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Yes. The point of the UN is not to be a world government. It is to be a forum for the five major power victors of WWII to coordinate things. Okay, that’s a bi
by umanwizard 7y ago
Yes.
The point of the UN is not to be a world government. It is to be a forum for the five major power victors of WWII to coordinate things.
Okay, that’s a bit flippant, but it’s mostly true.
There is a lot of discussion about how illogical it is that, for example, India or Japan aren’t permanent members and how the UN should be reformed. IMO this misses the point. If you made the structure more “fair”, the powerful countries would simply not bother participating. International relations are mostly based on power, not fairness.
I could set up a perfectly fair world government in my living room tomorrow, but it’s unlikely that anyone would follow its edicts.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> Okay, that’s a bit flippant, but it’s mostly true. To the extent it was true, that model got overturned due to Korea which demonstrated that it could not work and that the UN would fail utterly without a workaround for veto-induced paralysis; such a workaround was adopted in 1950 and has been used several times since (first notable use being to bypass the Anglo-French veto of a UN cease-fire and peacekeeping force in the Suez crisis in 1956.
- umanwizard 7y agoThis is interesting, and if true it challenges my understanding of how the UN works significantly. Can you elaborate?
- dragonwriter 7y agoI'll defer to Wikipedia for further elaboration: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_377 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assem...