Is the United Nation Indispensable? (October 29, 2009)

We have UN “peace keeping forces” on our border with Israel since the July 2006 war that lasted 33 days; this savage pre-emptive war ended with a major debacle of the Israeli troops and a definite political defeat of Israel’s expansionist strategies and pre-emptive war policies. This peace keeping force is not really meant to keep peace and could not do this job if a resumption of war sets in.  The major benefit of UN peace keeping forces is to interact with citizens and aid in small social and economic undertakings within the needed communities and providing seasonal jobs.  The fact that citizens are exposed to different nationalities and daily interactions is more important than any kinds of power exhibition and posturing.  One drawback is that many kids tend to like playing soldiers wearing blue beret or blue helmets; in a way start dreaming of emulating the UN military forces.

Many regions have witnessed exposures to UN peace keeping contingents with communication advantages that dwarf the petty enmities based on ethnic or religious conflicts that are the wreckages of lasting historic ignorance and confinements.  Just providing multinational troops for separating armies is good enough a job to preserving and consolidating the UN institutions. 

Currently, the UN departments are focusing on environmental changes (the Copenhagen forum is awaited with great expectation this December), eliminating arms of mass destructions, reducing the nuclear arsenals, slowing down the proliferation of sub-munitions, biological and chemical arms, and prohibiting the usage of land mines, cluster shells, phosphoric bombs. 

After the fiasco of the pre-emptive war in Iraq and the hopeless case of resolving the Afghan conflict by shear military intervention it is becoming obvious that the UN will erect a solid wall against such unilateral pre-emptive endeavors.  Major wars are practically at an end.  The main difficulty is to diplomatically pre-empt conflicts that may result in low level wars or civil wars that are more difficult to resolve when they starts than open wars; this is where the UN can dynamically extend helping hands as an honest third party broker to encouraging the main parties to meeting directly.

A not largely publicized endeavor is the efforts to re-integrate kid-soldiers into civilian societies; many families and communities refuse to accept their kid-soldiers within their mist for fear or disrupting the traditional way of life. Many African States have recruited over 300,000 kids to play soldiers during the many civil wars and those kids would not relinquish the man status they acquired during these horrible wars and the easy ways to rob and stead just by showing off with a Kalashnikov.

The UN divulged that military expenses have reached 1.5 trillion dollars this year; an amount that would have made every inhabitant of planet earth richer by 200 dollars.  The US alone accounts for 48% of that total in military budget.  Most armies have reduced the number of their standing armies in order to invest the savings on more performing weapons in load power, reduced size, and accuracy to kill and maim.  The US and Russia are negotiating the reduction on the number of war heads and ballistic missiles for the purpose of investing the savings on more performing and newer generations of war heads and missiles.  The US and Russia needed the UN as a world forum to misinform the world community on their intentions for greater peace and stability.

Civilian group actions are taking the lead over State governments in disseminating awareness on global problems and exercising beneficial pressures on the 199 State governments represented in the UN.  Former hegemonies of superpowers are making rooms to emerging economic and financial powers.  The group of G20 is meeting frequently and neighboring States are conglomerating into trade zones in South America and South-East Asia.

Slow changes in the re-organization of the UN and power distribution are taking place.  Rotations of non-veto power States (I think around 9 in addition to the 5 veto members) are asked to represent the UN body in executive sessions; for example Lebanon was voted in for two years after 53 years of absence.  This sharing in responsibilities is a great exposure for non-veto States to learn and get training on the UN administrative labyrinths.

The rights of the former five “superpowers” of US, Russia, China, France, and Britain to veto on major decrees related to wars or pre-emptive wars did not function well: superpowers did what they wanted to do anyway regardless of the votes in the General Assembly. Worse, the superpowers vetoed on petty matters that would have discouraged crimes against humanity and blatant apartheid policies.  The US caste the most number of vetoes in the history of the UN just to take Israel off the hook on the thousands of Israel’s behaviors and activities that went counter to the UN charter of safeguarding human dignities and rights. 

Veto rights to absolving crimes against humanity are not to be acceptable any more.  After the world financial crash, the successive failures of direct wars to solving problems, and the exorbitant costs to waging wars and paying for wars’ aftermath in caring for refugees, displaced people, and reconstruction a new political era is evolving; the superpowers are now willing to permit the UN playing greater roles in resolving world problems.