5 thoughts on “UNable: Is the world’s peacekeeper worse than useless?”

1. It’s highly debatable whether the UN was ever established to ‘make peace.’ Most historians of International Relations consider it the Post-Imperial alternative to nonviolent coercion, rather than bringing compromises between conflicting states. Where coercion is the goal, there will always be bias.
   But I think the role of UN ‘peacekeeping troops’ as a kind of token gesture towards peace needs to be looked at further. If ‘peacekeeping’ was the goal of this collective, then they would make damn well sure to have peaceful troops.
   Who, as we have seen in Congo, Sudan and Somalia, are the number one purveyors of war rape.
   So interesting as this piece is, to start from the premise that the UN is a ‘peacekeeping body’ is a kind of historical fallacy that will throw off any decent argument…

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   1. Very well-stated. Thank you for sharing. The very fact that the world’s most oppressive regimes have as much of a say as free, open, accountable democracies turns the United Nations into a farce. Indeed, over the last seven decades, the grand noble sentiments behind the establishment of the UN, as expressed by Eleanor Roosevelt and others, have been warped beyond recognition. Today, this suprnational body of unelected diplomats is simultaneously impotent in its ability to act and malevolent in its continuing attempts to dismantle the sovereignty of free nations – one resolution at a time…

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      1. Perhaps you are right about intentionality, but as a cynicist I would say the UN was always going to be weaponised by postcolonial states seeking to deny other postcolonial states their sovereignty, in order to boost their own territorial standing by filling the subsequent power vacuum. I’ve studied Rwanda’s Genocide in great depth, and find the UN complicit in their cooperation with génocidaires doing exactly that- turning on the most vulnerable states in order to secure greater regional power and control.
         By the way I’m enjoying your blog, it’s thoughtfully written!

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      2. In short, The United Nations should be converted into just another harmless NGO, no? Perhaps it could utilize its vast global reach to focus less on peacekeeping and more on something more tangible and immediate, say the distribution of food stufss and medical supplies to some of the world’s more foressaken places. Glad you’re enjoying the blog. I’ll try to keep it up!

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      3. The very concept of such differing states and governments coming together to agree on compromise rather than coercing the minority states, is bound for failure. I personally don’t see why we should take puppet governments or unelected officials seriously, even outside the UN…

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