Thank you for exposing the UN. You are right, it is our money that is supporting the corruption in this organization so we have the right to know what is going on/how our money is being used by our government and discuss our concerns. In my more 'fanciful wishes' I would like to see a 'check list' on my tax return form that allows me to select where I want my tax dollars to go - I would leave the Global Affairs Canada box blank.
Even before reading this article, I was thinking a little about the value that an international organization like a UN could provide. Please not the word could.
If someone comes to my house and assaults me, I can defend myself, but I also get the police involved. I think we do need an international organization that can call terrorists to account. When a country has to defend itself by invading another country, it generally doesn't work out in the long term.
As well I heard the head of the Red Cross talking about how they can't get aid into certain places because they have no way to protect themselves. So if there were international forces that could ensure safe passage of aid, that would be valuable.
But we don't have that in the current iteration of the UN. And some of that is corruption but also certainly the vetoes at the security council level play a role in that.
One question for the author. How do we put a value on the wars that have not happened because of the UN. If you look at why the UN came to be, it was to prevent future large scale wars. Canada lost 45000 lived in WW2. Is it fair to say that absent the UN, history since 1945 might have been different, and that not all that alternative history would have been as peaceful as things have been since then.
That's an interesting question. Let me respond with my own (unfair, counterfactual) question: are you aware of any wars that the UN prevented? Their peacekeeping record has been mostly dismal. I'm not aware of any serious crisis where they played a serious role in deescalation.
I would argue that the Security Council's structure (i.e,. the vetoes you mention) made effective governance impossible. Could it have been built differently? Having read Churchill's observations, I'm inclined to believe that, given the political problems of the time, the idea was dead at birth.
And, sadly, I don't think there's much hope for the creation of anything better in our day. But I'm certainly open to being proven wrong.
I will have to read Churchills observations on the structure.
In terms of examples that the UN might have helped, Suez in the 50s and in Cyprus in the 60s might be two examples. I didn't do a huge deep dive but I had read a book about Suez, and how with Britain, France, Israel and Egypt all involved, plus the Soviets, could that have blown up into more then it did.
The UN does self report more successful peacekeeping efforts. Without going thru them in more detail I can't say a lot about them, and I do acknowledge they are self reporting.
The Churchill source I read was from the final volume of his The Second World War.
I think it was the Americans who pulled the plug on the British/French/Israeli operation in Suez rather than the UN (that's certainly how the PBS "The 50 Years War" series presented it, if I remember correctly). But I'm not sure history has necessarily judged the Americans to have been right on that one. I'd also note that there was a UN deployment in the Sinai in 1967 that just cleared out on orders from the Egyptians (kind of the way UNIFIL have been acting for the past 40 years in Lebanon).
I'm certainly no expert on Cyprus, but my understanding is that there was never a serious threat of the disagreement spreading beyond a regional dispute. It's not like the world was on the brink of disaster. I do remember reading that Prof. Marshall McLuhan claimed that the fighting in Cyprus only flared up after the New York Times - suffering from a slow news week - pushed the issue to its front page.
The merits of isolationism are greatly unappreciated. The results of US foreign policies while essentially losing every conflict in the last 70 years should serve as a reminder. I sometimes wonder what the reaction of our friends, if we still have any, would be if Canada unilaterally parted ways with the UN (and NATO). Given our current and growing demographic and civilizational clashing from the follies of state multiculturalism, any and all foreign aid is anything but consensual for some significant group, why not leave it to individuals rather than politicians incapable of balancing budgets.
Your link is helpful. And I've long been a big fan of Hillel Neuer and UN Watch.
That list certainly catches a few dozen anti-Israel resolutions that I missed. But it also ignored many, many hundreds of others. There were, for instance, far more resolutions referring to each of Somalia, Sudan, and Haiti than referred to Israel.
Perhaps UN Watch's list only enumerated resolutions that were explicitly critical of target countries (rather than those establishing new aid programs etc). But they should probably have made that a lot more clear.
Thank you for exposing the UN. You are right, it is our money that is supporting the corruption in this organization so we have the right to know what is going on/how our money is being used by our government and discuss our concerns. In my more 'fanciful wishes' I would like to see a 'check list' on my tax return form that allows me to select where I want my tax dollars to go - I would leave the Global Affairs Canada box blank.
Even before reading this article, I was thinking a little about the value that an international organization like a UN could provide. Please not the word could.
If someone comes to my house and assaults me, I can defend myself, but I also get the police involved. I think we do need an international organization that can call terrorists to account. When a country has to defend itself by invading another country, it generally doesn't work out in the long term.
As well I heard the head of the Red Cross talking about how they can't get aid into certain places because they have no way to protect themselves. So if there were international forces that could ensure safe passage of aid, that would be valuable.
But we don't have that in the current iteration of the UN. And some of that is corruption but also certainly the vetoes at the security council level play a role in that.
One question for the author. How do we put a value on the wars that have not happened because of the UN. If you look at why the UN came to be, it was to prevent future large scale wars. Canada lost 45000 lived in WW2. Is it fair to say that absent the UN, history since 1945 might have been different, and that not all that alternative history would have been as peaceful as things have been since then.
That's an interesting question. Let me respond with my own (unfair, counterfactual) question: are you aware of any wars that the UN prevented? Their peacekeeping record has been mostly dismal. I'm not aware of any serious crisis where they played a serious role in deescalation.
I would argue that the Security Council's structure (i.e,. the vetoes you mention) made effective governance impossible. Could it have been built differently? Having read Churchill's observations, I'm inclined to believe that, given the political problems of the time, the idea was dead at birth.
And, sadly, I don't think there's much hope for the creation of anything better in our day. But I'm certainly open to being proven wrong.
I will have to read Churchills observations on the structure.
In terms of examples that the UN might have helped, Suez in the 50s and in Cyprus in the 60s might be two examples. I didn't do a huge deep dive but I had read a book about Suez, and how with Britain, France, Israel and Egypt all involved, plus the Soviets, could that have blown up into more then it did.
The UN does self report more successful peacekeeping efforts. Without going thru them in more detail I can't say a lot about them, and I do acknowledge they are self reporting.
The Churchill source I read was from the final volume of his The Second World War.
I think it was the Americans who pulled the plug on the British/French/Israeli operation in Suez rather than the UN (that's certainly how the PBS "The 50 Years War" series presented it, if I remember correctly). But I'm not sure history has necessarily judged the Americans to have been right on that one. I'd also note that there was a UN deployment in the Sinai in 1967 that just cleared out on orders from the Egyptians (kind of the way UNIFIL have been acting for the past 40 years in Lebanon).
I'm certainly no expert on Cyprus, but my understanding is that there was never a serious threat of the disagreement spreading beyond a regional dispute. It's not like the world was on the brink of disaster. I do remember reading that Prof. Marshall McLuhan claimed that the fighting in Cyprus only flared up after the New York Times - suffering from a slow news week - pushed the issue to its front page.
Canadian deaths were 45,400 and not 450,000 in WWII
Thanks - I corrected it in the comment.
The merits of isolationism are greatly unappreciated. The results of US foreign policies while essentially losing every conflict in the last 70 years should serve as a reminder. I sometimes wonder what the reaction of our friends, if we still have any, would be if Canada unilaterally parted ways with the UN (and NATO). Given our current and growing demographic and civilizational clashing from the follies of state multiculturalism, any and all foreign aid is anything but consensual for some significant group, why not leave it to individuals rather than politicians incapable of balancing budgets.
I was unable to read the UNGA resolutions at the link from my iPhone.
I found this elsewhere, arguing the disproportionate number:
https://unwatch.org/2022-2023-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-of-the-world/
Your link is helpful. And I've long been a big fan of Hillel Neuer and UN Watch.
That list certainly catches a few dozen anti-Israel resolutions that I missed. But it also ignored many, many hundreds of others. There were, for instance, far more resolutions referring to each of Somalia, Sudan, and Haiti than referred to Israel.
Perhaps UN Watch's list only enumerated resolutions that were explicitly critical of target countries (rather than those establishing new aid programs etc). But they should probably have made that a lot more clear.