How would you fix the United Nations?

[onejayhawk]

Why do you say sadly, that's the whole point.

To the contrary. The point is to create peace. I say sadly because the talk has no real authority.

Typical not. The UN core is the security counsil with imo as purpose to prevent avoidable escalation of conflicts that cause big violence
If acting realises that better than talking, I can agree. But most of the times acting only escalates.

The other purpose of the UN is to get consensus on common goals that need parallel efforts from many to move forward, like the Climate agreements. And again talking is the best base to get on with that.

Hence my suggestion about modifying the veto power, see above. Concerning purpose, see above this post. It is specifically not the correct forum for climate change discussions.

J

 

[Timsup2nothin]

One major change would be to change the veto power, by making an override possible. Say, by a 6 of 9 vote.

The sad reality is that it is a place to talk, not to act.

J

To what end? You suggest economic sanctions on Israel for yet another gross human rights violation. The US vetoes this proposition. The veto gets overridden but the US has made clear they are not going to cooperate so the sanctions will be totally ineffective anyway.

So, what do you do next? Sanction the US for blowing off the UN? To what end? As a test to see how many countries are more dependent on the US than they are cooperative with the UN?

 

[Ajidica]

It is worth remembering that any attempt to strip the veto from a P5 or kick someone out of the P5 would entail modifying the UN Charter, which would be such a cluster[censored] nobody is going near that with a 20 foot poll, a full hazmat suit, and behind a meter of lead.

 

[metatron]

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,

What is our metric for "contribution"?

 

[Disgustipated]

Apparently the UN has a formal mechanism to break a deadlock from repeated veto's in the security counsil,

which was designed shortly after the founding of the UN because of the Korean crisis at that time.
From https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...nations-may-seek-to-bypass-russian-veto-at-un

"Western governments, worried that the impasse is weakening the wider authority of the security council, want to pick up a rarely used route, first set up in the 1950 Korean crisis. Called “uniting for peace”, it would enable nine members of the 15-strong security council to bypass a Russian veto and refer the matter to a full vote at the general assembly. It would then require a two-thirds majority by the general assembly for an attribution mechanism to be agreed.
The 1950 “uniting for peace” route was explicitly designed to be used when the security council could not meet its responsibilities over maintenance of peace".

The fact this mechanism has hardly been used so far demonstrates I think that none of the veto countries likes it and have used their informal power to prevent it in practice.

At the core of the mechanism lies the necessity of any veto country to be able to have at least onethird of all the countries not against their veto, to neutralise this bypass procedure and win their point of view.
Something that was most of the time for most situations the case the past decades.

I doubt Russia will find onethird on their own, but I guess none of the big three will like the reviving of this procedure.
China has a lot of influence in Africa.

Interesting. I should have known about this since I was reading about the Korean war not too long ago. I would have included it in my OP.

I can see why it's not used very often. It's like the nuclear option, only a last resort. Sadly, most people don't care enough about Syrians for this to happen.

Let's say it like it is. Most of the world doesn't care about the plight of the Syrians. Only lip service for a moral cause of banning chemical weapons use. It's not nearly the issue the Korean war was.

 

[Gen.Mannerheim]

Let's say it like it is. Most of the world doesn't care about the plight of the Syrians. Only lip service for a moral cause of banning chemical weapons use. It's not nearly the issue the Korean war was.

I would posit that in 1950 nobody really cared about the plight of the Koreans either. The difference is that the Korean War was at the start of the Cold War, in a world that saw itself as extremely black & white (the Non-Aligned Movement didn't start until 1961). Most countries who fought in Korea didn't have a real interest in Korea itself per se, but viewed themselves as being on team Capitalism (USA) or team Communism (USSR) and viewed the conflict as an extension of their teams efforts. As the Cold War dragged on, and the Sino-Soviet Split, de Gaulle's France, and a host of other events added more complications to the world.

 

[inthesomeday]

What is our metric for "contribution"?

Military leaders and personnel, or material support, directly involved in victorious military operations against belligerent groups.

 

[AdrienIer]

Military leaders and personnel, or material support, directly involved in victorious military operations against belligerent groups.

Then France is above Australia. Not to undermine the efforts Australia put in the war, but without Australian troops and support DDay happens pretty much as it did while without the french resistance efforts the allies are pushed out of the beaches by June 10th.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Then France is above Australia. Not to undermine the efforts Australia put in the war, but without Australian troops and support DDay happens pretty much as it did while without the french resistance efforts the allies are pushed out of the beaches by June 10th.

Weren't Australia's biggest contributions in North Africa and Asia?

 

[AdrienIer]

I don't know enough about the Asian theater. But in North Africa, on wikipedia I see mostly British troops in Egypt and US troops in the 1942 landing. Plus the french resistance which handed over Algiers right as the Americans landed.

Edit : Ah yes the 9th australian division in El Alamein.

 

[Broken_Erika]

At the time of D-Day, they were busy in the South West Pacific Theatre...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_West_Pacific_theatre_of_World_War_II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Guinea_campaign

 

[Ajidica]

It is worth remembering that if the UK had pushed for any of the White Dominions to get a seat on the Security Council, the Soviet's would have insisted on each of their SSR's getting on the Security Council. If Security Council seats were going solely to who contributed the most, the Belarussian and Ukrainian SSRs contributed well in excess to the victory of the United Nations than Australia.

Also, the big reason France got a spot on the Security Council was because nobody wanted deGaulle to try and do his own thing. The guy was infuriating enough when he was on your side, hard to imagine what he would be like hostile toward you.

 

[inthesomeday]

Then France is above Australia. Not to undermine the efforts Australia put in the war, but without Australian troops and support DDay happens pretty much as it did while without the french resistance efforts the allies are pushed out of the beaches by June 10th.

To my knowledge Australia was more important in the landing in Sicily, in expelling the Italians from North Africa, and supporting the Allied effort against the Japanese throughout the Indian Ocean. Remember, D-Day itself is even of contentious significance.

 

[Lexicus]

without Australian troops and support DDay happens pretty much as it did while without the french resistance efforts the allies are pushed out of the beaches by June 10th.

Can you explain this a bit more fully?

 

[metatron]

Military leaders and personnel, or material support, directly involved in victorious military operations against belligerent groups.

Can you explain this a bit more fully?

Ok, let me spit out some rough, fast, loose data here.
At the time of WW2 France had forty something million inhabitants and was one of the worlds preemminent industrially developed countries.
Australia had like eight million, or something, inhabitants and had an economy largely based on agriculture and ressource extraction.

Over the course of WW2 France suffered some 200 thousand military fatalities and some 400 thousand civilian fatalities. A fair share of the latter being a factor of retaliation against Marquis activity, the other part largely being attributable to the Holocaust.
Australia suffered some 40 thousand military and only token civilian fatalities.

ITSD mentioned India. India suffered about 100 thousand military fatalities, largely a function of British efforts to reconquer Myanmar.
India also suffered about 2 million civilian fatalities as a function of famine and disease. We cound argue whether that is a voluntary "contribution".

Never mind India at the time had, like, a third of billion inhabitants. And never mind that French Indochina (i.e. largely Vietnam with its bright and rosy future) equally suffered about 2 million civilian casualties in WW2.
On a population of, like, 30 million, or whatever.

So, that's human life.
Economics don't carry us much farther. Because of the factors alluded to ever so gently above.

I'm just riffin' here.
I mean between the recent superficial comments some posters have made on Nazism being "left" or "right", the recent comments posters have made on certain quatitative factors of the Eastern Front and the recent comments made on - a timeless classic - ze Germanz having "democratically elected" ze Hitler, which appeared to outright aim at portraying any actual knowledge of the Machtergreifung as a moral and intellectual defect...
*deepbreath*
...there's really no danger of offending anyone.
Not while there are vile people on this board who use horrendous epithets like "Canadia".

 

[AdrienIer]

Can you explain this a bit more fully?

I can't be too detailed because I've forgotten some of the division numbers and the precise day to day events, but even without going into the resistance intel that made DDay's planning possible : on DDay the allies ended up (for the most part) fighting some pretty bad German divisions (like the 716th ID), composed of men barely fit for military duty equipped with quite a lot of outdated equipment. That's what made the Germans lose the beaches and unable to counterattack much. The divisions in Caen (21rst PD) were better, and the arrival of the elite panzer divisions from the Calais area to help them made operation Perch a failure. But if the panzer divisions had not been delayed by the resistance the British troops would have been counterattacked as soon as the 7th of june, before the bulk of the allied troops could have landed (in truth the British troops were counterattacked but not very efficiently). The same can be said of the German divisions in Britanny which did not participate in the first days of battle thanks to various sabotages and guerilla attacks. Because the beachheads in Utah and Omaha were not connected until the 10th, the Britanny divisions would have had a chance to push back the 7th US army corps to Utah beach.
There's also the case of the 2nd SS division which could have arrived in Normandy as early as the 8th (and be in fighting order on the 9th or 10th) but was told to deal with "terrorists" in central France on the way (Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane massacres).

The battle of Normandy only started moving in the allies' favor at the end of July (operations Spring and Cobra). Before that, any German counterattack not countered by resistance sabotage and intel could have changed the tide of battle.

 

[Lexicus]

I can't be too detailed because I've forgotten some of the division numbers and the precise day to day events, but even without going into the resistance intel that made DDay's planning possible : on DDay the allies ended up (for the most part) fighting some pretty bad German divisions (like the 716th ID), composed of men barely fit for military duty equipped with quite a lot of outdated equipment. That's what made the Germans lose the beaches and unable to counterattack much. The divisions in Caen (21rst PD) were better, and the arrival of the elite panzer divisions from the Calais area to help them made operation Perch a failure. But if the panzer divisions had not been delayed by the resistance the British troops would have been counterattacked as soon as the 7th of june, before the bulk of the allied troops could have landed (in truth the British troops were counterattacked but not very efficiently). The same can be said of the German divisions in Britanny which did not participate in the first days of battle thanks to various sabotages and guerilla attacks. Because the beachheads in Utah and Omaha were not connected until the 10th, the Britanny divisions would have had a chance to push back the 7th US army corps to Utah beach.
There's also the case of the 2nd SS division which could have arrived in Normandy as early as the 8th (and be in fighting order on the 9th or 10th) but was told to deal with "terrorists" in central France on the way (Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane massacres).

The battle of Normandy only started moving in the allies' favor at the end of July (operations Spring and Cobra). Before that, any German counterattack not countered by resistance sabotage and intel could have changed the tide of battle.

I don't buy it. Any German counterattack against the beaches was going to be wiped out by the firepower of the Allied fleet just offshore. Sending the Panzers against the beachheads would have been suicidal. As soon as the weather cleared up (which happened well before July) then Allied air power would make mincemeat of any serious German attack involving armored vehicles.

In any case, even had D-Day failed...I think the only thing that would have changed is that France would possibly have ended up in the Eastern Bloc (maybe the Berlin Pact instead of the Warsaw Pact or something?) By 1944 the USSR could easily have crushed the Germans themselves even if the Western Allies had made a separate peace.

ze Germanz having "democratically elected" ze Hitler, which appeared to outright aim at portraying any actual knowledge of the Machtergreifung as a moral and intellectual defect...

I share your annoyance at this. I see people claiming that Hitler was democratically elected all the time and I just facepalm every time.

 

[inthesomeday]

Ok, let me spit out some rough, fast, loose data here.
At the time of WW2 France had forty something million inhabitants and was one of the worlds preemminent industrially developed countries.
Australia had like eight million, or something, inhabitants and had an economy largely based on agriculture and ressource extraction.

Over the course of WW2 France suffered some 200 thousand military fatalities and some 400 thousand civilian fatalities. A fair share of the latter being a factor of retaliation against Marquis activity, the other part largely being attributable to the Holocaust.
Australia suffered some 40 thousand military and only token civilian fatalities.

But then why not Poland?

I can't be too detailed because I've forgotten some of the division numbers and the precise day to day events, but even without going into the resistance intel that made DDay's planning possible : on DDay the allies ended up (for the most part) fighting some pretty bad German divisions (like the 716th ID), composed of men barely fit for military duty equipped with quite a lot of outdated equipment. That's what made the Germans lose the beaches and unable to counterattack much. The divisions in Caen (21rst PD) were better, and the arrival of the elite panzer divisions from the Calais area to help them made operation Perch a failure. But if the panzer divisions had not been delayed by the resistance the British troops would have been counterattacked as soon as the 7th of june, before the bulk of the allied troops could have landed (in truth the British troops were counterattacked but not very efficiently). The same can be said of the German divisions in Britanny which did not participate in the first days of battle thanks to various sabotages and guerilla attacks. Because the beachheads in Utah and Omaha were not connected until the 10th, the Britanny divisions would have had a chance to push back the 7th US army corps to Utah beach.
There's also the case of the 2nd SS division which could have arrived in Normandy as early as the 8th (and be in fighting order on the 9th or 10th) but was told to deal with "terrorists" in central France on the way (Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane massacres).

The battle of Normandy only started moving in the allies' favor at the end of July (operations Spring and Cobra). Before that, any German counterattack not countered by resistance sabotage and intel could have changed the tide of battle.

French intelligence, and German incompetence, has very little to do with why the Allies won D-Day. Logistical and material superiority won the day for the Allies, mostly possible because of the Soviet’s success on the Eastern front. And as Lex said, even without D-Day at all the Soviets would have probably been able to push to Paris by 45 or 46.

 

[AdrienIer]

Well yes the war was mostly won on the eastern front, but your original argument was that France contributed less to the war effort than Australia (which is false) or Argentina (like, WTF ?). France fielded over 5m soldiers in 1940 and over 500k in 45 to fight Germany.
Are you suggesting that only Russia gets a veto because they're the ones who really won the war ?

France being included with the other war winners was negotiated with the US and UK around the time of the north african landing, and used as an argument to flip Vichy representatives and make large territorial gains without bloodshed.

And about Poland, it wasn't a world power like the other 5 were. The influence of Poland outside of eastern Europe is non-existent.

I don't buy it. Any German counterattack against the beaches was going to be wiped out by the firepower of the Allied fleet just offshore. Sending the Panzers against the beachheads would have been suicidal. As soon as the weather cleared up (which happened well before July) then Allied air power would make mincemeat of any serious German attack involving armored vehicles.

If the allies only hold the beaches then the allies have lost : if the German artillery has the range to hit Arromanche the artificial harbor can never be used and the allies are forced to retreat due to their inability to reinforce properly. You overestimate the strength of the allied situation before the 10th of june when the allied fronts merge and they get some breathing room.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Well yes the war was mostly won on the eastern front, but your original argument was that France contributed less to the war effort than Australia (which is false) or Argentina (like, WTF ?). F

Oh woah I did type Argentina didn’t I, sorry, i meant India. Wildly different words too, I must be losing my marbles.

I thought France was included on the security council because they still had a lot of colonies and was therefore considered a major world power. In any case they shortly went on to develop their own nuclear weapons which cemented that fact.