Role of United nations in peace keeping?

Question

though the main aim of UN is to maintain peace all over the world..wars are taking place in some parts of the world.Do u think that UN is failing to promote its aims&objectives.Being the member of UN why USA is encouraging or waging wars indirectly?

Answer 1

The UN is a miserable failure

The USA has no choice but to wage war because the UN has failed to prevent terrorism diplomatically

Answer 2

The UN fails where intergovernmentalism, and obscure principals such as 'sovereignty' rule.

How can you promote democracy worlwide and have China and Russia sitting on the Sec Council? But then how woul you be able to represent the world without those 2...

It is very difficult, but whenever the 5 agree, it certainly can work; but do not expect miracles. The Un doesn't have troops of its own; it only borrows from national governments, so don't expect them to ever get much more effective if the world keeps on being stuck in the dark ages of nationalism.

Answer 3

The position of UN is just like a good father having both weak and strong children, who at time fight among themselves and the father tries to compromise and bring things together, but then the more earning member has a bigger say which is accepted or rejected..

Though UN council for social and economic affair is doing more commendable work then the Security Council.

Answer 4

Wow think of the money saved if the UN moved away. Can already picture the new condo development, and all those so called ambassador privileges revoked. The millions of dollars not spent else were but spent in the US instead. The soldiers that won't have to part of the UN forces. The treaties the US can just brush away, the nonsense of asking permission to do the right thing would just save time. Instead of humanitarian dollars going into the pocket of UN officials it might actually go to the people that is if we want it too. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Answer 5

The UN may say they are helping promote peace, but they are actually just sticking their noses in where they shouldn't be. All they are really doing is sending more and more innocent troops off to never ending wars in countries that have never done anything to them. All they are doing is causing more wars.

Answer 6

UN fails in peace-keeping (as basically in everything they touch). It is heavy paid most ineffective bureaucratic machine where go the most incompetent civil servants all over the world, as if specially chosen by their laziness & dumbness; and those guys seriously expect to be somehow appointed as a world government, my!...Most of them are even illiterate, and must go some special "training" (to hide their dumbness, perhaps) in the UN post-graduation training Center near Torino, Italy. All this is done with the taxpayers money, mostly US ones; also with donations from some multinationals (Toyota, Volvo, P&G, Shell, etc.). With such staff you cannot reach overperformance anyway, not only in peace keeping...

Answer 7

The U.N. 's earlier prototype, the League of Nations was designed by Woodrow Wilson in 1919-1920. Even then, they could not stop the foreseeable WW2. They just stood by as the Allies taxed the Germans almost to death. Eventually, WW2 erupted. They failed to enforce the treaty that could have disbanded Hizbollah and put a quick end to their shelling of Israeli citizens. As well as NATO, NAFTA, and any other joint nations committee.

Answer 8

The United Nations has three functions in times of conflict:

1. Peace making
At this stage the UN provides neutral grounds for negotiation between conflicting parties, as well as the sharing of information and policy research. It attempts to resolve conflict while still respecting a state's sovereignty. Usually this will involve a series of plans towards peace, with contigencies for what happens if the plans fail or go differently than expected.

2. Peace keeping
Peace keeping occurs after both conflicting countries agree to try and achieve peace. UN Peace Keepers are NOT armed, and exist to provide neutral support to both sides of the conflict. They do this by reporting on compliance with peace agreements, and by measuring statistics that are important for assessing how many people are affected by conflict, famine, disease, etc.

3. Mandated Intervention
When peace keeping and peace making processes fail the UN Security Council can mandate armed intervention. However this is only done when the level of humanitarian disaster is at crisis point (eg when there is imminent or ongoing threat of genocide). Since this involves violation of state sovereignty, the UN will only use this as a last option and permanent member states can Veto the decision. Traditionally China and Russia have opposed intervention unless is it absolutely requires, whereas states such as the US and UK are less concerned about territorial intergrity and more concerned with humanitarianism.

Finding a balance is important but hard.

Although the US is a member of the United Nations, there is no way for the UN to actually force states to do anything. This is also exhibited by continued human rights abuse in China, which has about as much power in the UN as the United States itself. The United Nations will continue to provide its members with information about compliance and non-compliance with international agreements. But it is up to other countries to react to the US waging war.

Ultimately President Bush Jnr will have to face war crimes under international courts for the war waged in Iraq and the treatment of prisoners of war in Guantanamo Bay detainment camp. The actions taken by the Bush administration in the war against terror directly violates Geneva and Hague laws.

International Law has more power than the United Nations in this instance. But the UN plays a strong role in providing information, facilitating the exchange of ideas, and promoting peace... which international law cannot help out with.

What it comes down to in the end is that the United Nations is just one of many international non-government organisations. The UN was also founded under very different conditions than we experience in international politics today. It was originally concerned with Post WW2 rebuilding and development vis-a-vis the complexities of the Cold War and threats of mutual assured destruction through nuclear bombs.

So the structure of the UN has come under heavy testing since the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a hegemonic era (ie the US is the strongest nation with few strong opponents... previously it shared this power with the USSR in a bipolar era).

Changing its structure may help, but at the end of the day, regardless of structure we are still faced with the major challenges of the UN: it cannot force governments to do anything they don't want to do, and it must only mandate military action when it is absolutely necessary. These two factors alone mean that power of the UN during conflict will always be limited.

Answer 9

Most of the UN's successes are unrelated to peacekeeping. Their de-mining operations for example are vital to getting 3rd world nations back on their feet, since land mines keep farmers from planting crops.

Powerful nations fight their wars and leave their bombs and mines behind and don't even bother to clean up after themselves. The UN gets in there and picks up the mess.

People focus on peacekeeping failures because they hate the UN. The haters always come from large warmongering nations who are huge weapons proliferators.

If there ever are peacekeeping failures its not the UN's fault, its the fault of the nations engaging in the conflicts.

Answer 10

No doubt,it is a herculean task-and yet the UN has taken upon itself the burden. It's therefore, the primary duty of one and all, in lending a helping hand and morally support its cause in every form.