The United Nations was
intended to obviate war, and failing in that mission, at least to safeguard
economic trade especially if doing so staves off anticipated belligerent action
by countries seeking to restore compromised trade. In 2026, when Iran’s stoppage
of the one-fifth of the world’s oil that would otherwise go through the Strait
of Hormuz triggered a military threat by the U.S., Russia and China vetoes a
resolution in the Security Council aimed at reopening the strait and thereby
obviating an escalation in the military fighting between the U.S. and Iran. Because
not even a lopsided vote in favor—11 in favor, two against, and two abstentions—could
activate the U.N. in its principle role of peremptorily obviating war by protecting
trade, we can conclude that the organization had indeed effectively collapsed
and could not be reformed from within, given that five members of the Security
Council retained veto power. Meanwhile, military aggressors in the world were able
to fill in the power-void left by the collapsing post-World War II world order
to render might-makes-right the status quo in the twenty-first century.
At the time, an E.U. media outlet
opined that it was doubtful that even if the resolution had been adopted, it “would
have impacted the war” because the wording had been “significantly weakened in
a bid to get Russia and China to abstain rather than veto it.”[1]
In other words, the existence of the veto power in the Security Council was
responsible for the impotence of the UN in protected trade and reducing pressures
for war. Just that “Iran’s chokehold during the war . . . sent energy prices
soaring around the world” should have been enough of a justification for UN
protective action in the strait, but not even that rationale was enough for the
UN to be able to use its own forces to protect oil tankers through the strait.[2]
Because higher oil prices were
in Russia’s economic and thus military interests as that country continued its
four-year invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s use of its veto exploited a conflict of
interest, and yet the UN had no means of blocking such a use of a veto-power
even though Russia’s invasion violated the UN’s charter, which bars offensive military
action being inflicted by one country on another country. In other words, the
UN could not even stand up to a blatant conflict of interest whose exploitation
enabled further violations of the UN’s own charter.
With Israel continuing its
holocaustic genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, the U.S. having invaded
Venezuela to capture its president, and Russia still invading Ukraine, the interest
of the global family of nations in establishing an international governmental
organization without vetoes and with its own enforcement power was so clear
that the lack of any such formative action can itself be reckoned as signaling
a problem. In other words, knowing that the post-1945 global order was collapsing
while military aggressors were getting away with establishing might-makes-right
as the new global default, governments nonetheless failed to actively create a
new order institutionally so that could be the new default. That the very
concept of international law was rapidly being treated as mere guideline
rather than law demonstrates just how serious the UN’s de facto collapse
was, and yet not even an informal coalition of governments seriously proposed
an international institution—whether an organization or government—to pick up
the slack and counter Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump. My point is that the
inaction of the bystander governments is itself a choice, which could have been
different, especially given the proliferation of war crimes and crimes against
humanity being incurred at the time. The political inertia internationally
favored malicious national leaders and the false belief that the UN was still operational
as per its mission.
2. Ibid.
