Time to end the United Nations?

EUGENE KAELLIS

The so-called second Durban Conference "Against" Racism has alerted many Jews and others to the turbid depths to which the United Nations (UN) has fallen.

What is even more disgraceful is the apparent inability of the United Nations to halt the possible spread of nuclear weapons to such rogue states as Iran and North Korea, the danger of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of jihadists in Pakistan and elsewhere, and the spread of accompanying long-distance missile delivery systems that would threaten countries in many parts of the world. This inaction is symptomatic of the UN's continued and formidable failure.

This failure is due largely to the primary structure of the UN, one fatally flawed from its beginning and based on unrealistic and at the same time, totally cynical, arrangements. Of the five countries now permanently occupying seats on the Security Council – the United States, Russian Federation, People's Republic of China, Great Britain and France – applying bona fide criteria, only two, Britain and the United States, should have been entitled to veto power when the UN was created.

Of course, that would have meant that there would never have been a UN. This would have saved more than 60 years of failed expectations and made more likely the use of effective unilateral and bilateral measures to achieve and maintain or restore the peace and security of the world. If the concept of the UN had been aborted that would have been no greater tragedy than the death of the League of Nations which, when put to its first major test, the Italian fascist aggression against Ethiopia (1936), failed miserably and sent a message to the Nazis and Japanese imperialists, that effective international collective action to counter aggressions would never derive from the League.

The first criterion for permanent membership in the Security Council should have reflected the obvious fact that the UN was made possible by the victory of the Allied powers of the Second World War, which, moreover, took the initiative in the UN's formation. Countries that had not contributed substantially to that victory should not have been rewarded with veto power.

Therefore, for the following reasons, France should never have gotten a permanent seat. 1) France capitulated to the Germans after Hitler's (27-day) offensive, not because it lacked men or weapons, but because it had insufficient will to fight the Nazis. 2) Next to Germany, Occupied France became the biggest supplier of armaments to the Wehrmacht; 3) Vichy France outdid even the Gestapo in anti-Jewish activity. 4) French participation in the liberation of France was blown out of all proportion by late president Charles De Gaulle. It was certainly unessential and was relatively insignificant. 5) Vichy-controlled French soldiers fought against Allied troops in Syria-Lebanon in the summer of 1941. 6) In 1942, following the successful Allied invasion of North Africa, the French scuttled their Mediterranean fleet in Toulon. This considerable armada might have escaped to Africa, providing significant additional naval support for the subsequent Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy.

Again, applying this criterion, China should not have gotten a permanent seat and veto power. When the UN was formed, China was ruled by a Kuomintang government that had, during the war, stockpiled weapons sent from the United States, not to fight the Japanese, before whom they constantly retreated, but to use against its communist rivals, who were fighting both the Japanese and the Kuomintang.

Adherence to the "Four Freedoms" should have constituted the second criterion. The Four Freedoms, first proclaimed by President Roosevelt, were: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear. They formed the foundation for the preamble to the UN's Declaration of Human Rights and provided the basis of General Assembly Resolution 217A (1948).

China, as the People's Republic, is evidently ruled by an oppressive and exploitative regime. The Four Freedoms have no place in current Chinese life, nor are they likely to have any as long as China maintains the pretense that it is a revolutionary state and therefore "entitled" to suppress those labelled "class enemies."

The Russian Federation, holding the seat formerly occupied by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), while it made the major contribution to the defeat of the Nazis, after having been their major supplier of food and fuel, should never have inherited that seat because the U.S.S.R. never honored the Four Freedoms.

Because of these fatal flaws, the United Nations has no more positive and effective influence on world affairs than had the League of Nations.

Power considerations, not collective security, ultimately play the major role in any international agreement, but that doesn't mean that they should have been hypocritically and restrictively institutionalized within the structure of the UN and the Security Council. The major positive agreements since the Second World War, for example, the ban on nuclear weapons testing and controlled nuclear disarmament, were the result of bilateral negotiations between the United States and the U.S.S.R., with the UN playing a superfluous, redundant and negligible role.

The UN is not only unnecessary for unilateral or collective action by, between, and among the great powers, it actually inhibits such actions. With the disappearance of the UN, bilateral and multilateral agreements would not only still be possible, they would be easier to achieve. Effective preventive or remedial action could be taken more easily. For example, because of Chinese intransigence, no meaningful sanctions are being applied to North Korea. Were it uninhibited by the UN, the United States could mount a naval blockade of North Korea, pressuring it to abandon its nuclear program. It could do the same with Iran, permitting tankers to leave but no cargo ships to enter Iranian waters.

In the case of such unilateral actions, the United States would, of course, have to face the consequences: the usual riots, flag burnings, a possible decline in the presumed goodwill now allegedly being generated by President Barack Obama's administration (which may be confined to sentiment only, and not mark a major shift in the policy of newfound "friends"), but these would be a small price to play for preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons to irresponsible states. Action against North Korea would, on the other hand, strengthen American prestige in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India and the Philippines. More effective measures against Pakistan, instead of additional aid, could reverse growing Taliban influence there, and make India an even closer ally.

The other major body of the UN, the General Assembly, is hardly worth the effort required to discredit it. It has done that itself very effectively. The majority of its members collectively forms the biggest sinkhole for almost entirely ineffective foreign aid and are the biggest beneficiaries of misdirected and misappropriated sympathies and assistance in the history of the world. Sixty years after the end of colonialism, leaders of the former colonies (Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, to cite just one example) still blame their previous imperialist masters for their home-grown genocides, political repression, poverty, widespread disease, civil wars, their lack of material and political progress and the indifference, corruption and brutality of their governments, in spite of the substantial aid given them. Even South Africa, which inspired so much hope and such great expectations, is falling into a pattern of deceit, corruption and decline.

It is time for Canadians and Americans to stop "re-illusioning" themselves and, as the poet says, "sucking on the blade of hope," and mount a serious campaign against the United Nations, something their governments will not have the courage and determination to do without a marked shift in public sentiment. This will take political courage and the overcoming of years of accumulated propaganda and biases now evidently held by a majority of North Americans.

Eugene Kaellis is a retired academic and writer living in New Westminster.

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