Is UN pushing the world in to World War three?
 In view of the recent references made by the UN Secretary General
regarding the Sri Lankan conflict and its aftermath, it has become
necessary to evaluate the World Body in its current role as against the
purpose for which the UN was originally set up in 1945.
The two World Wars killed millions of people and destroyed billions
worth of property, especially in Europe. In fact the devastations of the
two Wars were so immense that it appeared as if man, through his own
greed and vanity, has brought about mankind’s own downfall. However when
the carnage and devastation finally ended the world leaders heaved a
sigh of relief and decided enough was enough.
World peace
It brought the war lording colonials to realize that armed power is
not the be all and end all of world peace and prosperity. They knew that
the world could not afford a third war and hence were compelled, albeit
reluctantly to take action to eliminate the causes that brought about
wars i.e. colonialism, slave trade and all other forms of subjugation of
man by man.
Albert Einstein was one of the first to advocate the formation of a
world body to settle issues between nations by peaceful means.
He wrote to Sigmund Freud, the renown psychoanalyst of his time
asking, “Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?”
They reasoned that the psychological roots of war lay in the excessively
aggressive nature of the male, as most if not all, War Lords are males.
They drew parallels with the animal kingdom, taking bull and the
rooster and opined that this aggressiveness is built in to males mainly
because of the need to dominate within the herds to maintain their
superior status, an imperative for sexuality.
Hence if man is to follow the primitive animalistic instincts, the
modern human civilization too would perish by fighting among each other.
Hence he advocated the establishment of two international bodies, one
Legislative and the other Judicial with international co-operation to
settle every dispute that arises between nations where every nation is
bound to abide by the decisions of that body and the laws promulgated
thereby.
Einstein also thought that such a process should bind nations to
comply with judgments made and legislations passed by those bodies and
carry out every measure such a tribunal would deem necessary.
He envisaged a world community of nations found on justice and
equality and considered that as a pre requisite for lasting world peace.
Thus the League of Nations, formed under compelling circumstances in
1942, became the United Nations in 1945 and it was meant to be future a
world government. The irony however was that it is not the professionals
of the calibre of Einstein’s and Freud’s who formulated the UN, but
politicians like Winston Churchill and Dwight D Eisenhower. Eisenhower
and Churchill wanted not fairness and democracy, but to preserve the
post Second World War status quo of the world. Hence we have a General
Assembly that is a sham of a ‘democracy’ and a Security Council that
seeks to dominate in the name of ‘Global security’.
Even though the UN has a General Assembly of 192 members it is only a
‘show piece’ of the world body and the most important unit and the real
power within the UN is its Security Council. This takes decisions on
world security and peace.
The Security Council is made up of nations that ended up on the
winning side of the Second World War. Hence it is nothing but a
‘Victor’s Club’ of the World War 11. It was initially made up of US, UK,
France, Taiwan and Soviet Russia. Every member of the 192 body has to
agree to abide by the UN Security Council decisions when they join the
UN. This means that the leaders of countries that represent less than
1/3rd of the world population do decide for the whole world and such
decisions become binding on every nation state. Even though the general
membership forms the General assembly and its authority of consensus is
exercised through the Secretary General, even the candidate to hold the
office of the Secretary General first has to originate in the Security
Council.
International Court of Justice
The current structure, scope and jurisdiction of the International
Court of Justice does not come even close to such a body as Einstein
envisioned, simply because the ICJ largely renders opinion, does not
have powers of enforcement and cannot even compel parties to a dispute
to be a part of the proceedings regarding the dispute.
Both the UN General Assembly and the Security Council do not have
carte blanche powers of enforcements but the latter posses the veto in
its permanent members and hence could stymie a proposed resolution in
its entirety. The lack of empowerment is a serious issue that has to be
addressed by the International community as a matter of urgency.
It is an incontrovertible fact that the international organisations
can work only on the basis of legal powers that are attributed to them
and those powers have to emanate from the sovereign states that form the
membership of the organisation.
Therefore UN today by and large is a waste paper factory and the
power of the Security Council is hijacked by the veto wielding world
powers making its action negative whereas global disputes need positive
and balanced action to wade off crisis situations.
Apart from these negative features what really bedevilled the world
body is its absence of righteous thinking among those who control and
finance it.
The world powers ideologically manipulate all the seemingly well
intentioned resolutions passed by the world body. US, Britain and
France, the majority in the Security Council would talk about democracy,
as if it is the system God wished for the man.
But then why aren’t they initiating reforms within the UN to
democratize its governance? Why isn’t there a system of jurisprudence to
dispense justice on global matters? They would cherish the best
democratic practices and a system of justice within their own countries
but when it comes to deciding on global matters they have made sure that
there is no democracy and no justice.
‘Right to Protect’, the R2P is the latest device that empowers the
Security Council to invade small nations in the guise of ‘human rights
violations’ and ‘genocide of minorities’.
Democratic system
The irony however is that when a small country like Sri Lanka has a
democratic system of governance and an independent judiciary, the World
Body has neither.
This means that the World Body does not have a mechanism to ensure
justice and democracy in its global decisions that even a small
developing country like Sri Lanka has. But the world body still sits on
judgment on the activities of countries like Sri Lanka, telling them how
they should conduct their affairs, threatening to invade them! What
justice, what totalitarianism, and what hypocrisy!
The world today is governed by the same aggrandizers who think that
the globe can be controlled by guns physically and by propaganda
psychologically.
Is it any wonder then that there is so much bloodshed and misery in
the world today? The world possibly cannot fare any better than the
standards set by those who man it.
Nuclear weapons
The Second Secretary General of the UN Dag Hammarskjold observed
that, “The UN was not established to take humanity to heaven but to save
it from hell”.
Fair enough, but what is the role of UN in creating an eternal hell
for Palestinians in the Middle East; for giving hell to little Vietnam
for well over 12 years, creating a veritable hell for Iraqis killing
almost a million in their own country and now in making another hell on
earth in Afghanistan by the indiscriminate aerial bombing? Is the UN
created to save the world from hell or to act as a ‘rubber stamp’ to
legitimize hellish deeds on earth?
On August 6, 1945 US and its allies bombed Japan with nuclear weapons
and the first bomb called the ‘Little boy’ weighing 60 Kgs was dropped
on Hiroshima killing 80,000 residents instantly and injuring another 70,
000, 69 percent of the city’s buildings were also destroyed. After the
devastation caused by this bomb and when Japan was preparing to
surrender they dropped another nuclear bomb called ‘Fat man’ on Nagasaki
killing 160,000 people and injuring 100,000. Altogether 240,000
civilians were instantly killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In fact those two urban areas were specially selected by the bombing
missions to ensure the maximum casualty rate of civilians ‘so that Japan
will buckle down to its knees through the sheer magnitude of civilian
casualties’.
The US after deliberately targeting and killing the civilians en mass
in a foreign country faced no investigation for war crimes by any World
Body and instead it became the super power of the world for its economic
and military power. On the Pother hand the World Body today is proposing
an investigation in to dubious war crimes allegedly committed by Sri
Lankan troops in defeating armed insurrection within its own soil.
The inherent danger however in this situation is that when the world
powers get exposed as sophists in their advocacy for world peace and
prosperity, they will cease to enjoy the credibility of the rest of the
world as those who could deliver peace and prosperity to the world at
large. When the leaders are corrupt, self centered and are brazenly
milking the rest of the world that would spawn a confidence crisis in
the world community at large, leading to a mutiny on board.
And this time such a mutiny could well be the end of the world!
[email protected]
 [ Dag HammarskjÖld]
Born: July 29, 1905
Died: September 18,1961
* Swedish diplomat and author and was the second Secretary-General of
the United Nations
* Served from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in
September 1961
* The only person to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
posthumously
 [ Dwight Eisenhower]
Born: October 14, 1890
Died: March 28, 1969
* Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953
until 1961
* During the Second World War, he served as Supreme Commander of the
Allied forces in Europe, supervising the invasion of France and Germany
in 1944-45
 [Sigmund Freud]
Born: May 6, 1856
Died: September 23, 1939
* Known for his theories of the unconscious mind and defense
mechanism of repression
* One of the most prominent thinkers of the 20th Century in terms of
originality and intellectual influence.
 [ Albert Einstein]
Born: March 14, 1879
Died: April 18, 1955
* Theoretical physicist, philosopher and author
* Often regarded as the father of modern physics
* Received 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics
 [ Winston Churchill]
Born: November 30, 1874
Died: January 24, 1965
* He served as Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951
to 1955
* A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the
British Army, an historian, writer and artist
* To date, he is the only British Prime Minister to have received the
Nobel Prize in Literature |
