bit of money. No wonder it's impossible to get anything done even after the Cold War ended; the system was never designed to mediate between this many Powers.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I had a tour around the UN buildings in Geneva just before Christmas, and theare truly impressive. I just couldn't shake the feeling that it was all "mouth and no trousers" as my Granny would have said.
What does the UN do?
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posted
The UN is mostly effective at the level of the programs it funds and supports (such as UNICEF) rather that at the level of the General Assembly.
EDIT: It's also better to think of the General Assembly as a handy forum for airing and introducing ideas and concepts rather than a body intending to get things done.
posted
They also like to tell dictators when they have been bad, bad boys. But they don't have enough power to actually send them to their rooms without supper, usually.
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(Not asserting that the UN was right and Bush wrong; just saying that it was just as well for Bush that the UN in fact has very little power.)
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posted
Agree with Teshi, I think that's spot on. Incidentally, I don't know if it still works this way, but for a long time international calls would have been impossible without something like the UN there.
The UN DOES have the power to send them to their rooms, but the mechanics (politics and actual workings) make it fairly rare for nations to reach any sort of binding consensus. Regional blocs like NATO traditionally are far better at organizing any sort of military action against someone that needs or appears to need a smackdown. No one really respects the UN (aside from the SC, much of the time) when it comes to what they are being told to do because there are rarely any consequences for inaction.
The Security Council is where most of the major clout is, and it's long overdue for a major overhaul. More nations will get permanant seats on it, and there will be a great many more rotating seats with the end result that, if veto power is maintained, the SC will cease to exist as a useful body. It's already nearly impossible to get so many disparate groups on board, more hands in the pot, like Brazil, Japan, Germany and India with veto power will probably cause a deadening gridlock.
I think the UN is extremely useful, and should be kept around, but I think we need to redefine what we actually want from it. Programs like UNEP, UNICEF, the refugee program whose acronym I can never remember, etc, are all very successful, and save millions of lives. But those sort of grass roots nuts and bolts programs are often overlooked because so many people just expect the UN to solve international problems, but other than being a forum for discussing disagreements, it has little to no forceful power that isn't delegated to it specifically in a given moment for a specific task. In other words, we never created it with the intention that it'd do a lot of the things being asked of it now.
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