Aus der Meinungskolumne des UN-Humanitätsbeauftragten Martin Griffiths in der NY Times: [Besides the known current conflicts]… Millionen andere Menschen leiden weltweit nicht weniger unter den lang anhaltenden und ungelösten Konflikten, die keine Schlagzeilen mehr machen – in Syrien, im Jemen, in Myanmar, der Demokratischen Republik Kongo und in der Sahelzone, um nur einige zu nennen.
Genau diese Situation sollte die moderne Weltordnung verhindern, die nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg geschaffen und mit aufrichtigem Ehrgeiz in der Charta der Vereinten Nationen verankert wurde. Das Leid von Millionen Menschen ist ein klarer Beweis dafür, dass wir dabei versagen.
Im Grunde glaube ich nicht, dass dieses Versagen den Vereinten Nationen zuzuschreiben ist. Schließlich ist das Gremium nur so gut wie das Engagement, die Anstrengungen und die Ressourcen, die seine Mitglieder aufbringen. Meiner Meinung nach ist dies ein Versagen der Staats- und Regierungschefs: Sie lassen die Menschheit im Stich, indem sie den Pakt zwischen den einfachen Menschen und denen, denen die Macht innewohnt, brechen.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/opinion/united-nations-gaza-ukraine.html
Welche Führung unserer Länder könnte ihre Macht besser nutzen?
https://old.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/1di4d69/world_leaders_are_failing_us/
18 Comments
These are countries that have had decades of instability due to corruption, ethnic tensions, internal theocratic movements, western interventions, economic instability, and poorly drawn post colonial borders.
I do believe that the United States’s leadership could do much better with its power, as it has played a role in destabilizing countries around the world (same applies to many western powers as well).
I love the United States as a country but also feel its government has failed many people around the globe.
[removed]
It’s nobody else’s job to fix these failed states besides its own people.
Look at the history of nations.
Periods of peace are often preceded by great wars. That’s even true in western Europe /America .
These countries are at earlier stages of development after being ravaged by colonialism + war often because of involvement of great powers.
The best thing to do (imo) is to let these countries settle. We don’t need to be involved in every single conflict (American perspective ) screaming about freedom and democracy. The age of McCarthyism is over
The world is not a good place, that’s all I have to say here.
astronaut_meme.jpg
always has been
In all srsness though, this is the state of the world post WW2, and through most of recorded history. “This is precisely the situation that the modern global order, created in the aftermath of World War II and embodied with heartfelt ambition in the United Nations Charter, was meant to prevent. The suffering of millions of people is clear evidence that we are failing.” Anyone remember the Cambodian genocide? Bangladesh genocide? Saddam gassing the Kurds for fun? Rwanda genocide? IMO humanity has always been failing.
“They are failing humanity by breaking the compact between ordinary people and those in whom power is vested.” – the ancients have probably mentioned this at some point, but the social contract was most famously discussed by Rousseau in 1762. Govs have always been failing humanity, because those in power always seek to perpetuate their own power/wealth.
Pretty much every country could do better with its power. Among the questions is: what can even be done?
Why would a western politician who was elected to represent constituents from whatever western country they’re in want to waste political capital or waste time during their legislative sessions to support other countries whose stability and prosperity does not affect the people who elected them?
UN was created to prevent another world war. I see no world wars around us, so good work for now, I guess. It was not created to prevent every single war in the world, since it’s not possible to do so, and if it’s the standard by which we’re going to judge UN and world leaders, it failed many times over already, pretty much at the same time it was created, and every year since.
UN Security Council had two goals: prevent nuclear war by letting opposing powers talk to each other frankly, and to come down like a ton of bricks on anyone stupid enough to piss off **both** USA and USSR. The ehmphasis is important, because every would-be warmonger at least has to please one big nuclear power, in some way, which means that power will have some hold over the said warmonger. It doesn’t mean that wars and death will be avoided – it only means that the very worst excesses *maybe* could be avoided.
So, how are thw world leaders “failin us”? *”By breaking the compact between ordinary people and those in whom power is vested.”* is populist bullshit. Ordinary people has zero interest in what happens in Syria, Ukraine, or Sahel, or anywhere else outside of their country. But yes, world leaders *are* failing: the only way UN can even do anything decisive is by having Security Council pass an unanimous vote. This can only happen if all SC members agree on the posed question. For it to be true, they must all respect each other’s interests, and account for them. And yes, that means respecting interests of powers they don’t actually like. And **that’s** where the world leaders are failing: they sacrifice any attempts at constructive dialogue for posturing, which gets them points at home, but prvents any cooperation.
The article, of course, doesn’t mean that. Instead, it’s basic point is “world leaders, and I mean Putin (and maybe Xi but I’m not going to say that), aren’t doing what US tells them” and purposefully avoids blaming anyone in the West for anything.
The UN was made to prevent WW3,not every single conflict in the World
Though i argue Nukes are more prevalent in that role than the UN
> Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Sahel
Why doesn’t the UN help Myanmar? Well look at Myanmar’s neighbors & ask, why didn’t they?
When you say “world leaders”, you mean the West, because you implicitly know that *only* the West gives a damn, despite having no proximity to these horror shows
ASEAN will never help Myanmar. The African Union will never help the DRC. The Arab League will never help Yemen
But the EU will help Greece. Now will that help be “good” (debt crisis bailout) – that’s up for debate. But that help **will come**
Sucks for everybody else, but thats how it is
The United Nations needs to grow a world-elected body of representatives to handle its “leadership” problem, which is in essence an age-old legitimacy problem. It is the identical problem that the institution has always faced, and Dag Hammarskjold and others predicted this solution even as they founded the U.N. Democracy must be seen to defeat the powers of world kleptocracy, and growing a world democratic forum at the U.N. to promote a basic agenda is simply the best way to accomplish this necessity.
The United Nations were meant to help
the wealthy countries.
It’s an overly optimistic read on the function of international institutions. Theses institutions created at the end of WW2, are made to serve the interest of those who emerged victorious. While there was some measure of idealism mixed in, it was never meant to provide a hierarchically superior coercive force to order international systems. It’s primary function are no different from the league of nations or congress of Vienna, that is the prevention of great power conflicts.
The United states influence by its own wilsonian Liberalism, did push for the adoption of mechanisms that could curtail the primal influence of anarchy. The various institutions including UN, was designed to build frameworks of rules and norms to regulate the way country interact, but falls far short of enforcement. The rhetoric used by western leaders in particular expounding the virtues of liberal institutionalism is inconsistent with what can be achieved in reality, and should be understood in part as a sales pitch, and in part means to apply pressure, since compliance is primarily voluntary.
Yes but I hope the intent here is to include religious leaders in this group as well, not exclusively governmental leaders. In fact I believe religious leaders over time have failed humanity for worse than any governmental leader.
We built this civilization on “easily available energy”, assuming that “the world is sooo big that we’ll always have enough, and we can treat some commodities as infinite”.
Well, easily available energy is slipping away and we’re in the century of realizing that “oh shit, it’s not infinite, after all”.
So yeah, we all failed ourselves. The most convenient ressources have been mined.
Wars will increase, to try and secure ressources for nations with their illusionary borders. You just need to take a look at borders and how they evolves for the last 2k years to realize that thinking “it’ll stay the same now; we’ve evolved, we have human rights, etc. !” is complete and total horseshit.
It was a very, very, very bad idea to mine everything we could, as fast as we could, to have better “dopamine hits”, or whatever reasons we convince ourselves with.
Accelerate :]]]
The leaders in Russian, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, Congo, and Sudan have failed and no one else. The United Nations is not a world Government. The rules based modern order requires people to sign on the rules and honor them in their internal and external actions. We do not want the world invading and sanctioning us because of how we apply the death penalty or which max interest rates we allow on loans. We shouldn’t put even more violence trying to stop the fighting in these areas. The fact that elite powers drew lines that created these nations in the first place effectively locks people that don’t want to live together in the same political unit. Why are people fighting over Kashmir today when the partition of India happened over 50 years ago. People who want to kill each other, especially over thoughts are not something that we can solve militarily from the outside. People who are not living a first world experience or who aspire to a simple religious life experience are not going to be cowed by the elites holding modernism over their heads. It just isn’t our job and it may not be our concern.
What is the alternative? We tried intervention from the outside in the decade after the cold war, and it failed. The world order is falling apart, because it’s never truly been there.
Arguably, the only time the ”World order” worked more or less as it was intended was when the UN served as a nice facade to Pax Americana. This vaunted world order never extended to the old Communist bloc
Now a majority of the world, including USA itself, is getting tired of Pax Americana, so there is no longer any world police to enforce this world order.
How can we have a fair world, when a majority of the world’s nations are run by petty dictators that have convinced their population that it is free world’s fault that they are poor, not that he himself is getting rich on their poverty.
I guess you’re pretty young and feeling this stuff for the first time. That’s okay, everyone goes through that. But the thing you need to understand is *it’s not your fight*. Our human minds were not built to be aware of every single bloody conflict going on in every corner or the world every single day. It’s not your responsibility.
Besides, world history is rife with good intentions producing disastrous results through meddling with foreign affairs. Saddam Hussein was a bloodthirsty, psychopatic dictator, but toppling him got us the Iraq war. Same with Gaddafi in Libya. The Vietnam War, shock therapy in 90s Russia, Afghanistan, the dictatorships South America during the Cold War, the list goes on unto infinity. The world of geopolitics and conflict is infinitely complex, and not as clear cut as Hollywood good guy vs bad guy narratives, it’s more of a “bad guy vs. an even worse guy” dichotomy. It is possible, nay, common, for both sides of a conflict to be equally as monstrous as each other, and there being no good options or outcomes to be had in meddling with it.