The UN is Obsolete.
It is time for a replacement.
Think back to the early 20th century. Think League of Nations.
10 January, 1920. That started a new paradigm in International relations. The goal was world peace — the idea that gave countries someplace besides warfare to help solve problems. As Wikipedia puts it:
Current scholarly consensus views that, even though the League failed to achieve its main goal of world peace, it did manage to build new roads towards expanding the rule of law across the globe; strengthened the concept of collective security, gave a voice to smaller nations; fostered economic stabilization and financial stability, especially in Central Europe in the 1920s; helped to raise awareness of problems like epidemics, slavery, child labour, colonial tyranny, refugee crises and general working conditions through its numerous commissions and committees; and paved the way for new forms of statehood, as the mandate system put the colonial powers under international observation.
Frankly, the exact same thing could be said of the United Nations. Although it did have some relative successes the League didn’t, it has still largely failed to establish any real “peace”, given the actions of countries like Russia and China.
The reason both failed?
First, they had little real power unless actively backed by a superpower nation. No police, no military of its own. Pretty much like the current ICC, it cannot send anyone into say, Israel, to arrest Netanyahu for his violations of International Law. So, he gets to skate off while continuing to do his thing, no matter how damaging it is to the general idea of any form of International power.
That’s the case because all of the nations who established it knew that they did NOT want an international “government” with that kind of power.
The reason?
The current theory of National Sovereignty. That’s considered inviolable. Getting someone thus arrested and tried requires a country to cooperate and allow the arrest, something that cannot and will not happen as long as someone like Netanyahu is still in power.
But what if there was a level of authority above nations? One with a police force and a military which could actually enforce International law?
We already have a kind of format for that, and it’s roughly how the US is organized, with local, State, and Federal levels of law and enforcement. Each level has its area of responsibility, but the lower ones cannot override the higher ones in matters of law and law enforcement. Now, our current situation kind of points out the flaws in actually enforcing the actions of the officials in power at the federal level, but that can be dealt with given the right rules in place.
After all, the last thing we want at the global level is an Authoritarian Dictator wanna-be. Firm controls need to be in place.
But my point is that it is time, culturally, politically, and legally, for the human race to establish some form of International control with firm and capable enforcement over the rules governing human rights.
At one time (just after WWII) the world situation had overtaken the League of Nations, and it was finally recognized as ineffective. So, the United Nations was established to replace it.
It is now time to recognize that the world’s cultures, our international political situations, and our world trade networks, need a better form of control, and that a form of control that is limited by the current idea of inviolable sovereignty is killing our ability of doing that with the current forms of international organizations.
Now, I understand that the process of doing something like this is controversial, messy, and difficult. There are going to be opposing countries, and it may even take violence in the end to make it work. Which sounds kind of like we’d be violating our own ideals in working to stop wars, wouldn’t it?
But the end product would be a world in which we could raise new generations in places no longer torn by strife and politically motivated violence based on human greed and avarice. A world in which eventually, we could reduce the need for military forces that currently take up a not insignificant percentage of the world’s GDP. Money that could be used to improve the lives and the living conditions for a huge number of countries’ populations around this globe instead of killing people off.
I offer the situation in Ukraine as an example of what we’re up against.
In that situation, we have three countries, Russia, China, and North Korea, working (fortunately not that well) together to allow Russia to invade a fourth country just for the sake of sating the greed of one man. It isn’t as bad as the pre-war conditions before WWII, of course, as China is certainly watching the world’s reactions and how far Russia is getting away with their attempt at imperial growth. But North Korea isn’t really in any better condition than Italy was, if the relative capability of Russia’s equipment vs. the West’s stuff is any indication. Plus, toss in the fact that virtually half of the artillery ammunition they’re providing back to Russia is in very poor condition, and that bodes very poorly for how NK may be keeping their own equipment up!
But still, the UN has done very little to either stop Russia’s invasion, or to supply Ukraine to resist. It has been up to the EU and NATO to step in to act to stop it, and even that is at a poorly conceived hands off distance.
No, we need a better way to act, and to actually prevent these situations from occurring in the first place.
Now, obviously, if you suggest something that smacks of a “world government”, that’s not going to even flutter off the ground. Even the use of something along the idea of “regulatory” is not gonna fly either. It’ll have to be something with two basic mandates.
First, the anti-war mandate. It would have to serve in a fine balance between having the ability to stop countries from invading others, resisting efforts by individual superpowers to overturn or prevent them from acting, or possibly coalitions of nations banding together to kill it — and yet, being under sufficient internal controls to prevent it from actually turning into a global Authoritarian nightmare.
That’s a tall order, just that!
But there’s another mandate it’ll need to fulfill, and that’s human rights protection. One of the other major issues the world has is the constant and widespread violation of human rights — and the very poorly agreed upon standards — prevalent around the world.
Yes, the current UN has done a grand job in spreading the ideals of human rights, but it has no effective manner of enforcement. It cannot enter a country without that country’s agreement to arrest someone who has violated International Law. Frankly, I’m not sure it even has an enforcement arm outside of the ICC to do that. Just like the UN has no actual military — it depends on member nations providing troops under UN mandates to actually DO anything.
So, here’s the suggestion I have.
We need that higher level of whatever you want to call it that has the mandate to enforce International Law, and the organizations with the authority to recruit worldwide to fill the ranks in order to enforce that law.
Remember the Federal system in the US? Same idea. It would have no authority to make law inside individual countries, but it could nullify laws that are counter to and violate International Law, and have the ability to enter any country to arrest violators or enforce those laws.
The internal controls would be strict to prevent their leadership from using that power to expand their power beyond the mandates they would be limited to, and any changes to the law would need the approval of a majority of either national delegations or even, eventually, a world-wide election.
Sounds simple, right? Not even close. I could go on for literally an hour’s worth of writing about this, but I’m not an International Law expert, nor a historian, but I do know enough to understand that we cannot, as a world with hopes and dreams of a brighter and better future continue without understanding that our current International situation is untenable and unstable.
At some point, the “sovereign” countries around the world are going to have to get together and do what the American colonies did two hundred odd years ago — band together and create something better and bigger than themselves — for their mutual safety and protection.
Remember Ben Franklin?
“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
We may not “hang” in the sense he meant it, but in the end, dead is dead, no matter the means or the perpetrator.
Besides, what if all that about UFOs turns out to be true, and there’s a galaxy of worlds out there we may have to confront someday? Do we want to do that as a hundred plus separate countries on the surface of one single planet, or do we want to face them as a single entity capable of representing us in that community? Would YOU trust the leadership of either Russia or China to have the best interests of the entire globe in mind? Or even the US?
Not me.
So, here’s the question.
What would YOU call it?
Is that two piece mandate ok? Or would that be a starting point for future expansion?
How long might it take for that organization to exist and operate before the world may trust it enough to allow it to expand the mandate?
You tell me. I’m all ears.
