Can anyone name a time a major world power didn't do what they wanted to do because they weren't able to get UN backing??

James you are brilliant!

Sterling, you should have left this thread Unanswered.

this shouldn't be seen as my endorsing major powers ignoring the un either; someone (prowar) asked me to name a single time a major power didn't just ignore the un when it didn't suit their purpose and I couldn't think of a single time.

in my nightmare, he even tried to claim that nuclear bombs would not cause nuclear fallout, (or as geeta points out, "nucular" bombs) and proceeded to srop lots on the southern states for some bewildering reason.

drop, not srop.

well, the implication is that the UN is a powerless white elephant, like a vicar at a tea party. and you may well be right. in the past there was more counterbalance between the members so i guess there'd be war by proxy (vietnam, korea, afghanistan), but that wasnt down to the UN but to cold war

i really dont see what the point in the UN is right now. If one country can just sweep it aside doesnt it make it the most useless policeman ever?

The US holds the UN's purse strings so it doesn't really stand for any shit.

But the US doesn't pay the UN.

The biggest source of UN income? The Iraq oil for food program.

i think that you and N are basically saying the same thing, sterling.

anyway, i think that mr. blount has a research project on his hands -- i certainly don't know the answer. though i kinda think that whether there's any incidence of a major world power doing what they wanted without UN backing is a red herring question wr2 both whether it's right that the major power didn't get UN approval and in that question's application to the iraq matter (since chimpco did submit the matter to the UN Security Council).

What about the Cuban Missile Crisis?

That was the closest the world has come to total nuclear annhiliation. The UN was used to hold meetings between the Russians, the Cubans and the US. It was here the US presented the evidence that they were planning to install missiles in Cuba. The whole story has really only just come out. Kennedy really underestimated the situation as the Cubans already had nuclear missiles on the island.

If it wasn't for the Jupiter missile withdrawal from Turkey as the key concession from Kennedy, we wouldn't be here now.

The UN being unable to prevent security council members from doing things does not make the UN useless, except at that. As CJ implies, doing preventative work is kind of a thankless task because people only talk about the stuff you didn't prevent.

The security council 5 permanent and 10 rotating members is an anathema. The UN charter needs redrawing with no vetos for anyone and Qualified majority voting on security issues within the general assembly. No nation should have power above that given to it by its population. The UN is an anachronistic body born from early 20th century Imperialism and has been the chief agent of prolonging empires beyond the end of the cold war.

The US should have its voting rights removed until it pays its fair share of its dues, as should any other nation.

Removal of US voting rights = the surefirest way to end what good the UN does still do.

Quite possibly but then at least we could rebuild it into something more apropriate for our times.

U.N., RIP?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4011-2003Jan30.html

Removing the US seems, like Tom said, a pretty bad way to make it pay more attention to the UN. Wasn't the UN meant to be an improved League of Nations (like that was supposedly the crappy early 20th C version)? What's the difference? I can't remember.

The whole argument that if the UN won't support the US it is morally bankrupt is one of the worst aspects of this debate. It's kind of a you'll play want we want to play or we'll take our ball home kind of argument. Libya is head of the Human rights commission not because it is a shining example of Human Rights but because a group of countries wanted to stick two fingers up at the US. Its a great shame that it has come to this. The fact is that the US is a terrible abuser of Human Rights, It executes, It executes even the mentally deficient. it disproportionally imprisons certain groups of its population, it imprisons in shocking conditions, it at time disproportionately imprisons people relative to their crimes; vast swathes of its poor cannot earn a living wage, have no access to decent medical care or even decent schooling; and this is supposed to be a shining light of Human rights.

I never said remove the US, I said that its voting rights should be removed, not its right to speak, put forward proposals etc. just the voting right and only until the US or Ted Turner comes up with the money.

"Imagine if all the seats on the Security Council were filled by the Left's rogues' gallery of evil dictators: Pic Botha, Augusto Pinochet, Franco, Hitler, etc. Would the Left cheer if the United States won their unanimous support? Would the New York Times get all choked up with emotion, like the verklempt yenta on Saturday Night Live, over Colin Powell's triumph? Somehow I doubt it.

Maybe this is because there are almost no white and certainly no first-world dictators anymore, and black, Asian, and Arab tyrants simply don't count in the eyes of the multicultural Left. In fact, I would bet that if you polled the average fair-trading, organically grown, earth-friendly, living-wage-paying coffeehouse in Seattle, or the typical opened-toed-shoe-wearing protester at an anti-globalization march, asking "Who comes to your mind when you hear the word 'dictator'?" you'd get more George Bushes than Mugabes, Assads, and Jong-Ils combined.

Anyway, I'm not saying the Security Council is simply a posse of left-wing dictators and tyrants. My point is that it wouldn't matter to the U.N. voluptuaries if it were. Why we should breathe easier knowing we got a green light from Cameroon is something nobody's been willing to explain.

To liberals, the U.N. represents their loftiest goals of a peaceful and democratic global order where the peoples of the world set aside their differences in pursuit of our common interests as passengers on this, Spaceship Earth. To many conservatives, the U.N. represents the persistent obtuseness of liberals determined to put what ought to be ahead of what is.

Sure, it would be nice if the nations of the world, as represented on the Security Council, had concluded that Saddam is a repugnant and vile dictator who must be kept from further brutalizing his subjects and his neighbors. But that's not what happened. We bought the votes of most of the Security Council members, and they were for sale precisely because these countries are incapable of looking beyond their own narrow self-interests — not because they transcended them. Cameroon cares far more about trade concessions from the U.S. than it does about who sits on the throne in Baghdad. Does any U.N.-loving liberal really believe that Cameroon went along because our cause is just — because the glorious spirit of human cooperation and global harmony filled the air at the U.N.?

And I don't mean to pick on Cameroon. By pleading for U.N. approval, the no-blood-for-oil crowd increased the international trade in both blood and oil. In order to get the votes of Russia and China we had to give those countries a free pass at killing their Muslim Chechen and Uighur populations, respectively. We also had to promise the continuity of France's oil contracts, and of Russia's too. Whether these countries think we're right about toppling or containing Saddam is something of a mystery; what we do know is that they don't think our case is compelling enough to trump their own narrow self-interests. If it were, we wouldn't have had to spend the last couple of months haggling over what happens to Iraq's debt to Russia or France's oil contracts. Right? I mean, if the U.N. were half the thing it ought to be, our U.N. partners would have dropped those concerns the way Cincinnatus laid down his plow. And if the United States is as wrong and selfish as the anti-war crowd says, then the rest of the Security Council are just a bunch of whores willing to do the wrong thing if we pay them enough.

People from all across the political spectrum often make the argument that members of our own Congress are inclined to make back-room deals that serve the narrow interests of their parties and themselves. The Naderites consistently harp on how citizens are locked out of the process. "Republicrats," according to this view, split the spoils and leave the rest of us holding the bag. Obviously, these arguments aren't completely worthless, but they are usually overblown, since our politicians have to deal with fair elections and an aggressive free press.

Oddly, we don't often hear the same analysis applied to the U.N. — even though the same dynamic is in effect there, only much more intensely. The representatives of the Arab nations — not one of them a democracy with a free press — do not represent the interests of their people. They represent the interests of the corrupt governments who sent them there. So in this sense, the U.N. is not an arena for democratic debate. It is a souk where merchants trade the blood and treasure of their nations.

We are seeking authorization to kill people if necessary — there's no reason not to be blunt. And we bought it by giving authorization to others to do the same. I can live with that, I suppose, because I think the stakes warrant it. Why liberals can remains a mystery."