…Americans favor international law and institutions, very strongly in fact. Which is pretty remarkable given the beating they take in the mainstream doctrinal system. As for the UN, there is plenty wrong with it, but the main problems trace back to the great powers, mainly the US, that pretty much determine what it can and cannot do.
To take an obvious example, the UN can do nothing when Security Council resolutions are vetoed — the most extreme way to violate a Security Council decision. Since the 1960s, when the UN fell out of control, the US is far in the lead in vetoing resolutions on a very wide range of issues, Britain second, no one else even close. Similarly, the General Assembly and special committees (like Disarmament) can do nothing when their decisions are blocked. To take merely one example, it’s well understood that the core issue of nuclear terror and even possible terminal war is control over fissile materials. For years, the UN has been working on a verifiable FISSBAN (Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty), which would deal with a substantial part of the problem — and it may literally be a problem of species survival. The UN has not been able to implement FISSBAN. Is it the fault of the UN? Or does the failure have something to do with last November’s vote: 147-1 in favor, with two abstentions, Israel, which is reflexive, and Britain, which stated officially that it favored the treaty but couldn’t vote for it because this version was “too divisive”: 147-1. Check the coverage and we get a good estimate of the priority ranking for survival of the species, or nuclear terror in New York, in the mainstream doctrinal system.
…Easy to continue. This is not the whole story, of course, but it seems to me that in comparison with mountains of material like this, reforms of the kind that are discussed are hardly even a mole hill.
And on an optimistic note, these are problems we can do a great deal about.
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