How would you fix the United Nations?

[Disgustipated]

The United Nations is broken in my honest opinion. A country uses chemical weapons, and the U.N. does nothing? If the U.N. can't do anything about such activity, what good is it? What do they even accomplish? Giving jobs to unskilled people? Seems to me that's all they do. The whole point the U.N. came into being with is to stop activities such as this.

First of all the security council needs to be disbanded. No country should have this much power. This was a mistake from the outset. This was strictly a power move by western nations to have a grip on power. There should be a general vote to declare war on Syria, if 3/4 of the nations approve, then the nations that approved are mandated to declare war on Syria. You should not have 3 rogue nations (U.S., U.K., and France) going off on their own dictating their own justice. And for what? An attack that does almost no damage? Tomahawks aren't particularly effective. Just ask Bill Clinton in the 90's with his Wag the Dog attack that accomplished absolutely nothing against Al Quida. Most likely such a measure would have failed because Russia would threaten world war if Syria was attacked, but I really don't think Russia would risk annihilation over Syria. But I admit the risk of World War is there with my proposal. Even if the proposal failed, at least something was done other than talk, which it seems is all the U.N. does.

So how would you fix the United Nations? Or do you think it's working?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The purpose of a "UN resolution" is to stop arms sales to the target. If one of the five largest arms dealers in the world considers them a valued customer and defies the resolution not only is the resolution ineffective, but the UN is in a position where they have to try to censure one of the five largest arms dealers, which eliminates any control that may be exerted over that arms dealer in the future. So those five are given "veto power" in order to prevent any order being given that they would ignore.

So, my short answer would be that yes, the UN is working.

It isn't working as well as one might hope, because it has no real power over the largest arms dealers in the world. But in those cases where the largest arms dealers in the world can agree on a customer that deserves to be blacklisted that customer is really stuck. And when a rogue nation like Israel or Syria has to maintain sufficient decency to keep at least ONE of the big five on their side it does impose some limitations on their behavior, which does reduce the risk of a major war and does reduce the number of small wars.

 

[Berzerker]

The UN charter limits actions it can take within countries, participants didn't like the idea of a world govt interfering with their internal affairs. I think it helps, it still gives voice to peoples who dont have much of one and world condemnation can work. I think the UN should be expanded to deal with natural disasters if it doesn't already. It would be nice if the UN could step into civil wars like in Syria and stop it somehow, but thats an invitation to a wider conflict.

 

[Zelig]

Mandatory pot brownies for all members.

 

[Synobun]

The UN works as well as it can in a world dominated by nation states.

@Disgustipated, what do you feel is the purpose of the United Nations?

 

[caketastydelish]

The United States has far more power than the United Nations for all practical purposes, this making the United States the real United Nations.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

United Nations has not power itself, it has the power members countries give it. It is powerful members (particularly the most powerful one, USA) who do everything they can to make UN useless and then claim UN is useless and blame it for all that is wrong in the world. It is a nice scapegoat if anything.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Fix it? Take away the veto power some nations abuse enjoy.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Fix it? Take away the veto power some nations abuse enjoy.

That doesn't fix it Lemon, that just destroys it.

Consider:

Israel goes on one of their routine "slaughter some Palestinians because we can" spasms. The world in general is rightly outraged, and the UN calls for sanctions, limiting trade with the Israelis. There are no circumstances where the US is going to honor such sanctions.

Currently, the US just uses their veto. Everyone is disgruntled, except the Israelis and the other permanent members of the security council. We move on.

Take away that veto and we have the US violating sanctions imposed on Israel by the UN. The normal response to that is for the UN to call for sanctions against the US until they comply. Hardly anyone can afford to stop trading with the US so that just flatly won't work. So a vote is taken that demonstrates that the US can basically do whatever it wants.

While that may seem no worse than the US being able to do whatever it wants because it has a veto, it does in fact make a difference. The UN choosing to be powerless because they are following their own rules is an entirely different matter than the UN being demonstrably powerless because the US just blows them off. Nations who are not protected from the power of the UN by the rules are still subject to some amount of control, if the former. If the UN puts themselves in a position where powerful countries just blow them off who is ever going to listen to them?

 

[Zkribbler]

The purpose of the veto is to prevent a UN-vs-Great Power conflict.

 

[Cheetah]

The point of the UN is to have a standing system for diplomatic contact. As such, it works.

The pretentious stuff of standing for human rights and democracy while having half the members being corrupt, murderous, thieving, oppressing tyrants is as stupid as it sounds, of course.

 

[Cutlass]

The UN is not a government. Don't expect it to act as one.

 

[inthesomeday]

At the absolute very least make the permanent security council members impermanent. The excuse for putting them there doesn’t even make any sense, France didn’t contribute to the war effort anywhere near as much as, like, Australia, or Argentina.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

At the absolute very least make the permanent security council members impermanent. The excuse for putting them there doesn’t even make any sense, France didn’t contribute to the war effort anywhere near as much as, like, Australia, or Argentina.

They are among the top five arms exporting nations...third I think last time I checked.

 

[EnglishEdward]

At the absolute very least make the permanent security council members impermanent. The excuse for putting them there doesn’t even make any sense, France didn’t contribute to the war effort anywhere near as much as, like, Australia, or Argentina.

Which war are you talking about?

 

[inthesomeday]

It was WWII. The five permanent members were given their places on the grounds that they were the leaders of the allies, the United Nations. But in 1945 I really don’t think france deserved that title.

 

[Mouthwash]

Abolish the General Assembly.

 

[EnglishEdward]

I am not sure that Argentina as a country did very much during WW2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentina_during_World_War_II

Declaring war when Germany had clearly lost e.g. six weeks before surrendering hardly counts.

 

[mitsho]

Don‘t be idealistic. The Security Council works as intended, you can‘t change it to a majority rule, and if you would, the great powers would ignore it.

So, I‘d rather do stuff like making contributions to peace-keeping missions mandatorily be of a financial AND personal nature. (At the moment, rich nations buy themselves out, leaving African nations to provide the soldiers. With a human „skin in the game“, these would become more efficient). Or increase its budget. Or put a cap on the length of f.e. the Human Rights Reports. Or create a Sustainability Council similar to the security one. Progress will solve the other petty problems sooner or later (probably later, but still).

 

[Tahuti]

How to fix the UN?

Have the UN buy this company and use the profits to finance its operations, among lots of other things.