Why I (Sometimes) Hate the U.N.
Because both Russia and China can use their veto power as permanent members of the Security Council to block anything and everything they want, even overriding decisive majorities.
And they’ve both vetoed U.S.- and U.K.-backed sanctions on Mugabe’s illegitimate regime in Zimbabwe.
And why did they do that? Because China, for one, does business with Mugabe, and because neither Russia nor China wants the U.N. to challenge undemocratic regimes. Here’s how the Russian ambassador put it: “This draft is nothing but the council’s attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of a member state.”
But then what’s the point of the U.N. if it can’t organize international action as required? And, to be sure, what is happening in Zimbabwe, with Mugabe and his thugs turning an election into a sham and brutalizing the people, as they have done for many years now, requires international action.
U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad — a Bush appointee who, on this issue, is quite right — put it well: “China and Russia have stood with Mugabe against the people of Zimbabwe. This resolution would have supported the courageous efforts of the Zimbabwean people to change their lives peacefully through elections.”
So much for that. So much for peace and democracy in Zimbabwe, or anywhere else for that matter, if Russia and China can help it.
(Cross-posted from The Reaction.)
8 Responses to “Why I (Sometimes) Hate the U.N.”
I am amused.
The US goes out of it's way to piss off the Russians by putting missile defenses in Poland and the Czech republic to protect Europe from Iran ( like anyone is going to believe that ) and then the US expects the Russians to help them out when It has a problem.
It can be frustrating to be sure, but remember that it works both ways. We've ticked them off (along with many non-members of the permanent security council) by using our similar position to veto each and every incident where the rest of the coucil wanted to condemn something Israel did. When you all get veto power, this sort of thing is just going to happen I guess.
i think the very idea of a U.N.-type organization is a good one, but the reality suffers from some pretty severe design flaws, one of the notable ones being that it isn't a democracy.
Sorry, DQ, but this is not a U.S. problem. It goes way past that simple outlook. Of course it's not surprising that the Russions couldn't care less. Never think that they are anything but a tyranny right now. I was just running an errand and listening to a report on torture prisons in Russia.
Funny, I have been listening to the radio for the last few month and I keep hearing discussions of US torture in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib & Bagram Air force base, not to mention Extraordinary Rendition and archipelago of secret prisons, Civilian weddings getting a few tons of American Bombs dumped upon them. We aren't exactly standing on the moral high ground here.
It's not that the Russians couldn't care less, it's a cheap and easy way of expressing their displeasure at our foreign policy in their Near Abroad. basic tit for tat.
We can complain about China and Russia's veto power, but we have to be fair and complain about our own indecent use of that same power.
Our use of veto power is not indecent, unlike the case with Russia and China.
The UN, supposedly this great thing to rise above and end political strife among nations, is riven throughout with political strife and is viewed by normal people with ugly cynicism.
I'm surprised anyone still has naive faith in the UN. (Maybe the holdovers are the same kind that actually believe in or want world government, no doubt at the US's expense.) The wackiest people would say the UN is a “tool of the USA and the West, an evil instrument of oppression” and cheer Chinese, Russian, and French vetoes, and they are fans of the menagerie called the General Assembly, which in addition to being thoroughly politicized, often engages in faddish politics influenced by the degenerate radicalism of liberalism in the 1960s and later years. (Hence we still hear “neo-colonialist” nonsense and see Israel-bashing get-togethers by nations who also demand “reparations” from the West.)
Bull.