Some one the main reasons for the failure of League of Nations, which was formed to protect the future wars after World War I includes Domination of France and England, lack of mutual cooperation and loss of faith in league. Many of these defects can be still seen in United nations. According to Wistrich (a UN critic), "a third of all critical resolutions passed by [the UN] Human Rights Commission during the past forty years have been directed exclusively at Israel. By way of comparison, there has not been a single resolution even mentioning the massive violations of human rights in China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Syria, or Zimbabwe."
America's funding of Afghan Taliban with the help of Pakistan's ISI to defeat communist Soviet Union in Afghanistan is according to me was nurturing of now called extremist Islam or terrorism. Although I do not deny the presence of extremist elements in the Islamic society even before that but the term I used "nurturing" is significant here. America didn't even thought about consequences of her actions and now, she is using the same method of funding the Iraqi and Syrian Kurds to defeat IS and this is the point where United Nations role bears a question mark. Is America really dominant in UN that its all actions seems legitimate?
With 9/11 attacks, United Nations (or America) took actions outlawing terrorism and starting a war. This war is mainly against Al-Qaeda or Talibans while state funded terrorist program such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Mossad are unaffected. This is the kind of attitude and behavior Robert Jarvis described in his readings as unless each person (state) thinks others will cooperate, he will not. Let us consider Jarvis this view by an example. Nuclear non-proliferation treaty was signed by 190 countries including current nuclear powers but despite this, nuclear stockpiles remains high. United nations has been unable to gain trust of Nations to cooperate with each other and this was the main reason of failure of League of nations. In our example, we still look towards UN for the solution of Kashmir issue but to no avail. It is because America has no interest in it or UN is unable to enforce crucial rules and regulations on powerful nations like India, we do not know now but what we know is that UN has to appear as a strong International institution otherwise, history will repeat itself.
I agree that the UN is going towards the same path league of Nations was but for a different reason that is, it is dominated too much by the big powers unlike the League which had zero power over anyone. The success in military co operation is better done by NATO than the UN, but UN's strength lies not in that area but rather in the humanitarian programs such as UNESCO, UNISEF etc.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your opinion about strength of UN lying in its humanitarian projects but again, the basic purpose of creating such leagues is to prevent such wars as both League of nations and UN were formed for this sole reason. If NATO is better suited for military cooperation then there are many other agencies also who are directing a great effort in relief works. Moreover, NATO was created to protect its member nations from the communist expansion and does not bear the responsibility for other conflicts.
DeleteThere were also more reasons to the failure of the League in addition to the ones mentioned above. The main problem was within the structure of the General Assembly because all all decisions had to be agreed upon unanimously before any action could be taken. However, in the UN this problem was solved as only two thirds of the assembly had to agree before passing a resolution. Also, the UN is a much more successful organization compared to the League of Nations as some of the structural as well as organizational problems were not repeated when the UN was formed.
ReplyDeleteI am not meriting its success by the fact that how much it is structurally more strong rather how much it have been successful in maintaining a peaceful society.
DeleteYou have a lot of interesting ideas, but a thread that connects them all is, at times, lacking. So yes, while it is true that international organizations have failed to accomplish all of the tasks that they should be doing, at least these organizations have done some good as Rida note. And in spite of the failings of the UN, there hasn't been a WWIII. Sure terrorism and other conflicts continue to exist, but there has been no major international conflict on the level of the World Wars since its creation. Therefore some credit should be given to the UN.
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