How Far Do You Agree That The UN Is Largely Obsolete In Enforcing The Will Of The Global Community?

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How Far Do You Agree That The UN Is Largely Obsolete In Enforcing The Will Of The Global Community?

In this essay I will attempt to explain to which extent the UN is obsolete in enforcing the will of the global community. This will be done by exploring some of the criticisms of the UN, such as the UN’s veto power, the role of elite nations and their democratic character.

In 2004, former ambassador to the UN Dore Gold published a book called Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fuelled Global Chaos. The book criticized what it called the organization's moral relativism in the face of (and occasional support of) genocide and terrorism that occurred between the moral clarity of its founding period and the present day. While the UN during its founding period was limited to those nations that declared war on at least one of the Axis powers of World War II, and thus were capable of taking a stand against evil, the modern United Nations has, according to Gold, become diluted to the point where only 75 of the 184 member states during the time of the book's publication "were free democracies”. He further claimed that this had the effect of tipping the scales of the UN so that the organization as a whole was more amenable to the requirements of dictatorships. The UN General Assembly decided to hold a moment of silence in honour of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il following his death in 2011. Western diplomats criticized the decision. An official at the Czech Republic's UN mission said the Czechs did not request a similar moment of silence for Vaclav Havel who died a day after Kim.

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There has been controversy and criticism of the UN organization and its activities since at least the 1950s. In the United States, an early opponent of the UN was the John Birch Society, which began a "get US out of the UN" campaign in 1959, charging that the UN's aim was to establish a "One World Government." Charles de Gaulle of France also criticized the UN, and was not convinced that a global security alliance would help in maintaining world peace, preferring that the UN direct defence treaties between countries.

There has been criticism that the five permanent members of ...

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