JBL,
To add some flavor to that article, the author, SIR William Rees-Mogg, is the co-author of a doomsday economics book, Blood in the Streets (which sits upon my bookshelf at this moment).
It's an interesting little book written back in the late '80s fortelling the soon to come collapse of the world economic order, hyper-inflation, and a rush to precious metals (if I recall the premise properly).
I consider his perspective slightly opportunistic. When the lawyers and economists start tearing apart a document such as the NATO charter looking for violations of international law, while ignoring the obvious failure of the UN security council to prevent the iniating violations of international law by Serbia, then I have to believe these guys may just have a personal agenda they are implementing against NATO (or just trying to find a legalistic reason to prevent taking a stance against the current operation).
There have been MANY examples in which MANY countries who are MEMBERS of the UN have iniated violent actions against their neighbors or internal populations.
And considering that the Security Council is a flawed organization wherein any ONE of the permanent members (like China or Russia... or the US) can veto a particular course of action, it obviously has difficulty in resolving issues that involve personal rivalries/interests between two or more of the permanent members. We can see an example of this in the Balkans where China and Russia both threatened vetoes in the UN thus neutralizing the UN ability to respond militarily to Milosevic's violations of international law.
Personally, I'm beginning to think the security council needs to be revised providing the 5 permanent member seats to the 5 most prosperous economies or by placing these seats into the hands of dedicated neutrals or unaligned nations like Switzerland, Sweden,... etc.
Regards,
Ron |
