It’s 2026 and people still don’t understand what the UN is. It is not a police force punishing countries. If it was no country would want to be a member. It’s a forum of discuss for countries so they have a place to argue instead of war. It’s quite good in that, still of course psychos will always start wars.
Ayo non horny post.
The UN is a diplomatic structure that exists to give state’s representatives a place to gather and talk. It’s not a world government. If it had been created with the intention of being one, no one would have signed on.
It’s not a world government.
Exactly. The UN is NOT a world government and we need to stop expecting it to act as one. That was never the intention of the UN.
That being said, a lot of people talk about the necessity for the “rule of law,” but there cannot be the rule of law without some kind of government with the authority to enact and ENFORCE laws. If nations are not willing to sign on to something like that, we cannot have the rule of law. Instead we will have the rule of whichever country has the largest, most powerful military and/or economic influence. I know a lot of Americans are fine with that arrangement because that position is currently occupied by the US, and has been for more than half a century, but the US might not always occupy that role. I wonder how those Americans would feel about this arrangement if China, for instance, were the world’s hegemon instead of the US?
Its got to start somewhere, we have to agree on something, or its going to get a lot hotter in a lot of horrific ways. I hate the hair splitting, the “yes, but what abouts”- things are getting bad out there and it has to stop. There are 190 other countries that are putting up with this, isn’t that enough to enforce something??
The term “democratic” does a lot of heavy lifting, given that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council can veto any substantive resolution.
The term “democratic” does a lot of heavy lifting
there is only one instance of the word “democratic” and it’s you saying it. He didn’t edit his post. Why are you so hell bent against the UN?
Sorry, I misread diplomatic for democratic, but my point still stands.
I remember the first time I read about the Rwandan genocide and the UN’s voluntary and conscious inaction. It genuinely made me feel sick to my stomach.
Situations like Ukraine and Palestine/Gaza make me think about that again.
At some point, inaction becomes complicity.
Honestly, I don’t think the vetoes are the main issue. In international diplomacy/law, enforceability rules discussions. If all the small countries vote to prevent the US-Iran war and intervene against the US, good luck enforcing it. The vetoes just reflect this reality.
The UN helps coordinate where there is a will to cooperate, but it can’t govern the world, whether veto power exists or not. What could be done to improve this I am not sure, but it is not as simple as removing the veto.
The UN used to be involved in peacekeeping. The problem is that the world is more divided than it was before. UN peacekeepers used to patrol Gaza. They defended South Korea.
As it is now, the US has completely removed most funding from the UN. Even if the deliberative bodies wanted to be more involved in world conflicts, they don’t have the funding anymore to do so. Trump is trying to strangle the UN to make room for his dictator council.
Wait until you learn about the UN’s role in the Korean war.
Would you consider yourself complicit?
Unironically? Sure.
I realize that I’m butting into a discussion that has little to do with my own world view, but you realize this line of inquiry is useless, don’t you?
If we’re talking about whether the U.N. has any power, then either they do and it’s a shame they’re not using it, or they don’t and so they’re kind of irrelevant.
If we’re just talking about whether you or I are going to hell, like, I really don’t give a shit. Maybe I will.
I believe the UN is relevant and has power on some levels. When a few million people want to kill another few million, it depends a lot on how much the member states are willing to do.
From a certain level of conflict, they become irrelevant because they don’t hold any hard power. But I don’t see how that makes them complicit
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why is the UN so hell bent against OP?
Trump’s “Board of Peace” is intended as basically official world police and several countries have signed up for it because they want to actively enforce “peace” towards anyone they disagree with.
The UN will never succeed in anything useful unless their resolutions carry economic or military weight.
To justify and “legalize” imperialism and the capitalist world system more like.
? The soviet Union was a veto member no?
For a “place to gather and talk” they sure do use a lot of money and resources. Maybe they should switch to remote work lol
The UN budget for 2025 was $3.7 billion
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/12/1158531
For comparison, global chewing gum sales in 2025 were $48.68 billion
That explains why the UN doesn’t kick ass.
10 million per day still seems like a lot, though we don’t know how much the sitting around and talking part actually uses since the article mentions this:
The regular budget funds UN programmes across key areas, including political affairs, international justice and law, regional cooperation for development, human rights and humanitarian affairs, and public information.
seems like
You clearly know what you’re talking about, Professor.
reddit ass comment
“The UN wasn’t founded to take us to Heaven, but to save us from Hell”
The UN is a place to meet, discuss differences and work out solutions. That’s it. Without it, the most trivial of conflicts can easily spin out of control. As world history has shown, and 20th century history most of all.
Not that OP has given that much thought, yet here we are.
Ah, yes, whatever would we do if nobody was stopping international conflicts from getting out of control? If the UN werent there to stop them, we might have the most-heavily-armed nation in the history of humanity actively funding genocide by a client state (with the actual diplomats saying their goal was to start literal Armageddon), kidnapping heads of state, assassinating heads of state, and suborning the second-most-nuke-filled country’s annexation of another country by lifting embargoes! Man, could you imagine if the headquarters of the United Nations were in THAT country, and everybody just… Did nothing? Man, what a crazy world we would live in.
It sure is a good thing that that same country doesn’t also refuse to sign any of the treaties meant to “save us from hell”, like the one saying “we won’t use land mines”, or the one saying “genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes are bad, and we should send people who do them to be punished”, or, oh yeah, all those treaties that are meant to actually make it so we don’t boil ourselves alive on a gods-forsaken world? Man, that would be wild.
Don’t get me wrong: many UN organizations do really good work. Look at the WHO! Man, it’s a good thing that that same country understands the important work of preventing and reducing the impact of the next Pandemic! What an awful world we would live in if they, say, decided to stop funding the WHO!
Again, the UN only has the power its memberstates give it. The UN ‘doing nothing’ means its memberstates don’t want something done.
Simple as that. The UN is not a state, it has no own money, no army, no economy. It’s a platform for global discussion and decision making. That’s it.
If you wanna blame people for bad things happening, blame the people doing the bad things.
Complacency.
The UN was sabotaged long ago by its permanent council.
And for some reason the UN does not fucking about what its supposed to care, AS long AS Its not white people dying in a conflict.
Anyone that makes this argument fundamentally misunderstands what the purpose of the UN is and as such should not offer any opinions on it
But “the UN, UN-Nazi’d the world.”
And as we can see, there ar no nazis in the world.
(I like the UN, but they really ar kinda useless…)
It’s a quote from Idiocracy.
But are you a nepo kid with massive generational wealth?
