World Politics
1 June 2017: Imagine all the countries of the world, coming together after 2 world wars to say, ‘this must stop. let’s come together for a peaceful world.’
This was the United Nations — the largest collective of nations on the planet.
In college, I lost in an inter-college debate defending UN’s achievements.
And today, I can confidently say that United Nations is nowhere close to what it could be — it is rather, divided nations.
Plenty of reasons but a few obvious ones that we oversee.
One that in the security council, 5 nations have a veto. How can an institution profess to be democratic when its structure is so flawed?
And if the security council passes a resolution, NATO (the winners of WW2 mostly) goes ahead and does what it wants anyways.
Two, the officers who staff the UN jetting around the globe, justifying their salaries by doing reports and writing grants without impact — these officers add a lot of ‘fat’ to what could otherwise have been an elegant and minimalistic institution of change.
UN doesn’t have the true support of countries that it should have — and it doesn’t have the leadership that can garner it (it changes once a decade and rotates by continents)
And three — Nations uniting seems like a paradox in times of regional tensions. It is more a forced having-to-get-along and make agreements that no one can uphold.
So if Trump backs out of the painstakingly achieved Paris deal, it will only reveal that now it is no longer time to rely on United Nations but United People Across Nations.
No one is gonna rescue us — it is upto us to take the lead, and invite the global institutions to follow.
**
22 Sept 2017: The International Day of Peace would be better off being re-framed International Day of Non — Violence.
I can be very peaceful at the cost of others — which I see happen with people of privilege. Blind to the historical injustice that they are beneficiaries of, they extol the virtues of a spiritual path to peace.
Non-Violence on the other hand is much purer — you’re reaching peace by ensuring that you haven’t harmed or even forced anyone else.
So many peaceful countries and people are violent (and one may argue, lacking a deeper peace, but doesn’t matter!)
In fact we even gave a Nobel Peace Prize to Obama (who was the head of a country that was involved in several direct and indirectly violent attacks).
So taking the liberty of ‘directness’ I’d say:
Peace is over-rated. Non-violence is a nobler pursuit.
