While reading about if the UN needs mending nowadays, I came across an opinion/article at thehill.com that speaks about how the UN and some alliances will matter for the upcoming elections in the U.S. To my surprise and understanding, what I took away the most from this article is how broken the U.S. is and how the present administration is backfiring at different efforts and achievements made by the U.S in the last several decades. I even think the article became “too political” at one point for my taste when I wanted to read more about the UN and alliances affecting the country instead. Nevertheless, I decided to use this article because it did mention (and explained) how throughout history the U.S. planted the seeds for what we know today as pacific alliances worldwide, and by doing so the achievement of diplomatic relationships that would have been impossible otherwise.
The title of this post refers to a couple of quite accurate sentences describing the current state of the U.S. where a lot is happening (social injustice, social movements, uncontrollable fires, an unstoppable virus killing people left to right, unemployment figures not seen in decades, an economy collapsing, and more). And the observation that stroke me the most was: “Decades after its founding, the United Nations is in need of serious reform. The Security Council is broken, and the General Assembly irrelevant”. Therefore, are both (the U.S. and the UN) broken and in need of mending?
To answer this question simply, I think they are. The U.S. is longing for the golden years of hegemonic power and the UN is working based on an outdated system, and hence both need to fix, rearranged, and updated to the current circumstances of the world. Societies have changed and thus countries, but organizations and institutions do not always reflect these changes, but unless they readjust to new situations, their work is not only useless but their existence is pointless.
The other strong argument made in this article speaks about the Trump administration breaking or pulling over from different alliances worldwide, which historically placed the U.S. in a privileged position. This isolationist behavior is not only making the U.S. losing diplomatic and leadership ground in the political arena, but it is enabling other powerful countries like China to call this empty spot their own and in doing so winning the favor of the world. My intention is not for the U.S. to go back and impose its presence and authority once again, but to create and use new strategies to gain back the lost ground with a more diplomatic approach (including with regions or countries where it saw no benefit before). This would be part of an updated and mended U.S. with a fresh globalist approach. The author of the article thinks that hope is not lost in regards to repositioning the U.S. in key global alliances due to the historical delivery of the U.S. of values such as democracy, freedom, open markets among many others. Many other countries share these same values and hence would be willing to unite forces with the U.S. In his opinion, the only threat to this global “repositioning” of the U.S. is Trump being re-elected for a second term. In contrast, he thinks that the biggest U.S. competition (China and Russia) has no genuine alliances, but rather short term and valueless relationships. In the end, the U.S. still has the hope to gain the global leadership ground back, but many things must be fixed, changed, or stopped.
As for the UN, many people have lost hope and even interest in the work they do. Their resolutions are seen as piles of papers and words that don’t take anywhere, and the future of the organization and overall purpose are questioned. Even during our class, we have briefly touched upon the UN and its usefulness. Given that this week we will discuss with more depth about the UN, with this post of mine and the article I found to share, I hope to bring more light to this topic and understand some instances still not clear to me.
Thank you for your time!
Maria Rodriguez-Ferreno.
Link to article: https://bit.ly/3jScojd
Maria,
You make a provocative point in your post–namely that perhaps BOTH the UN and the United States need to be changed. It’s hard to tell in the former case whether this is tied primarily to the president and his warped and uninformed views of the United Nations and multilateralism more generally, or if it is a larger problem. And the same can be said of reforming the U.S.–i.e., how much is due to the disastrous presidency of Donald Trump and how much of it is structural?
It has been known for some time that the UN was and is flawed, but what is often overlooked is that many of the specialized agencies of the United Nations (e.g., WHO, FAO, WFP, etc.) work quite well. In fact, the WFP–World Food Program–just won the Nobel Peace Prize!
–Professor Wallerstein