Hawk, I agree with all that, including the ineffectual nature of the UN. I meant more that the UN should be pushed along into a better form which would have more political legitimacy and a mandate to actually do things to control renegade countries or thugs.
I recall three instances off the cuff of the UN being pathetic where it mattered.
One, was a relatively innocuous instance, though it indicated the problem. A UN tank was pushed out of the way by an Israeli tank and that was that. It seemed to me that there should have been a push back. While Jews and Israel have got and have had horrors of unbelievable proportions to deal with, that still doesn't get a blank cheque, a promised land and the right to bulldoze the UN out of the way. Though, I admit I don't know the circumstances so don't say it was particularly wrong, just that something was obviously badly wrong that the UN accepted being shoved.
Another was the pathetic instance of UN soldiers being tied up to stakes and the men of Srebenica being murdered en masse. The UN and Europe should have taken major action in stabilizing the situation and creating a sensible political establishment in ex-Yugoslavia. It was only thanks to Clinton and the USA that the horrors of the area were ended.
The worst was the casual abandonment to genocide of Rwanda. Perhaps there wasn't a lot that could be done - some problems are simply insuperable and nature red in tooth and claw is the final solution, but I suspect a relatively minor international presence could have avoided the carnage.
Fighting is often an angry, frustrated, cusp in time when, if the moment can be defused, people find a smoother way to proceed to the future.
I believe people have an instinctive desire to belong to something greater than their own mortal lives, which I suppose has evolved out of millions of years of tribal adhesion and mutual self-defence and reproduction. Humans take it to supernatural levels, and while an atheist in regard to conventional superstitious religions, I'm pretty sure there is something sneaky going on which is at present beyond our ability to comprehend and presumably will remain so since our brains are such pathetic little instruments designed for being sophisticated tribal primates.
People have shown over millennia a willingness and even a desire to identify with greater and greater tribal entities. Look at the USA for example. Nearly 300 million people who strongly identify as Americans with all that that means. It's an eclectic mix of everyone on Earth but those bonds and belongingness work very well.
Similarly across all countries, or most, especially those where the democratic process means the majority of people agree more or less with the government of the day. So, in NZ, we are dinkum Kiwis. With loyalty first to self, then family, then friends, then city, then country, then UN, then to supernatural beliefs.
Being limited to country, with the rest of humanity merely UnAmerican Aliens, unworthy of full human rights, seems to me to be leaving a gap in the natural state of thinking of people who are properly socialized [meaning grew up well with good parenting, rather than being socialist].
The Christian idea is one of universality and fills what I believe to be an essential ingredient to being a human as fulfilled as can be in this Earthly shambles. But I don't subscribe to the other aspects of Christianity, which I consider outright looney, and I doubt were actually part of the original ideas of JC. Certainly, JC would NOT have any sympathy with the Catholic vs Protestant MADness and would consider the Omagh horror worse than Roman Rule and his own crucifixion.
Anyway, as the USA, China, India, Germany Japan and many other countries have shown, people can perfectly happily feel identity with countries bigger than the whole world's population of only about 500 years ago. So, size and numbers of people is NOT a problem. What matters is political integration and satisfaction of the great majority of people in the political process.
For example, although I disagree with our current government, I'm still satisfied enough that it's okay and I'm happy to wait for the next election to see if I can swing things more my way for a while.
The problem with the UN is that it is an anachronistic WWII victors' club rather than a political institution to which people are comfortable paying some allegiance. Just as our family, friends, city and country are each things we support, another layer in the form of an agreeably constituted NUN would also garner support of at least 70% of the world's population.
The USA is in a good position to lead such a development and it would serve USA interests to have such an institution. Actually, New Zealand could lead such a thing too, and if I wasn't so lazy, I'd get it underway. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow. It would be easy enough to do. Okay, I'll do it! I've just got to finish a nice cup of tea and go to celebrate a niece's graduation first.
Manana,
Maurice |
