Will the UN meet the new challenges of the twenty-first century or will it be the next failed League of Nations?
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The United Nations seems to be yet another inept onlooker as the Middle East explodes in wonton chaos, death, and destruction. Groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula take pride in torturing and executing innocent civilians. And the Assad regime consistently and brazenly engages in chemical warfare against its opposition.
Yet beyond calling emergency meetings and delivering the occasional verbal condemnation, it’s hard to know what the United Nations is doing to blunt or prevent these tragedies from continuing. The world deserves better.
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The UN was created out of the ashes of World War Two in an attempt to establish an international body that could address the modern, global forms of challenges facing the world. It was a successor to the globe’s first Woodrow-Wilson-inspired club called The League of Nations. This is important to note because The League of Nations was generally viewed as a failed effort due to its inability to prevent the outbreak of World War Two. Though many factors fueled its struggles—including the United States’ refusal to join—a lack of resolve to stand up to aggression is normally cited as its principal problem.
And while no one would argue with the daunting mission of the United Nations, or any other world body, it is, by definition, accountable to the world for its results.
Here is its list of purposes:
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To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
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To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
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To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
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To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.
It seems to me that the UN is struggling mightily in suppressing many horrifying forms of aggression and outright failing to encourage respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in much of the world.
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The historical excuse, however, for the UN has always been this: it’s nothing more than a composition of member nations and if these nations prefer their narrow self-interest over that of universal principles then there’s nothing more to do.
This was the familiar refrain during the Cold War (1945 – 1989) when Moscow and Washington rather than the world body settled most global security issues. This was true in the bi-polar world of the post World War Two era. The two global superpowers commanded the world stage.
The 2015 world is different. While the US continues to project military, economic, and social power across the globe, it’s by no means the only power. Other states, including Russia, France, the UK, China, and Saudi Arabia, among others, have increasingly demonstrated a resolve to intervene in international disputes. More and more nations recognize the perils of passively watching monstrous aggression play out.
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There’s also a deeper issue at stake. Humanity needs virtuous warriors who are driven by a commitment to something bigger than self. Dr. Robert Moore, author of many books on Jungian psychology and a key personality in the modern men’s movement, describes Warrior energy in this way:
“The Warrior’s loyalty, then, and his sense of duty are to something beyond and other than himself and his own concerns… He lives a life exactly the opposite of most human lives. He lives not to gratify his personal needs and wishes or his physical appetites but to hone himself into an efficient spiritual machine, trained to bear the unbearable in the service of the transpersonal goal.”
Transpersonal goal is the technical term for mission.
The UN can be this virtuous warrior, driven by commitment to a mission and purpose, rather than by narrow self-interest. It has the mission, charter, and scope to assert itself on behalf of those who can’t, include the tragic victims of international barbarism and chemical weapon attacks.
But only if it chooses to do so. Will it? Will it seek to shape a future based on universal human rights and collective security or will it appease tyrants and permit stark violations of its principles?
With a budget in 2012-2013 of $5,152 billion, it ought to be able to address the most heinous and dastardly crimes of the present era.
Will the UN meet the new challenges of the twenty-first century or will it be the next failed League of Nations?
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Photo credit: Flickr/Christian Schnettelker
Who’s watching the Watchmen? By all means, WE are watching the Watchmen, ready to see them fail: http://www.projectzerocentral.wordpress.com, and when they do, we will be ready to launch.