The Role of the UN in the New World Order
I have been reading The President of Good and Evil all week. Last night I read the chapter on "Pax Americana". In many ways, it is the most interesting of the chapters that I have read. This is partly because Michael Lind's criticism of Singer from the New Statesman still rings in my ears:
I found this a very provocative paragraph, which stuck out in my mind. Is there really no UN without US military power, in- or outside of the security realm? I have been trying to do some research on this matter, but much more is still left to be done. Certainly a Pax Americana sounds far from desirable if you don't happen to be American. Nor does the oligarchy of any "concert of the leading great powers" seem more desirable. Nothing could have more legitimacy than UN approval. This was particularly evident in Australia at the time that Howard joined Bush in the Iraq War. Most Australians did not think we should have gone to war with Iraq without UN approval. And the UN was never going to approve such an action because there was not the evidence to justify it. This has since become more than painfully clear. And now America has appealed to the United Nations for help in rebuilding Iraq anyway, and restoring stability to that country. The US may not have needed the UN to go to war. But it has needed the UN in order to go to peace. This makes the role of the UN in the New World Order—and there definitely is a New World Order, in one form or another—something of concern to me.
Most of Bush's critics, including me, have thought that the alternative to a Pax Americana is a concert of the leading great powers, including the US, acting within or outside of the UN system. But according to Singer: "After the end of the cold war, there were only two plausible candidates for the role of global peacekeeper in international affairs: the United Nations, or the sole remaining superpower, the United States." He appears not to recognise that there is no UN, at least in the security realm, without US military power. Absurdly, he cites the fact that the US ranks 18th out of 21 countries in contributions to United Nations peacekeeping to suggest that the UN is really not dependent on US power.
I found this a very provocative paragraph, which stuck out in my mind. Is there really no UN without US military power, in- or outside of the security realm? I have been trying to do some research on this matter, but much more is still left to be done. Certainly a Pax Americana sounds far from desirable if you don't happen to be American. Nor does the oligarchy of any "concert of the leading great powers" seem more desirable. Nothing could have more legitimacy than UN approval. This was particularly evident in Australia at the time that Howard joined Bush in the Iraq War. Most Australians did not think we should have gone to war with Iraq without UN approval. And the UN was never going to approve such an action because there was not the evidence to justify it. This has since become more than painfully clear. And now America has appealed to the United Nations for help in rebuilding Iraq anyway, and restoring stability to that country. The US may not have needed the UN to go to war. But it has needed the UN in order to go to peace. This makes the role of the UN in the New World Order—and there definitely is a New World Order, in one form or another—something of concern to me.
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